The ironic nature of "personal assistants" like @MrTweet is they are not unlike anyone suggesting I follow someone. Helpful at times--though usually to call my attention to someone I'd otherwise never know about--they are silly at best.
If one of the goals, like you write, Elliott, is to network with other people for some higher purpose, where's the purpose in networking with strangers if the only reason you're tweeting to them is at the request of @MrTweet?
Elliott
· 9 months ago
Ari - I don't disagree with your point. I think tools like Mr. Tweet - tho silly - allow people just getting started to find people they might find interesting. Networking is always with strangers until one of you introduces yourself...
Ari Herzog
· 9 months ago
How many people join Twitter just because, out of the blue? I'd hazard few. Rather, people join at the suggestion of others or (now) by reading something in the mainstream media or on their favorite blog, etc.
Thus, new users already have a list of folks to follow and be followed by and to engage with; and MrTweet is handy down the road as an intuitive alternative to searching a Twitter directory like Twellow.com. But to argue MrTweet is used up front? I know people use it, but I fail to see the relevance.
Liz
· 9 months ago
I think there should be the death of the Auto-Follow. People used to use it create reciprocal relationships but now it just seems to be a tool to quickly up your follower count by following people and dropping those that don't follow you back.
How crazy! I follow people who don't follow me back and I don't follow everyone who follows me. The goal is to have a reason for following each person you follow, make a case-by-case decision, not this mass following instinct.
Because, you know, after you start following more than 500 people, you can't keep up with reading every Tweet you receive. So, if you don't have some personal point of contact with those you follow, they are just filler followers who you add and never have any contact with again. Kind of the opposite purpose of a social network, don't you think?
Elliott
· 9 months ago
Good call, Liz. I think some will argue that by using a program like TweetDeck, you can sort your followees into groups - making conversation easy with a mass group. My only problem with that is why are you following the other people in the first place?
Liz
· 9 months ago
I can't answer for anyone else but I look at each person's recent Tweetstream (past 20 messages) to decide whether to follow them or not along with their bio. And I follow other academics and anyone from New Jersey, just on principle! ; )
Elliott
· 9 months ago
I like that, Liz!
Liz
· 9 months ago
P.S. If you don't think this is a problem, explain why over 6,000 people follow @themime who has never actually issued a real Tweet....ever! They are following someone who neither adds ideas/thoughts/opinions to the conversation nor responds to other people's comments. That account is just the most obvious but it's been happening throughout Twitter since around Oct/Nov 2008.
Monica
· 9 months ago
Okay, I'll be the first, brave soul to comment on this post. I think that this post should definitely serve as a gut-check to people engaging in social media -- any and all tools. Basically, if you're using the tools for the sake of using the tools, then you're sadly missing out on all the great people out there that you could meet.
Marito
· 9 months ago
It's true that to hit that button is a great temptation. But at the same time - the amount of followers does matter a lot to many people. I, personally, have just a couple of follows as it's, as you point out, the way to filter the best information!
Ross
· 9 months ago
"It says that people follow you because you’re valuable, not because you’ve started following them first."
Also, people follow people simply because they have a name. Many so called "gurus" don't post much of anything I would pay a penny for, let alone a quarter, yet because of the name, they get followed.
Just wanted to point that out, otherwise, fantastic and extremely clever read :)
James Guanzon
· 9 months ago
great article! thanks ! time to follow up and use Twitter Karma!!!
Rick LaFave
· 9 months ago
I believe that people should be able to use twitter in any manner in which they see fit. That is why twitter allows you to follow and unfollow. See my article listed at: http://bit.ly/1a9bW; I welcome opinions.
Elliott
· 9 months ago
I agree 100% - people should use Twitter (and any other social network) as they see fit.
This post obviously allows me to sit on a soapbox a little. So, I do believe that if people are what I would consider "followholics" - they are just not using the tool in the most productive and beneficial matter - for themselves or anyone else they come in contact with.
Jim "Genuine" Turner
· 9 months ago
I'll be talking tonight on my show about The Gaming of Twitter Exposed. Want 10K followers in a month. Easy. Yes this preys upon the Twitterholic. Tune in and let me know your thoughts tonight. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/socialmediasphere/...
Liz
· 9 months ago
Should racking up followers for no reason be ones goal in social networking? That's part of the problem. It should be quality over quantity and it's difficult to manage both.
Elliott
· 9 months ago
I don't have to tune in to let you know what I think...
