Journal of Tormod Haugen

Twitterdemics - my network grows

When I started using twitter for real, I set out to follow a small group, only following back if I deemed other persons interesting enough to read. This worked out rather nicely, I followed a few people, tweeted a bit, got a few followers and it got going.

I’m still not sure if I say anything that is interesting, but at least I don’t say enough stupid stuff making people remove me again.

Anyway. I muddle about, blocking the occasional spammer, following back someone who inadvertently follows me… (there is a fine line between modesty and depression induced paranoia). I’m suddenly above 20 followers and 20 I follow. Then something happens. People I follow reply to someone I cannot see. Or rather, to someone I don’t follow. I take a quick look, and follow them. They follow back…

The snowball has started rolling. It is an epidemic! A Twitterdemic! Even being careful about following and followers, I find myself passing 30, 50 and even 70 followers and foll.. fr… subscriptions! Will it ever end? If everyone else (for smaller values of everyone) are doing this, we’ll end up with a big ball… a metagroup of twitterers - each of who has a small number of strings out in the twitterverse.

Or perhaps it will all collapse like a house of cards?