NOWSOURCING

You can’t actually keep up with very many Twitterers (assuming you have a job or a life), so following large numbers is artificial. The lists have helped — you can keep up with subsets and ignore most of the tweets that go by — but they don’t make enormous lists any more real.
The implications for the value of followers are obvious. There are a few people who really care about what you say, and a few with whom you have actual relationships,and the rest are people who happen to ride the train with you.
If we wouldn’t say, “I’m so influential! Thousands of people followed me to work today on the freeway!” then we shouldn’t imagine that having thousands of followers means much.

RE: Account age…

That’s a bit messy of a metric. For example if a SMB starts in 2007, uses their stream for service announcements and have 300 customers/clients… 300 following/followers would be reaonable. In contrast, a regional organization could start an account in 2009. They use their account for engagement, announcements, and extending their scope of influence. Given the entirely different approach taken, many factors would shift dramatically. Also, say this regional organization is based in a major Metro area. It’s conceivable to exceed the more aged SMB account in a single day. Factor external influences and a regional org could max out the number of followers allowed per day if it has a strong Metro WOM following.

No brand names, no celebs and no one-of-a-kind accounts. Still possible to see a tremendous difference in following/followers. Far to messy since the type of account, purpose and utilization of twitter varies dramatically dependant on market and objectives.

IMHO, it’s far more important research competitors using the same platform (in this case twitter), research others using your desired model and connect with other influential members that cater to and promote your niche market. Of course, with each analytics can you open, 3 more open, but…

I just don’t think there is a magic/baseline number you can associate since there are far too many variables at play. Even generalizing could get messy, fast.

As far as the massive descrepencies… Yup, following autofollowing users is a great way to game your “authority” on twitter. However, anyone who would need to consider such analytical data should also have enough mastery of language to be able to “read” the user’s timeline and make a informed choice on whether to associate w/ that account. Now, that’s in a perfect world where your SMO actually knows what their doing.

Gimme 2000 Quality followers/following members who will engage and promote my account over 20,0000 sheeple any day!

The question is: How many followers can you handle?

I think following everyone back is a silly idea – expecialy for individual. How do you make sense of the noise signal? At the same time a large number of followers may sound like a great idea, but more important is to judge their interaction with you – if that level is low, then again it’s a pointless exercise.

I am with rebecca on this one, lists are a great way to manage large number of people you WANT to follow, without having to follow them. (link to a post I wrote on this very issue that yo may find interesting – appreciate your feedback)

@Tad Chef: thanks for stopping in – how many followers can I handle? How many you got?

Seriously though, with the advent of groups in several third party tools and Twitter lists, you should theorethically be able to handle any number of Twitter followers.  What I think you’re asking though is how to handle all the followers within one’s friend stream.  That’s a good question that I don’t have a good answer to, especially considering things like Dunbar’s number (a theory that people really can’t keep up relationships beyond 150 people).  The good thing is that we really don’t have to keep up with every single person we’re following: in fact, if you look at many Twitter “celebrities,” you’ll see that they are mainly just replying to people that are mentioning them.  So while it may look like they are hyper active (in upwords of 100 Tweets a day), they are really just taking care of dm’s and mentions.

Depends. I massive unfollow a ton of people, but I had my account set to autofollow for a couple months and it got loaded w/ spammers. All the people I drop are spammers. Everyone else gets a chance to show their value.

Since dropping several hundred spammers from my following list, I’ve actually found that the quality of my followers has started to improve (gaining known, influential followers vs. marginal or obscure followers) and I’m getting more of them, faster.

So, depending on the person, I suppose…

We agree Quality Over Quanitiy. We have reached 12,000 followers. If the people have value will follow them and not drop them. We use Twitter as a introduction tool. The key is to engage the users to establish relationships. This a time consuming process if you want to do it right. Any questions follow us at http://www.twitter.com/SEONOW

I still Havn’t joined Twitter….
Thanks for the post…

You have to really be intriguing to get followers on Twitter.
I don’t mean that in an offensive manner, but usually people don’t desire to recognize what a stranger is doing every minute of the day.

I still do not get all the fuss about twitter, and have given up trying to follow and sift through all the noise that you get bombarded with. For me it doesn’t offer much value, but I am hoping that something will happen to convince me otherwise. From what I’m seeing quite a lot of the big name bloggers in the make money online niche are promoting building your list huge so you can make some tidy money off sponsored tweets. That I get, but I prefer to make my money in other ways, thank you very much!

Anti-Twitter here. Despite it’s rapid growth and continued popularity I think Twitter is a fad and not really worth the time of any business. Seriously, what business do you need to be in that requires you to keep you ‘fans’ updated as to your activities on a day to day or hour to hour basis? It’s a great tool for celebrity stalkers and sharing jokes, but has anyone ever heard of a company which made a killing thanks to that tweet they sent? Twitter is a waste of time.