Jim "Genuine" Turner
· 9 months ago
Yes Liz agree wholeheartedly. Elliott this was a great and timely article.
abartelby
· 9 months ago
It's definitely no secret how *I* feel about following and not following on Twitter, so I just had to leave a comment in praise of your points, and to heap the most praise of all on your statement, "If I’m following you, it’s because I would pay for your updates," since I could not agree with it more. I recently embarked on a "Twitter House Cleaning," of sorts on my own follow list, and this was the tenet with which I led my own clean-up, so I applaud its sentiment.
I guess the one quibble I would leave with you, with regard to all of the (mostly quite useful, I think) Twitter applications and tools that you list, is that (for me personally) I've noticed them not being as reliable lately, throughout the recent population explosion of the Twitterverse. To me it seems that, while tools such as Grader and Mr. Tweet were simply fabulous only, say, three months ago, they seem to be finding it more challenging to weed out the "Twitter Detritus," as I call it, so that the only *real* way to be sure one is building the highest quality of network is to do the work to get to know one's network the old-fashioned way: through genuine interaction and engagement with them.
But perhaps that's just me being an old. :-)
Anyway, fabulous article!
Elliott
· 9 months ago
Thanks a lot for your comments, Atherton.
I don't think any "tool" to find people to follow is ever going to be perfect, but it can give you a place to start. It can narrow down people for you to review - and that's the key - reviewing people before you start clicking that button...
@scrooks
· 9 months ago
This is why I have two twitter accounts.
With one I only follow those I personally know or who tweet things I don't want to miss. It's very manageable and easy to catch up on when I haven't checked it in a while. I also have several of these people set to generate a text message on every tweet because I consider them so important. This is also where I do the majority of my own tweeting.
With the other I follow personalities and companies that I have an interest in, but for whom it really doesn't matter if I miss a big batch of tweets. There's no personal connection so it's more like a simple news stream. None of these people will ever have their tweets turned into text messages.
The division is handy and feels very natural. It's never difficult to figure out which account to use to follow someone.
Elliott
· 9 months ago
Steve - that's a really a great idea. I didn't think of that!
@BillCamp
· 9 months ago
I agree this is a good strategy and do something similar with one twitter account and my client of choice, TweetDeck. I find it works well to have one TweetDeck group of people with whom I have a relationship, a second for people of interest, and a third for news and announcements. One advantage of doing this for me is that I will occasionally move people between the two non-news groups as I find my interest in them (permanently or temporarily) growing or if they started prolifically posting things I'm not interested in. I keep following them via my less closely followed group in case their focus or my interest changes. (Of course, if it never changes, I stop following them.)
(In case TweetDeck developer @iaindodsworth (or anyone who has his ear) is reading this, it would be really helpful if TweetDeck made it easy to have a group that included everyone not already in a different group. For now, I have to manage that manually.
Jen
· 9 months ago
I never auto-follow people but look at the last few posts and the bio, like Liz suggests. However, I find that with tools like TweetDeck and the 'group' feature, even a large number of people are easily followed without missing interesting info in the stream. Also, I agree with your comment about regularly reviewing who I follow - if there are too many "I'm having a coffee" tweets and not much else, I tend to unfollow them. Don't see a problem with inactives though - at least they are not clogging up my stream with useless posts and if I had a good reason for following them in the first place, they might actually have something interesting to say when they do decide to tweet again.
Elliott
· 9 months ago
Good points, Jen. I knew TweetDeck groups would come up - and I agree it's effective in dulling the overall noise. I like your take on inactives, too.
JanSimpson
· 9 months ago
Nice rant- but you seem to put all followers/followees in the same boat. If you said something about those who follow 12,000 with only 12 updates, well okay then, or if you said something about those who follow you then unfollow in order to have more followers than their little 150 followees- to make them look more important - well okay then - or my personal favorite - those who have a cause, you follow them, they send an auto dm and ask for a favor without following to build a relationship in order to get a favor.
Some ppl, like me, build relationships and reach out to many, discuss many topics whether pc or not get followed, unfollowed and yelled at - others have great discussions with me- and we biuld better relationships.
It is all in your strategy, the person you are, the relationships you build, what you give back - and wait for it - it is about what you learn about the different cultures, the differences, the ways to approach them and have a relationship with them - maybe you wouldn't put everyone in the same boat -
Nice rant though - good for you.
