I think the reason to follow people is if you are interested in what they have to say.

If I were Kevin Rose I wouldn't want to follow 70,000+ people, I would not be able to find the posts I am interested in over the people I am just following for moral's stake.

The ratio following/followers doesn't tell Twitter users anything useful. Nothing more than yet another meaningless measure. These kind of measures are only meaningful for developers building apps interfacing with twitters API, aiming for getting a piece of twitter's pie.

But, there's always a but, there wouldn't be Twitter without developers being funded based on the amount of people using their creations... making them an excellent advertising platform.

I only follow people that have the same intrest as me. I even block followers that do not have the same intrest but want to follow me. (mostly there spam bots or twitter feeds)

There is no perfect ratio, it is whatever you suits best. See also: http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2008/12/05/ass...

I have a simple rule if i can't dm someone i don't follow.

I like following lots of different random people that follow me because you get to converse with them. I suppose you could call me a twitter hippy :p

People like Kevin Rose are special cases with those number of followers but I think it shows aggorance in some cases but I am not a Rose fan (C&D letters from digg will do that :p).

I disagree. I would rather see someone following a few people than someone who auto-follows everyone else.

Guy Kawasaki follows 31,934 people? Yeah, I'm sure he reads everthing they say.

If I'd follow everyone who follows me, I'd mostly have a lot of spambots in my follow list.

actually twitter is pretty good at blocking spambots now.

I gnerally follow people who follow me, but filter out those without photos, or who have a poor, or non-existent description. And if people get boring, or too loud or repetitive, one can just unfollow.

I use Tweetdeck to filter messages, so that I can add those who I really want to hear from into a group, and pay closer attention to that.

The followers/following ratio is a personal decision, and it's fairly meaningless, but those who follow very few people seem to me to be missing the whole point of twitter, and I am more likely to follow those who follow larger numbers of people. I am making the simple assumption that they are more likely to hear something interesting and perhaps pass that on from time to time.

I follow people who I think are interesting.

Once Twitter allows diving people in groups, you will be able to fallow everyone, group them somehow and filter what you really want to read.

You mean like what tweetdeck does!? ;)

I have a total of 149 followers, until two months ago I was following around 150 people, that number went down to 70. This week my following number dropped to 20. The 20 people I follow give me the information I need and special, the information I WANT. I don't have the time and don't see the use of following more people.

How about people do what the hell pleases them and the dork police stays out of other people's life!?

My followers/following ratio is about equal but I don't follow people just because they are following me, I'm not an attention whore! I follow those I want to base on my own rules.

Hmmm... None of the above choices. You should follow interesting people. I would say that most people who follow me are people that are interested in me and/or the stuff I'm doing and working with. Which of course means that people who follow me are into the same stuff as I do. So when someone follows me, I check their Twitterfeed and if it looks remotely interesting, I hit follow.

Which in turn means that I have a little bit more people I follow, than people who follow me.

BTW, I'm Oyvind on Twitter: twitter.com/oyvind

Since everyone uses Twitter for their own reasons, I don't think there's any golden ratio when in terms of the optimal number of followers to following.

For me, I follow everyone that interests me, and though I'm currently following more than a 1,000, I still don't feel overwhelmed by it. In addition, since I follow those that I find interesting, I'm not put off by the fact that some people that I follow don't follow anyone back. If that's how they want to use Twitter, then I'm just as free to not follow them as they are to not follow others. True, they're not getting the full value out of Twitter that I get out of it, but they're not wasting my time either; they just feel that they have other places where their social media time is better spent.

Watching: "Are You a Twitter Snob? « " ( http://tinyurl.com/6a8jkg )

Perry Belcher makes a very valid point, which I've used as my own benchmark since I first started using Twitter. I don't follow people like Rose or Kawasaki (or Scoble, for that matter). If they've anything valid to say, it'll filter through Twitter anyway. If not, it'll just get lost in the noise.

Are You a Twitter Snob? http://tinyurl.com/6a8jkg

Hmmm...
In the same vblog we're telling people:

* It's not social media unless everyone is following everyone - regardless of conversations taking place.

* Don't be a "Twitter snob" - follow everyone and even automate your re-follows (because automated following is very "social")

* Not following people is like turning your back on them at a party (would love to see Perry speak individually with all 70,000 people at a party he throws.)

* Create and manage multiple accounts so that you're not an "asshole" (because you have time for this - as a side note, tweetdeck would let you create groupings, Perry... and it's free also... perhaps another "a-hole" cure?)

* That Perry needs to go unfollow people because there are some he shouldn't be following (that doesn't sound very social.)

Ref the comment about Solo Media vs. Social Media - it's a bold assumption that Rose doesn't carry conversations and respond with @ and DM's or that he doesn't like or acknowledge people he's not following.
Because someone doesn't auto-follow 70k people doesn't make them un-social.

--= THE BOTTOM LINE =--
The beauty of Twitter is that everyone can use Twitter however they see fit - and none of them are wrong. Calling them out as snobs or abusers because of who they do or don't follow would just seem to be arrogance.