How Many Friends Can You Keep?

I've been enjoying the Internet for fifteen years.

Everyday I write a Weblog in English and Japanese. I'm really addicted to the Internet.

On the Internet I can express what I think and feel freely, and sometimes I get responses to them. In the real world it's not easy for me to be free from the bonds of society. And my taste is so specific that it's difficult to get to know people who are interested in the same subject. But on the Internet I can find people who I can talk with, that I would have never known without the Internet. I like to see my weblog's access log. When I find that someone has accessed my blog from Rwanda or Saudi Arabia, I get very happy. My friends on the Internet are irreplaceable to me.

But I feel strange, when I find a person that follows thousands or tens of thousands of people on twitter. How does they read so many tweets? Of course they never reads all the tweets, which they follows. I've found the same thing on facebook and Mixi. How many friends can you keep?

In the real world I only have a few friends. It takes much time and energy to get along with friends seriously. I want to cherish my precious friends, so I can't keep many friends. It's the same as on the Internet.

I'd like to read weblogs and posts of my friends carefully, and make good replies to them. I always want to write a journal and a post that makes my friends laugh and feel happy, and are useful for them. It takes a lot of time to do so.

I can't imagine how people, who have full of addresses in their cell phones, associate their friend. People, who have tens of thousands of followers, want to show having so many friends, do they? What does it mean? Exhibitionism?

I also am an exhibitionist, so I wrote journals on a weblog every day. But I'm proud of the quality of my friends, not the quantity of them.

Postscript:
I heard that there was a usage of singular "they" and I used it in this journal. Is it a common usage?