1. Direct communications with personal friends
The first usage I have for Twitter is to stay in touch with personal friends of mine. Here I want to read all those “meaningless” tweets about lunch, the kids, and the puppies. This is also the category where I want to engage with people intensely. For this usage Twitter is really just another medium like the phone or email.

2. Staying aux current with my topics of interrest
There are a few topics where I want to stay current on any developments. Since these are not classical newspaper topics, it’s tough to get the news. So by following other activists in the field, I have a good way to stay up to date as well as keep those interrested up to date on my own activities.
This is a less directly engaging way to use Twitter. It’s more about sharing mutually interresting news.

3. Getting information from leaders
There are and always will be those whose opinion I value on a diverse array of things. For that reason I want to hear what they have to say. I want to be informed when they write a new blog post or similar. I really don’t care as much whether they ever read anything I write. Or whether they ever interact with me in any way whatsoever.
This usage of Twitter is completely unidirectional and non-engaging.

These three major usage categories create different patterns in what I want to gain from Twitter. It’s hard, but I have found a way to have all three. I just group my real friends into one group. These I don’t filter at all then I have a group per topic. Here I filter out all @replies unless they are replying to me. And then I have a group for my category three people. Here I filter out all @replies and filter the individual people through a topical bayesian filter.

This way I can actually follow many more people than I would otherwise be capable of. By severly filtering Twitter depending on my usage patterns. I think unless someone filters like I have come to do there is no way that it’s possible to keep up with more than 500 people.

Dominic Jones(@irwebreport) is considering and has suggested to unfollow people that follow more than 2000 people. I think he has a points. However I think he is ignoring what Twitter is used for by different people. If you group and filter aggressively it may well be or become legitimate to follow a lot more people than 2000. I think a year from now I will be following closer to 20000 as I discover people and as more people join Twitter internationally. I hope @irwebreport will reconsider his position and take into account the possibility that filtering and grouping may well increase his limit.