I don’t think, if I deleted my account, that doing so would prevent me from going to the media and saying “I’m an expert on Twitter” because whether I had a new account or not, at one point, I did have a million users. That number, even if it’s no longer currently the case, would still be salient enough to let me jump ahead of other Twitter users if I wanted / needed to, especially if I were attempting to get press for my book (which should be noted, has nothing to do with Twitter or social media.)

Everything else here I agree with, but that point stuck out at me as being well intentioned, but probably not as effective as thought.

Oh and as an aside, for finding ‘interesting’ people to follow…I would like to humbly recommend http://grou.pe which let’s you pick up to five people you’re interested in as a group and then tells you who they all currently follow that you don’t (disclosure: I’m the developer behind grou.pe)

That’s all the SUL really was, a recommendation of accounts Twitter employees thought were cool, it just happened to be on a bigger stage than a personal recommendation, bigger than the developers who created it probably ever imagined.

I think we could debate all day about whether the accounts on it deserved the recommendation but the damage has already been done and Twitter looks to be fixing the problems of the first SUL and they seem to be moving in the right direction. I also think the path to least resistance is to just leave the counts the way they are and move forward, so I’m guessing that’s what Twitter will do (because it’s what I’d do).

If not, why did you accept a gift from Twitter worth many thousands (and potentially millions) of dollars?

but there is a difference btw your comparison and the sul

Also, regarding your counts on say Facebook – remember that those too are influenced by your status on the default list. This is the real gift that Twitter gave you – it’s the ability to not just monetize the direct traffic, but also to capture users in other places – rss, facebook, email, whatever.

On the general interest vs specialized type postings, I am working on a post about this – I hope to have it done end of next week.

as a side note, I am writing a lot less today because I am focusing my time on CC. I’ve been trying to decide how I will handle CN going forward.

Allen is right that your theory on counted retweets would only matter in a non-SUL world. We know, for instance, that Mashable has a retweet army, boosted by the SUL position. Had that account and others never been there, their numbers would be dramatically different.