Sometimes my Twitter following list starts to grow out of control and the time comes to give it a trim, or maybe even a wholesale cull. Using a combination of online tools, such as ManageFlitter, as well as manually sorting through the list on Twitter, here are some of the things I look out for.

• Inactive accounts: If you don't tweet for a long time I'll probably get around to unfollowing you, eventually. Probably.
• Marginal follow backs: There have been times that I have been followed, received the notification email and pondered for a while whether I should follow back or not. There have been cases where I thought 'Oh, go on then' and, as it has turned out, that was the wrong choice.
• Non responsives: Accounts that I have never had a Twitter conversation with, never retweeted or been retweeted by and rarely, if ever, found an interesting link via. It seems pointless maintaining these follows.
• Twitter follow limits: Sometimes some follows just have to go because of the Twitter following limit rules, which stop you from following more than (insert secret Twitter number here, but usually around 120)% of the number of people that follow you once you follow more than 2,000 people. With a lean and mean follow list I can become free from these limitations and reach out and find new people to follow.
• Noise: With a large following list my signal to noise ratio can get out of control and sometimes it becomes time to retune and refine.
• Specials: Some people on Twitter are worth following, but will never follow you back and are very unlikely to every respond to a reply. The likes of @rickygervais, for example. All follows are equal, but some are more equal than others.