JanSimpson
Elliott
· 9 months ago
Your first paragraph is right on! I agree with you in all of those cases.
It's great that you reach out to many different types of people online - it's exactly what all of this is perfect for. However, all this article was about - essentially - is how it's impossible to communicate and engage in conversation effectively with the 12,000 people someone follows.
Articles like this have to generalize -- because we're talking to an audience of 10s of thousands of different types of people - I can't address everyone individually in this type of forum.
Like someone above made the point - people can use Twitter however they wish.
Linc4Justice
· 9 months ago
The problem is people who follow your tweets and actually enjoy reading them for whatever reason take umbrage when you unfollow them. I tried this out as an experiment because for the reasons given here, I did not like following people when there was no intent to actually read their tweets. But it seems people are content to have you merely follow them even if you don't read their tweets, just so long as it means boosting their own numbers.
Once I unfollowed people to bring my numbers down to realistic levels, it caused a massive hemorrhaging in my following numbers, to no real surprise, while I got an endless amount of DMs from people wondering why I wasn't following them anymore and if I offended them somehow, and one amusing tweet from a Twitterer who obnoxiously thought I was just gaming Twitter to get girls (meanwhile she is following over 20,000 people).
While I did this, a friend of mine continued to mass follow people with no shame at all. The net result from that effort is that she's amassed a huge following that has subsequently boosted traffic to her blog, Facebook profile, and resulted in new opportunities and paying gigs to write for other sites and blogs, opportunities that never would have happened otherwise. It was brute force marketing in a way, the Twitter equivalent of poking someone, but it worked.
So while some may find mass-following distasteful, there's no denying that it has reaped major benefits to those who have mastered the art of it.
Now what I do is use a personal Twitter account to keep track of my favorite tweeters, while using my main account as a means to promote myself and my blog.
Erica
· 9 months ago
That's what I was thinking. I started off using Twitter as suggested in this article, not wanting to clog up my feed with stuff I was never going to read. Then on a whim I started following everybody who followed me, and followers magically quadrupled in a few days.
I thought "Oh, this must be how Twitter works!"
Then I thought...I don't care about 4/5 of the tweets I'm reading!
So traffic is up; networking is working. I can't be sanctimonious about who I follow, because the network doesn't grow.
We need an application that allow you to hide tweets from 4/5 of the people you follow, so you just see the good stuff ;)
@BillCamp
· 9 months ago
@Erica TweetDeck allows you to do exactly that. You can turn off the panel that displays everyone you follow and create a group of just the people whose tweets you want to see.
(After already mentioning TweetDeck in a comment above, I'm starting to sound like an add for it. I just really like the app and suspect I would not have gotten as much out of Twitter if I was not using it.)
luca filigheddu
· 9 months ago
I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago with the 5 reasons why you should follow someone on Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/bn8738 - autofollow is definitely something you should avoid
ivan_filios
· 9 months ago
Elliot:
Thank you for your post. Twitoria is a great tool for house cleaning.
mayhemstudios
· 9 months ago
The one tool I found to be the best for finding followers is #followfriday. :)
Rafael Armstrong
· 9 months ago
Thanks for the eXcellent article. I'm a relatively new twitterer, and I have to say that this post is VERY close to my personal twitter follow/follow back philosophy.
Once again-- thanks. r
me
· 9 months ago
I couldn't avoid noticing the beginning of the article:
Elliott Kosmicki is the founder of GoodPlum.com . . . You can also follow Elliott on Twitter.
Doug Caldwell
· 9 months ago
One should be a follower of P*O*S* not just anybody. We should seek out those of value as you said so well in your article. It got a 'stumbleupon' vote from me. TKS. * persons of interest
Michael
· 9 months ago
Converesly, another point of view: following someone who adds you is just twitter etiquette (twitterquette?) When I see someone with 12,000 followers and who only follows 6 people, I think, "wow is this guy a raging ego maniac who doesn't care what other people think." Either that or it's someone that doesn't "get Twitter" yet. I follow anyone who follows me. Sure there are people who's main purpose is personal branding, but there are software tools (and an rss feed from Twitter) to follow the specific people you want to. Who cares, it's not real life, it's only Twitter!
