I know there are a lot of folks who suggest that it doesn’t matter who; or the numbers of people following you on social services like Twitter or FriendFeed are. They like to suggest that it is more about the number of people you follow regardless of whether or not those people follow you back. On the surface this is a nice PR type of sentiment but does it really translate into anything of value in the scheme of things?

I don’t think so.

I have been using Twitter since it became the hottest thing in the blogosphere following its use in the SXSW conference a couple of years ago. There were a couple of times when I took a break but I always ended coming back to the service but through that time I have seen more discussions over how it was going to go mainstream, or it was going to fail or how it continued to be the best thing since sliced bread. along with those discussion was the whole argument of which was more valuable – the number of followers you had (whether you followed them back didn’t – and still doesn’t – seem to be important) or the number of people you followed regardless of whether they returned the favour.

At the forefront of this whole discussion; like many others to do with the web and social media, was Robert Scoble who has lately said it is more important the number of people you follow. The idea being here that the more people you follow the smart you can get because you have more information to draw on. Except there is a problem with this supposition and it goes right back to what the whole Web 2.0 and social media ethos is built on – that being it’s all about the conversation. So you can follow hundreds or thousands of people but if those people don’t even know you exist how are you suppose to have these great conversations.

As I thought about all this I decided it was time to do some early spring cleaning of my Twitter and FriendFeed account. My only prerequisite being people that I had been following for sometime but hadn’t felt I was equal enough to return the favour. As snarky as that may sound it’s a reality that if people aren’t following you back it is probably one or more of three reasons. First being language barrier. That being either of us don’t speak the same language.

Given that I’m not in the habit of following people who don’t speak English this probably wasn’t one of the reasons. The second possible is a lack of mutual interests. Again since I am not in the habit of following people who blather on about stuff I’m not the least bit interested in I don’t see this as being a reason for them not returning the favour. So what does that leave – really. Yup they aren’t of the opinion that by following me that I can be of any interest to them or that I might write something useful for them.

If that is the case what is the point of following them, because after all no-one learns anything with one way conversations. Not to mention, but to think that they are more important than the person following them and thereby there is no need to return the follow is just plain arrogant. So out came the chopping block for Twitter and FriendFeed and the axe started falling.

When it came to Twitter I used a nice little tool that Corvida pointed me to the other day which made the job a lot easier. the web app is called Twitter Karma and does a great job of pointing out who you are following, who is following you and mutual contacts. In the space of about half an hour I had removed some 110 people who I had been following but hadn’t felt I was good enough to return the favour. Among them where people like @acarvin, @scottw, @dsearls, @bgolub, @stevecla, @thomashawk and many others.

FriendFeed was a lot harder and time consuming to go through but by the time I was done I had pared it down by 64 of those that didn’t think following me was necessary. Among those there was KevinFox, ChrisBrogan, DanielHa, DrewOlanoff just to name a few.

Some might say that I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face by removing these contacts to which I’d pretty well say bullshit. If their time and words are so valuable that everyone wants to hang off of them then fine; but what kind of value is there when they restrict who they are willing to have conversations with to a limited few and the rest can hang out in the peanut gallery.

Everyone’s time and words have value and part of this whole social media thing is about broadening the conversations to include a broader and broader range of people being included – nut just your buddies from the conferences. You have made it quite plain that my input in your conversations doesn’t mean squat so guess what – you aren’t worth listening to either.