[epidemian]

What would be the purpose of "following" someone on Twitter if you don't want to read what they say? Genuinely curious; i'm not a Twitter user, but AFAIK the "following" relation there is unidirectional (i.e. you don't have to follow people that follow you).

[0majors]

I like to have my friends on Twitter so I can shoot them @ messages but as soon as the number of people I follow goes above around 100 the signal to noise ratio turns me off. I don't have the time or the interest to read all of that to find couple of good tweets. I'm a light Twitter user due to this; I assume creating lists can help.

[jarek]

If only there were any other ways of messaging people on the internet

[jamesrcole]

So? Why do you even need the Internet? You could just SMS them? or why do you even need SMS? Why not just send them snail mail letters or see them in person?

There are certain pros and cons -- differeing levels of convenience being one of them -- of every communications medium and your response completely ignores that.

[andrewmunsell]

He's referring to Facebook-- there's a feature where you can still be friends with someone and not see anything (or just some things) they post. It's good for obsessive Farmville/Words with Friends types to hide that activity.

[Mahn]

He refers to Facebook, but he mentions he wishes Twitter were like this, hence the question what utility would this have for Twitter.

[snowwrestler]

Same as Facebook--maintain the relationship but reduce the noise. You can only DM with followers for example.

[eterm]

Technically, you can only DM people who follow you. Whether you follow them is irrelevant.

Twitter is a pub sub model, it doesn't really make sense to want to sub but not sub. Twitter follows aren't like friendships at all, they're a "I want to see your content" marker.

[marblar]

Yes but the fact that they are publicly visible makes them serve a secondary purpose.