b.) Tweets in such a way that interests me more than 50% of the time
So I don't actually pay attention to who follows me, and I only currently follow 14 people (though a few more follow me)
What I would say, however, is that I disagree with your "< 3 tweets/day" - I know what you're aiming at, plenty of people tweet WAY too much (I suspect I do, now and then), but there are plenty of reasons for more than three interesting tweets in a day, and it's quite possible for someone to tweet more than three times a day on a regular basis without it being annoying or pointless.
I pass no moral judgment on frequent tweeters. But given that I only follow folks who tweet infrequently, any frequent tweeters quickly dominate my twinbox. So that approach doesn't work for me. I do make exceptions for transient events if they're interesting.
My algorithm is a little different. I analyze every follow request with what kind of information is this person going to provide--does it add to my personal network, interesting commentary on sports or what is happening in the music, snowboard and mountain scene -- if so I will follow them.
The number of new follows I get isn't huge, but it's enough that I won't check each one for content. I'm sure I'm not the only person who wishes that follow mails contained the last 5 tweets from the follower... that'd help things immensely.
My algorithm is (notice new follower) -> (ignore). The thing I happen to like about Twitter is that it's curated. I've found plenty of interesting blog posts, videos, etc. by following a handful of people that interested me. Beyond that initial spike in follows when I first joined, I haven't actually followed someone because they started following me.
If I notice that someone is getting frequently RT'ed by some of the people I follow, and the original tweets are actually interesting to me, I start following them. I don't really use any other way of finding followers, and it's worked out fairly well for me. I have a fairly uncluttered twinbox, but I still get a healthy dose of interesting tweets.
It's all about maintaining a high signal:noise ratio.
1. They tweet about my professional interests only - CS, programming, web development/marketing/startups, or finance/trading/econ (and for the next few weeks, the World Cup). Little to no personal stuff. Get a second Twitter account for that.
2. 4:1 or higher signal:noise ratio. If I see a second tweet about your Starbucks latte being too hot, or that you just finished your daily jog and are sweating, /unfollow. DO. NOT. CARE.
So far that's about it. I don't screen based on follows, followers, tweet frequency, etc., as that has no strong correlation to tweet quality.
The same goes for who I follow. I only follow 57 people as of writing, but 99% of them are people I'm truly interested in. I try to never follow more than one or two new people per week, that way I can easily see if they're worth following, or just people I'll end up skipping past.
I also go by the followers/follow > 1, but for N>500. If a friend of mine follows 100 people but only has 50 followers, I give them a pass. I'll flat out block someone if it's clearly a "social media expert" with follows close to followers over 1000. It's pretty clear that they aren't really following anyone and will unfollow me in 48 hours if I don't help pad their stats.
I agree. Friends always get a bye on the filter, but I'm way more likely to look at someone who has 150 follows and 50 followers than someone with 2k of each (which means they're just playing the follow me/follow you game).
a.) I know personally
b.) Tweets in such a way that interests me more than 50% of the time
So I don't actually pay attention to who follows me, and I only currently follow 14 people (though a few more follow me)
What I would say, however, is that I disagree with your "< 3 tweets/day" - I know what you're aiming at, plenty of people tweet WAY too much (I suspect I do, now and then), but there are plenty of reasons for more than three interesting tweets in a day, and it's quite possible for someone to tweet more than three times a day on a regular basis without it being annoying or pointless.