LeeHoffman
· 9 months ago
I'm coining an idiom for this one: when masses of people act in seemingly irrational ways, its not because they are irrational, its because the system is. Twitter's design, much like Myspace's used to, emphasizes follower counts, even at the cost of using twitter to get quality information. There are a number of ways Twitter can solve this, but just telling people to act differently probably isn't one of them:
I've noticed most of the "social media [guru|expert|consultant]" types on Twitter just follow everything in hopes auto-follow is enabled for those accounts. +1 for getting rid of it. Retweeting could stand to get trashed, too.
Kishau
· 9 months ago
I think the tools mentioned are great. Tweetdeck is also effective for 'grouping' followers.
Having said that; I'm tired of the rules (who to follow, how to follow, how many to follow etc.). People (adults, professionals, entrepreneurs, leaders) should develop their own goals, objectives and guidelines for using Twitter. This can be accomplished by actually (and actively) using the tool and also by learning new ideas from others (not hard & fast rules). If someone prefers to auto-follow a gazillion folks and that works for THEM, who am I to judge? I most likely wouldn't follow them, but clearly I wouldn't be their target audience. I focus on my group of Twitter "friends"; if at any point the connection isn't working for me (based on my own guidelines), the unfollow button is readily available.
thanks @Elliott for this good article. I´m trying to cope with the daily tentation to follow someone who looks interesting to me. Will use some of the mentioned services to clean up a bit my follower list.
And I like what you describe at the end of the article as the objective: "... use Twitter to network, respond to people in a timely manner, become more engaged in conversation, and better learn about the people you’ve chosen to follow"
I follow most of my followers and others because I use my Twitter account to promote the company I work for. We are about expert advice, and we believe everyone is an expert on something. I also check out the profile, last ~10-15 tweets and bio before following. There are some irrelevant profiles out there. I sometines use my favorites to keep track of people who interest me most.
Dainis Graveris
· 9 months ago
Yeah, agree, I use Mr. Tweet to see who is following me, if I see we have common interests I accept - and if I see I am getting many worthless tweets for me - I simply unfollow.
However I like Your point in this article.
Lena Cardell
· 9 months ago
From your replies below, it sounds like you already use tweetdeck (which i was just about to recommend :P)
Following about 350 people (and counting) just because they're interesting turns my "everyone" feed into a pure source of ambient information for me. I can ignore it when I don't have time, or instantly have a stream of interesting things to discover and comments to respond to at my fingertips when I do have a spare moment. Similarly, I've created a blogs only group that I treat in a similar way. Twitter owns stumbleupon for information discovery, and frankly is more useful for me when I'm in info-overload mode than google Reader.
I also use the groups function to separate out the50 or so real friends I want to follow more closely. Further, I device update 10 people who I want every update from.
Generally speaking, I don't have the time to adequately consider the quality of someone when I have a minute to check out the feeds of people who follow me. I can tell right away if someone is spammy, useless, or a bot, but some of the most interesting people I now follow were a consequence of what you're calling sympathy following :)
Elliott
· 9 months ago
Lena, thanks for the well thought-out comment. I appreciate your input!
Beth Kanter
· 9 months ago
Also, if you use the principles of social network analysis - and find influencers across different network hubs - you don't have to follow so many people. I wrote about this here: If you were stuck on a deserted island, who would you follow on Twitter? http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/01/so-m...
Patrick
· 9 months ago
Dude... Followholic? Come on... just scanning this temporarily turned my brain grapes to brain raisins... Thank Crunchie for The Drama 2.0 Show: http://tinyurl.com/b2bc86
Hernan Valencia
· 9 months ago
I agree with your post and the suggestions. I have a rule for following people others might find interesting. If you have more friends than updates. That is, if the number of updates is less than the number of followers, then to me, you're just trying to artificially pump up your numbers. But, I'll more than likely follow you if you have more updates than followers. To me, that means you've grown your followers organically.
grapplica
· 9 months ago
yes yes yes, so what I was thinking recently, so much better than the impuls post I had in mind. Good job Elliott, guess I'll follow you now :p
FatFighterTV
· 9 months ago
Thank you so much for the great tools you mention in this post - I had never heard of Twitoria, Twitter Karma, or Tweepler until I read this. I just used all of them and feel much less cluttered.
Believe Kids
· 9 months ago
I am guilty of this to a degree. Not on purpose necessarily but I do find a lot of interesting people on twitter and do want to follow them and I want them to follow me back. Unfortunately, it looks like I follow twice as many people as follow me. Now that I read this, I will unfollow some folks and wait for them to follow me. Thanks!
markdavidson
· 9 months ago
"First, turn off auto-follow in whatever program you’re using to do it. There is no possible way that anyone legitimately wants to follow back everyone who follows them. This isn’t up for discussion."
