Is the Numbers Game Killing Twitter?

My activity is on Twitter centers on trying to build a network of like-minded people to share ideas with. Generally, I like to post links and comments about current news events that I think might be of interests to other atheists. I try to pick the stuff I think others might enjoy reading, watching or listening to. And I enjoy getting feedback comments, DMs and retweets from my followers.

I've been trying to find new followers who share my interests but I keep getting followed by spammers and scam artists. I recently found this advice online on how to identify accounts not to follow. I wish I had seen this earlier.

Quick tips to identifying Twitter spam:
- Woman’s name + some numbers, in the username.
- Follow ratio is way off, they follow lots, nobody follows them.
- “get rich quick” scheme, regarding followers.
- Look at their posts- all plugs for products

I think the numbers game is killing Twitter. I just wonder how many of my followers represent truly interested users? How many of my followers really care what I post on Twitter or ever click on the links I post? To find out I started using Cligs. Cligs is a URL shortening service that can give you some pretty cool information about the hits your posts get.

Out of the nearly 2000 followers I've got only a small fraction of them respond with a click. So the numbers don't really mean very much.

I've a TwitterGrader rank of 99.4 and they place me at about 17,000 out of nearly 3,000,000 Twitter users. Gradually, I've come to recognise that these numbers and rankings are nearly entirely meaningless. The personal feedback I get is really much more significant.

Most people using Twitter only monitor a small group of their followers by using features provided by Tweetdeck or other twitter clients. So, I think everyone knows the numbers don't mean very much.

I have begun to turn my attention to Friendfeed which I think is a good way to leverage Twitter.