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The twitter model is very strange, the more success it has, the less usefull it becomes.

I’m a fresh user, been using it for 3 month. I started to use it for business purpose: as I manage an internet strategy consulting and developing firm, Twitter is the best way to be informed by a serious of very cool people on what’s going on in the Web. Actually I have just 32 users in my following profiles http://twitter.com/AndreaDenaro/friends with some great names, such as Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki and Tim O’Reilly. That’s cool! I’m in direct touch with some of most interesting professionals in the Net and I’m informed in real-time of any new feature or trend available on the market.

Here is the first paradox: as much as you use it, it becomes un-usefull.

Think on 32 people: just 6 or 7 are serial twitters, but I received about 90 twitts in the last 4 hours! Most of them are related with links and articles (always really interesting) Imagine if I would like to read each of them! And I’m just at 30 people…. Every day I leave at least an half of these messages  completely unread and also if I try to look through the long list of them, is difficult to find every interesting argument.

Mark Clayson (absolutely casual example), one of the user I’m following, has … 17.900 friends! That means he receive updates from 17K people: one each second? Maybe more How can he read each of them? It is impossible: probably he has filtered all this users and it is reading updates just from a few number of ultra/trusted friends. Or maybe he is not working anymore, just twitting all day

But without thinking on 17K users (I don’t now which is the average of following profiles), I’m asking to myself how to read updates from 100 or 200 users.

Many conclusions come to my mind:

a. it has no sense to add a lot of people. You should add only trusted ones.
b. reputation is the key (to listen and to be listened)
c. too many massages give the same results: caos and caos

On the other side is the quality of the content: if I use twitter to stay in touch with my friends, ok… but what about if you use it to find business informations?

What is really important to me, is the value of the information: a new service, a different trend, a strategic consideration… Anything that can give me an advantage in my business. Robert Scoble it’s a great twitter and I find really useful his messages. But as I read them, all my competitors will probably do it (well, probably not in Italy).

Here comes to me the second paradox: the more followers you have, the less cool you become for me.

This is particularly important to who’s becoming a sort of twitter celebrity and doing business on that (NYT). The more followers you have, the less strategic become your informations. Your twit will be retwitted by lot of people so I’ll receive your information also without having you in my following list: it’s not strategic to have you in my contact list.

Obviously twitter celebrity are interested in influencing as much people as they can, so it is perfect for them, but in a medium range time they are condemned to loose power:  it should be great to discover all that guys who can give me a serious advantage. It should be great to find a search engine that show where buzz starts, who first twitted what, how it grow up. It should be great to know what other people doesn’t know yet and not what everybody already does.
There is a third paradox, and is related with the business model: too many users means less influential informations and twitters.

I read many articles about Twitter PRO accounts: not just I would probably pay, but I would also suggest to many of my clients to do the same.
If you try to think just a moment on an user like Robert Scoble, you would probably understand that is totally unuseful to be added to his account: he has an enormous influential on people and he is a terrific traffic driver, but what about when he will be chosen by tens of companies? Totally wasted money.

And what about the random “normal” user: you will be added in 1000 following list. Mmmm great 1000 users… 1000 users kindly ignoring your brand (I’m really curious on the redemption rate!)

P.s. let’s see how many people will twit this articles!