[kyleashipley]

Maybe you're just using the wrong heuristic for Twitter? I never follow more than 100 people and periodically cull my list down to that if I go over. My goal is primarily to follow interesting people, especially other local programmers, people who are working on cool research topics I would otherwise miss, and friends who make me laugh. I remove anyone who is too noisy for too long, even if they are interesting. Twitter is by far my favorite social network and is generally high-signal for me.

Popularity seems like an anti-goal unless you're selling something.