2,000

I hit the magic 2,000 number on Twitter yesterday and had a stop putting off the inevitable: paring down the number of people I follow on the site.

For those of you who don't know about this magic number (and I was in this category two days ago), ostensibly to prevent spamming, Twitter temporary halts you once you follow 2,000 people. Note that, like many people, I don't pay particularly close attention to 90% of my followers' tweets. I use HootSuite to filter followers and keywords into manageable streams, although there are plenty of alternatives out there.

What to do?

Google it, of course. I found a neat little post on some of the different options. ManageFlitter (pictured above) worked very well, easily allowing me to remove people without pictures on their Twitter profiles or those who have been inactive for 30 days. There are other options, including deselecting verified or popular accounts. You can also remove over-tweeters en masse.

Maintenance

Much like regularly tuning your car or going to the doctor, it's probably wise to routinely run a utility like this. I'm a big believe that social media quality trumps quantity. Sure, it's great to have 10,000 followers, but what if they're just spammers and white supremacist groups? I'll take 200 people who actually care about what I have to say and write.

Any tips for managing your tweeps?