I love that final subliminal command. That's an excellent deployment of cognitive psychology. Kudos.
It's gotten lots of attention for expressing sentiments similar to yours, especially about the silliness of auto-follow!
Your recommendations of different services to use to clean up one's tweet-stream are a great addition to this meme.
Scott Fox
Jason Tryfon
· 8 months ago
I follow 10k people and yes it's noisy but when I have Tweetdeck open I do scan the Tweets of those I do not have grouped. I think the real issue and point you are trying to make is those that mass follow people to obtain higher follower counts and keep climbing in the rankings out of some need to be popular. That I feel is the bigger issue.
P.S Tweepular.com is coming April 1st which handles this beautifully
Twittergator
· 8 months ago
Great article! For so long now I have been encouraging my readers and followers to only follow those that give real value to YOU, in their tweets. I love your "i would pay for your updates" rule, and yes, everybody should use Twitter as they wish. But, those that follow everybody should expect to receive an onslaught of auto DMs, and links, from the exact same people that suggest this way of using Twitter.
Check out http://www.TweetTop.com (i created it) for who to follow on many different topics.
Cheers
J
julie_poplawski
· 8 months ago
When I first started twittering I thought it was impolite to not follow people who followed me; but then I couldn't unearth the tweets I wanted to see. So much clean up was required! Great links in this post and I think as social media evolves it will become more targeted! But all in all a fabulous process; creating community of like minded energy, its almost spiritual!
Shireen Smith
· 8 months ago
Interesting stuff in your post. I've just been on Twitter a month now and making my mind up about all this. One comment I found quite telling in your post was this: 'But if 800 people have come across you on their own and started following you, while you’re only following the 80 people you care about - that says something about your value. It says that people follow you because you’re valuable, not because you’ve started following them first'. Is it in line with your overall message to equate your value with how many followers you have? My own impression of people who follow me back when I follow them, is to warm to them, just as I would warm to any charming person I met when networking in the real world. Those who ignore the fact that I've followed them, make me feel as if they regard themselves as some sort of 'star' who is being followed but will not follow others back. I see them as arrogant and am more likely to then unfollow them. Initially I like to give most people who seem half decent a chance to interest me. I watch their tweets, and if they jar I will unfollow them. We are all working out our approach, and Twitter has many uses. You can follow large numbers without necessarily closely reading everything everyone says. However, occasionally something interesting might catch your attention and extend your understanding of the world, and that is why I disagree with your approach towards Twitter following.
ShireenSmith
· 8 months ago
Very useful information here, but I find this remark of yours telling in that you equate number of followers who you are not following back as an indication of your value: "If you’re following 1,000 people, and have somehow got 800 of those people to follow you back, it doesn’t really mean that much. But if 800 people have come across you on their own and started following you, while you’re only following the 80 people you care about - that says something about your value. It says that people follow you because you’re valuable, not because you’ve started following them first". I've only been on Twitter for a month now and am making my own mind up about it all, but I do feel that those who don't follow me are snooty, in the same way as I would if I met people networking in the real world who are clickey and not open to new relationships. When brands like Starbucks or Zappos follow me back, I warm to them, and feel they are interested to find out about me and engage with me. So, on the whole I suppose I disagree with your approach at this point in time.
John Bankroft
· 7 months ago
These guys are like social network superheros and they use Twitter to communicate. 6 social networking tactical specialists formed an elite online assault team to investigate and expose community injustices that are too ridiculous for the police to get involved with. Their weapon of choice…social networks. http://www.snipteam.com Very funny concept!!!
Betsy Stone
· 7 months ago
I'm headed to NTEN in San Francisco next week and finally got around to getting up and running on Twitter. I thought long and hard about who I would follow, though I like the way you put it: follow only the people you'd pay to follow. I just blogged nine observations about my first 24 hours on Twitter, and echo many of your sentiments: www.philanthrophile.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/9-...
Tim Regan-Porter
· 7 months ago
I agree with all of your points. The only hiccup is DM for the company twitter account. I'd like to encourage our followers to DM us with issues. However, we have to follower our followers to allow them to DM us. I wish there were a better solution -- on that prevented DM spam while also not making us fake-follow people.
