Tweet Tweet

I am not the only one to notice that Twitter is running a little slow today. There have been a number of Tweets I've seen over the last several days either stating the obvious or suggesting why this is happening. The problem with Twitter being slow is that I am posting my Twitter feed directly to the site. This is done via a script that runs from the browser. This means that if Twitter is slow, then this site runs slow. I have noticed this before and I finally did something about it today. I moved the script to the end of the page so that I HOPE the page loads and then the Twitter data loads, and the page doesn't look awful and half rendered. Time will tell. While I am talking about Twitter, I am surprised that I have 25 people "following" what I post there. Of course, I realize that Twitter is just another social network site. This means that there is more going on with the site than might be obvious. One of the behaviors I have noticed in the Twitter population is the idea that if someone is following me, I should be following them. Or at the very least, there is a portion of the Twitter population that things most of the Twitter population thinks this way. It works this way, a Twitter user can see who is following them. There is also an option to be notified when someone starts following you. Either way, you get to see who is following you. There seems to be this idea where if you follow a lot of people, at least some of those people will follow you to see if they can figure out why you are following them. At the very least, someone is going to click on your account to see who you are. I know I check the pages of the people I am notified about. So am I interesting enough to have attracted 25 people? I'm not sure. One of my followers is my brother. Another is a member of the Myst Community. Two are for software projects I use or have used. One appears to be associated with the city. Some appear to be people I don't konw but who live in the region who may have just added other locals, unless I'm not really paying that much attention to the people I work with, as I'm usually on the phone all day. At least one entity is a project to follow as many people as possible. The rest just look like they are trying to sell me something, assuming I'd follow them just because they are following me. One is following in the 10's of thousands. Tens of thousands of people being followed. Considering that Twitter will happily forward you, via SMS or IM, every update from every person you are following, I'd hate to live or work with someone following that many people. When does the phone ever stop? When does the IM ever cease? I'm following 5 accounts. Brian, two myst people, one software project and the local city update. I'm not really in a rush to add anymore. I sometimes think about adding more Myst people. I really wasn't going to add the first one, till they followed me first. Honestly, I wonder how people feel about the unexpected follow from someone they kind of know, but don't really konw. /shrug. There were a few more poeople following, but when I cared a little more about it, I blocked them. I stopped blocking. If someone really wants their friends/follwed account timeline to look just a messy and meaningless as the public timeline, why should I stop them. There only going to follow 9,999 other people. I will be checking to see how the page is loading after the changes I made to try to protect from slow tweet retrieval. But let me konw. Then again, it's not like there are a lot of you out there actually reading. I might try a different method of presenting my own feed over the long weekend.