Excellent post. Echoes my sentiments almost exactly. I'm a responder (mostly) with a few broadcaster tendencies. I love the community -- or "house" -- I've built for myself with Twitter.

A few additional comments: While I agree that both @replies and RTs can be annoying, occasionally they help me connect with other people or information I find interesting. To me, it's worth wading through both on my Twitter stream for the 10% or so additional useful content they provide. I do wish people would think twice before using either feature; it sure would cut the bandwidth.

As for following/unfollowing -- I follow only 100 people, which I find borderline managable. If I want to add someone, I have to remove someone else. That's how I keep my house. But it never ceases to amaze me how some people use Qwitter to track unfollows and get so offended when you stop following them. People like that really do need to get a life.

Now I need to figure out who to unfollow to start following you.