Rebecca
· 7 months ago
Nice summary of technological solutions. You forgot one though - your own judgment. If someone you follow is too chatty, or blatantly trying to market stuff, or otherwise boring, you can determine all by yourself, without any help, if you should unfollow them!
I also disagree about people who are not Tweeting. They may be doing the Twitter equivalent of 'lurking' (not stalking - that's something else) - they're just trying to learn the ropes, or they are better listeners than talkers.
Everybody's got an algorithm for everything but Twitter's about relationships, when it comes right down to it. Relationships are not an exact science.
Sasa
· 7 months ago
Hah, count me in. Excellent post!
RobertChristine
· 7 months ago
couldn't even read the entire article without clicking the Mr Tweet follow button -- nice observations!
justin williams
· 7 months ago
*this got long so in case you don't read the rest let me say really great stuff for any level of user!*
dude i just started twitter a couple weeks ago. i've been a direct marketing pro for many years - always an early adopter of new media, always wary and skeptical of fads. i joined to analyze whether or not social media can be an effective tool for-real in a DRM toolbox, or just an annoying guerrilla tactic most likely to piss-off the very people u are trying to target. as a direct response man, i'm less interested in creating buzz than in generating actual orders - but naturally the two activities are symbiotic. still waiting on the sidelines, gathering information and meeting great people, wondering if twitter can be monetized or will become the next mega-market-share behemoth without a plan or $5 in the bank. dunno. but reading intelligent, well thought-out articles such as this at least reveals smart people are constantly contributing towards evolving social media. well done. jjw
justin williams
· 7 months ago
oh, right my original question that i left-off! there is another category i am discovering i didn;t see in your article: following people that are recommended by people you totally dig and trust - but then once in awhile they blink & you're stuck following a televangelist with 200 post an hour. how to unfollow without insulting friend??
YODspica
· 7 months ago
There are quite a few good twitter applications, however content is also important to keep your followers interested both in you and your business services. Behind every business there is a personality and a culture, that is I decided to merge the two with twitter as opposed to have two separate accounts.
“Aw, that’s so sweet… this guy I never heard of who has no description filled out, no website, and only 4 tweets started following me… I’ll follow him back, poor guy!”
hahaha! this could come from a simpson episode. smashing!
All Comments
If one of the goals, like you write, Elliott, is to network with other people for some higher purpose, where's the purpose in networking with strangers if the only reason you're tweeting to them is at the request of @MrTweet?
Thus, new users already have a list of folks to follow and be followed by and to engage with; and MrTweet is handy down the road as an intuitive alternative to searching a Twitter directory like Twellow.com. But to argue MrTweet is used up front? I know people use it, but I fail to see the relevance.
How crazy! I follow people who don't follow me back and I don't follow everyone who follows me. The goal is to have a reason for following each person you follow, make a case-by-case decision, not this mass following instinct.
Because, you know, after you start following more than 500 people, you can't keep up with reading every Tweet you receive. So, if you don't have some personal point of contact with those you follow, they are just filler followers who you add and never have any contact with again. Kind of the opposite purpose of a social network, don't you think?
Also, people follow people simply because they have a name. Many so called "gurus" don't post much of anything I would pay a penny for, let alone a quarter, yet because of the name, they get followed.
Just wanted to point that out, otherwise, fantastic and extremely clever read :)
This post obviously allows me to sit on a soapbox a little. So, I do believe that if people are what I would consider "followholics" - they are just not using the tool in the most productive and beneficial matter - for themselves or anyone else they come in contact with.
Elliott this was a great and timely article.
I guess the one quibble I would leave with you, with regard to all of the (mostly quite useful, I think) Twitter applications and tools that you list, is that (for me personally) I've noticed them not being as reliable lately, throughout the recent population explosion of the Twitterverse. To me it seems that, while tools such as Grader and Mr. Tweet were simply fabulous only, say, three months ago, they seem to be finding it more challenging to weed out the "Twitter Detritus," as I call it, so that the only *real* way to be sure one is building the highest quality of network is to do the work to get to know one's network the old-fashioned way: through genuine interaction and engagement with them.
But perhaps that's just me being an old. :-)
Anyway, fabulous article!
I don't think any "tool" to find people to follow is ever going to be perfect, but it can give you a place to start. It can narrow down people for you to review - and that's the key - reviewing people before you start clicking that button...
