I've so far followed everyone back but as numbers grow there has to come a time when I start to edit who I follow which I think will be by the quality or relevance of their posts. I have those who's names I now recognize and when I see their post go to their walls to catch anything I've missed.
It's a good problem to have though as it means steemit is growing and healthy.

Only peps looking for making $$$ follow as many as they can.
Quality members focus on Quality, not quantity .
Ps. I do the exact same.

Agreed. When a comment looks generic I take the time to get into that person´s profile and see their comment section. If they have more than 5 like that I will flag that person. I don´t like to do it but I prefer tot ake care of Steemit and to have the community we all want. Good content pal.

I'm already having a hard time following 170+ people. 

It pisses me off when I spend hours on a post and someone comes in, does and ctrl+v and goes "great, now follow me". When it took me half of my day not doing anything else but put my time in on comments giving real thoughtful  opinions (it's tiring after some time, but I don't complain) and going on chat to really help people out, get my name out. 

Low efforts yield low results. I totally understand and agree where you are coming from.

This makes it clear how difficult it can be if you follow an abundance of steemians: the inability to view/read/comment on every post.
Resteemed

I was starting to come to this conclusion myself. I'm very, very new here, but I have a few friends and favorites on here already -- and I'm missing their articles! I'm going to be a bitch and go unfollow some people now.

I think this makes sense.  You gotta earn the right to be followed by demonstrating long term engagement and not being a TABLOID STEEMER. Feel free to check my blog to read:
  
https://steemit.com/blog/@chelsea88/the-sad-phenomena-of-tabloid-steeming

Don't follow me, you can't handle my TRUTH.

All drummers are encouraged to follow though

Thanks

It is your assumption that only you make good posts ..
I think u overreacted on this ..
No one asks  from u to follow right ..so

<p>We all know my posts are the only ones worth following anyway. The rest are all just <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flotsam,_jetsam,_lagan,_and_derelict">flotsam and jetsam</a>. :-)</p>
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        <em><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Flotsam_and_Jetsam_on_Hackley_Bay_Beach_-_geograph.org.uk_-_375544.jpg">image source</a></em>
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I thought about writing something like this myself. I do follow new people, when they  A) write thoughtful and useful comments on my posts and B) have material that I find interesting and C) I get the sense there's a good chance they'll be sticking around. 

I believe it's important to lend others a hand as was done for me, but definitely not when it's "Great Post please follow me."  Terrible strategy, and sorry if I offend anyone who reads this, but I feel it should be rather obvious that it is. Though I"m guessing if someone gets offended by my saying that, then it isn't obvious. So I say to whoever that might be- I wholeheartedly want to see this platform grow, straight to the moon as people keep talking about, but with a certain level of quality. In both material and interaction.

I just made a post including this very same sentiment today! I do not follow for follow, never have, never will. In my recent post I talked about my intentions Ansbach hopes for this account and being genuine is a huge one for me. I don't want empty follows, I surely won't give them! 

I'd really like to be able to weed out resteem posts, to be honest! Especially when looking over someone's blog feed trying to see if their content is actually something I'm interested in or not. 

Good post! I'm all about it!

I share this same sentiment! My feed should be a collection of stuff I love and enjoy. There's no point building up numbers just for the sake of it

Follow me you will get a bucket of gold delivered right to your door step in the morning..

We all should follow good account not all account

I whished to write such post several times, got pretty tired from such comments. I see not me alone:)

Great post, I concur wholeheartedly. You might wanna edit your Sig though. I don't think you can mine Steem anymore.

Following you :)
https://media.giphy.com/media/ghPfNK0PIAeY0/giphy.gif

Keepin' it real.  :) I hope to provide awesome content that people will enjoy too. You're ideas are solid gold. Thanks for expressing them.

Maybe Steemit could need a RSS-feed for each profile, that way you could group the profiles yourself in a reader... :)

[I wrote about this](https://steemit.com/steemit/@mattclarke/to-the-169-authors-i-follow) same thing 8 months ago. 
Could not agree more.

Thank you for sharing.  ☆☆☆☆☆😎

Your post make a lot of sense to me. I am following fewer people as I am new here but I still have not had time to read most post from them and also curate. I am still just looking around and learning about Steemit and it is time consuming enough. I am happy to hear that even older Steemians are still having fun and it is not only about the money. Keep on Steeming on!!!

@steevc, Early on i made a follow me, i follow back post.  Ended up with a buch of garbage followers that i then followed and dont habe anything in common with.  Big mistake, now gotta go through and unfollow quite a few.  What you have suggested here is the way to go.  Nest to grow organically with people yoy have a common interest with.

Not a complaint, but just an observation: I have 782 followers, but I never get more than 120 upvotes, and that's on a good day, with a full moon, having danced around an oak tree while chanting esoteric mantras.

Apparently, a majority of my followers don't like my content much or can't be arsed to curate. Fair enough, but why are they following me then?

Again, not a complaint, I'm just curious about how this works.

@steevc,  I really appreciate this post. 

 It's useless to get so many followers that don't interact with your article.