Also, if anyone from Twitter is reading: it would be nice if Twitter implemented a way to subscribe to someone's timeline instead of having to resort to this method.
If you're concerned about API usage limits, just use the API keys of any official client (google them) and enjoy.
The problem here is in the end that there isnt a easy way for a company to communicate it's product strategy to api users and people are left to reverse engineer it.
It's like they gauged interest on half-an-MVP of a feature and never bothered to truly complete it and make it actually useful.
I only follow under a hundred people and find it cumbersome to keep up. How do you follow more than 1,000 users and manage to keep up with that stream?
You jump in occasionally, see what's going on and then continue on with whatever. I follow about 2k people and most of those are acquaintances, some colleagues, etc. The only reasonable way to keep an eye on things is lists or custom searches.
When I'm attending a conference, I add a hashtag search a few weeks in advance and kill it a few days after the event. I can catch all the last minute "who's in town?" or "here are my slides!"
And then lists are key. I have a few set up for specific topics, former colleagues (private), and my local tech community. That way I can stay plugged in regardless of other stuff happening.
Depending on how chatty they all are, I think you could reasonably follow around 1,000 people and keep up with it alright. Much more than that and you're just periodically sampling a chaotic timeline you're not really engaged with, though.
If you mute a heavy retweeter on twitter, isn't that the same as just deleting them? Why continue to follow someone you've muted?
1) They don't know I've muted them, which can be nice for personal friends that are just too damn chatty.
2) They can still DM me, again useful for closer acquaintances.
3) I'll often mute temporarily, e.g., I'll probably mute several people for a week during the RNC convention, because they'll be much chattier than usual. Or I just recently muted somebody who would not stop with Brexit articles. I care about it, but as a USA citizen, I don't need 70 tweets a day about it.
4) I still see replies to the muted person (from other people I follow). I don't see tweets directed to other people unless I also follow them. So if muted-friend-1 tweets something and unmuted-friend-2 responds to 1, I'll see that tweet and can swipe over to see the full conversation. IOW, I still see "@mutedfriend that's awesome!", whereas if I unfollowed, I would only see responses that purposefully broaden their reach, e.g., ".@mutedfriend blah".
Anyway, not a huge difference, but yes, there are enough small differences that I'll often choose to mute rather than delete/unfollow.
But it can also be useful to just outright temporarily mute someone who's at an event or something and swamping your timeline with irrelevant tweets that you know are timeboxed and will soon return to normal. A 7 day mute or whatever beats unfollowing and forgetting to refollow.
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackybird/ddlhmpom...
It isn't a novel which is needs to be read from start to finish.
+1 Twitter should build this!