With one I only follow those I personally know or who tweet things I don't want to miss. It's very manageable and easy to catch up on when I haven't checked it in a while. I also have several of these people set to generate a text message on every tweet because I consider them so important. This is also where I do the majority of my own tweeting.
With the other I follow personalities and companies that I have an interest in, but for whom it really doesn't matter if I miss a big batch of tweets. There's no personal connection so it's more like a simple news stream. None of these people will ever have their tweets turned into text messages.
The division is handy and feels very natural. It's never difficult to figure out which account to use to follow someone.
(In case TweetDeck developer @iaindodsworth (or anyone who has his ear) is reading this, it would be really helpful if TweetDeck made it easy to have a group that included everyone not already in a different group. For now, I have to manage that manually.
Also, I agree with your comment about regularly reviewing who I follow - if there are too many "I'm having a coffee" tweets and not much else, I tend to unfollow them. Don't see a problem with inactives though - at least they are not clogging up my stream with useless posts and if I had a good reason for following them in the first place, they might actually have something interesting to say when they do decide to tweet again.
Some ppl, like me, build relationships and reach out to many, discuss many topics whether pc or not get followed, unfollowed and yelled at - others have great discussions with me- and we biuld better relationships.
It is all in your strategy, the person you are, the relationships you build, what you give back - and wait for it - it is about what you learn about the different cultures, the differences, the ways to approach them and have a relationship with them - maybe you wouldn't put everyone in the same boat -
Nice rant though - good for you.
JanSimpson
It's great that you reach out to many different types of people online - it's exactly what all of this is perfect for. However, all this article was about - essentially - is how it's impossible to communicate and engage in conversation effectively with the 12,000 people someone follows.
Articles like this have to generalize -- because we're talking to an audience of 10s of thousands of different types of people - I can't address everyone individually in this type of forum.
Like someone above made the point - people can use Twitter however they wish.
Once I unfollowed people to bring my numbers down to realistic levels, it caused a massive hemorrhaging in my following numbers, to no real surprise, while I got an endless amount of DMs from people wondering why I wasn't following them anymore and if I offended them somehow, and one amusing tweet from a Twitterer who obnoxiously thought I was just gaming Twitter to get girls (meanwhile she is following over 20,000 people).
While I did this, a friend of mine continued to mass follow people with no shame at all. The net result from that effort is that she's amassed a huge following that has subsequently boosted traffic to her blog, Facebook profile, and resulted in new opportunities and paying gigs to write for other sites and blogs, opportunities that never would have happened otherwise. It was brute force marketing in a way, the Twitter equivalent of poking someone, but it worked.
So while some may find mass-following distasteful, there's no denying that it has reaped major benefits to those who have mastered the art of it.
Now what I do is use a personal Twitter account to keep track of my favorite tweeters, while using my main account as a means to promote myself and my blog.
I thought "Oh, this must be how Twitter works!"
Then I thought...I don't care about 4/5 of the tweets I'm reading!
So traffic is up; networking is working. I can't be sanctimonious about who I follow, because the network doesn't grow.
We need an application that allow you to hide tweets from 4/5 of the people you follow, so you just see the good stuff ;)
(After already mentioning TweetDeck in a comment above, I'm starting to sound like an add for it. I just really like the app and suspect I would not have gotten as much out of Twitter if I was not using it.)
Thank you for your post. Twitoria is a great tool for house cleaning.
Once again-- thanks.
r
Elliott Kosmicki is the founder of GoodPlum.com . . . You can also follow Elliott on Twitter.
http://www.squawkingtech.com/2009/01/popping-th...
Having said that; I'm tired of the rules (who to follow, how to follow, how many to follow etc.). People (adults, professionals, entrepreneurs, leaders) should develop their own goals, objectives and guidelines for using Twitter. This can be accomplished by actually (and actively) using the tool and also by learning new ideas from others (not hard & fast rules). If someone prefers to auto-follow a gazillion folks and that works for THEM, who am I to judge? I most likely wouldn't follow them, but clearly I wouldn't be their target audience. I focus on my group of Twitter "friends"; if at any point the connection isn't working for me (based on my own guidelines), the unfollow button is readily available.
I refer to this as Twitter for Grown Folks (http://tinyurl.com/d8jpxh).
Will use some of the mentioned services to clean up a bit my follower list.
And I like what you describe at the end of the article as the objective:
"... use Twitter to network, respond to people in a timely manner, become more engaged in conversation, and better learn about the people you’ve chosen to follow"
http://twitter.com/etorsten
I also check out the profile, last ~10-15 tweets and bio before following. There are some irrelevant profiles out there.
