Hat tip to @stephendale. And there is a case in point - once you've been on Twitter for a while you end up with at least hundreds, and more likely thousands of people that you are following. Each of those decisions to follow made with perfectly valid logic, but suddenly your manageble river of cool news and content becomes more like the total Twitter firehose itself. Hopefully several people in your Twitter stream mention the cool article, so you don't miss it. This TechCrunch article "Twitter Quitters And The Unfiltered Feed Problem" explains the problem. Note that the URL extension for this article is /sorry-my-feed-is-full/ - hey ho! A couple of key quotes:

"Twitter should not abandon its unfiltered feed. It’s the foundation of its whole user experience. Still, there are other ways to alleviate the overflowing firehose problem."

"There’s nothing like tweeting something and getting responses within seconds. It makes the whole world feel smaller. The challenge is whether Twitter can retain its intimate town square atmosphere for everyone as it grows to become a digital city…and a public company."