I sometines use my favorites to keep track of people who interest me most.
However I like Your point in this article.
Following about 350 people (and counting) just because they're interesting turns my "everyone" feed into a pure source of ambient information for me. I can ignore it when I don't have time, or instantly have a stream of interesting things to discover and comments to respond to at my fingertips when I do have a spare moment. Similarly, I've created a blogs only group that I treat in a similar way. Twitter owns stumbleupon for information discovery, and frankly is more useful for me when I'm in info-overload mode than google Reader.
I also use the groups function to separate out the50 or so real friends I want to follow more closely. Further, I device update 10 people who I want every update from.
Generally speaking, I don't have the time to adequately consider the quality of someone when I have a minute to check out the feeds of people who follow me. I can tell right away if someone is spammy, useless, or a bot, but some of the most interesting people I now follow were a consequence of what you're calling sympathy following :)
If you were stuck on a deserted island, who would you follow on Twitter?
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/01/so-m...
it looks like I follow twice as many people as follow me. Now that I read this, I will unfollow some folks and wait for them to follow me. Thanks!
I love that final subliminal command. That's an excellent deployment of cognitive psychology. Kudos.
Very nice post. I agree!
In fact, I posted a similar article (more of a rant, really) about "Annoying Twitter Myths" on Tuesday, too.
http://www.scottfox.com/2009/03/4-annoying-twit...
It's gotten lots of attention for expressing sentiments similar to yours, especially about the silliness of auto-follow!
Your recommendations of different services to use to clean up one's tweet-stream are a great addition to this meme.
Scott Fox
P.S Tweepular.com is coming April 1st which handles this beautifully
For so long now I have been encouraging my readers and followers to only follow those that give real value to YOU, in their tweets. I love your "i would pay for your updates" rule, and yes, everybody should use Twitter as they wish. But, those that follow everybody should expect to receive an onslaught of auto DMs, and links, from the exact same people that suggest this way of using Twitter.
Here's something your readers might find helpful.
http://tweetergetter.com/FrankTocco
Easy to get lots of followers.
http://tweetergetter.com/FrankTocco
Frank Tocco
Cheers
J
My own impression of people who follow me back when I follow them, is to warm to them, just as I would warm to any charming person I met when networking in the real world. Those who ignore the fact that I've followed them, make me feel as if they regard themselves as some sort of 'star' who is being followed but will not follow others back. I see them as arrogant and am more likely to then unfollow them.
Initially I like to give most people who seem half decent a chance to interest me. I watch their tweets, and if they jar I will unfollow them.
We are all working out our approach, and Twitter has many uses. You can follow large numbers without necessarily closely reading everything everyone says. However, occasionally something interesting might catch your attention and extend your understanding of the world, and that is why I disagree with your approach towards Twitter following.
I've only been on Twitter for a month now and am making my own mind up about it all, but I do feel that those who don't follow me are snooty, in the same way as I would if I met people networking in the real world who are clickey and not open to new relationships. When brands like Starbucks or Zappos follow me back, I warm to them, and feel they are interested to find out about me and engage with me. So, on the whole I suppose I disagree with your approach at this point in time.
I also disagree about people who are not Tweeting. They may be doing the Twitter equivalent of 'lurking' (not stalking - that's something else) - they're just trying to learn the ropes, or they are better listeners than talkers.
Everybody's got an algorithm for everything but Twitter's about relationships, when it comes right down to it. Relationships are not an exact science.
dude i just started twitter a couple weeks ago. i've been a direct marketing pro for many years - always an early adopter of new media, always wary and skeptical of fads. i joined to analyze whether or not social media can be an effective tool for-real in a DRM toolbox, or just an annoying guerrilla tactic most likely to piss-off the very people u are trying to target. as a direct response man, i'm less interested in creating buzz than in generating actual orders - but naturally the two activities are symbiotic. still waiting on the sidelines, gathering information and meeting great people, wondering if twitter can be monetized or will become the next mega-market-share behemoth without a plan or $5 in the bank. dunno. but reading intelligent, well thought-out articles such as this at least reveals smart people are constantly contributing towards evolving social media. well done. jjw
http://yodspica.com
http://twitter.com/YODspica
http://facebook.yodspica.com
hahaha! this could come from a simpson episode. smashing!