Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Levi Lenaerts — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:03:04 -0000

“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!

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Brian Tristam Williams — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:37:01 -0000

paragraph 2, "you're" not "your." bye

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

YODspica — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 09:17:36 -0000

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.

http://yodspica.com
http://twitter.com/YODspica
http://facebook.yodspica.com

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

justin williams — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:32:54 -0000

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??

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

justin williams — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:13:51 -0000

*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

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

RobertChristine — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:55:48 -0000

couldn't even read the entire article without clicking the Mr Tweet follow button -- nice observations!

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Rebecca — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:18:56 -0000

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.

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Tim Regan-Porter — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:26:23 -0000

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.

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Betsy Stone — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:52:05 -0000

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.wordpre...

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

John Bankroft — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:25:34 -0000

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!!!

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

ShireenSmith — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:12:59 -0000

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.

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Shireen Smith — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 07:31:39 -0000

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.

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

julie_poplawski — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:39:54 -0000

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!

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Responsive.AI — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:06:17 -0000

Check out http://www.TweetTop.com (i created it) for who to follow on many different topics.

Cheers

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

ad consultores — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:19:38 -0000

Very interesting. Thank you

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Frank Tocco — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:18:54 -0000

Great article!
Here's something your readers might find helpful.
http://tweetergetter.com/Fr...

Easy to get lots of followers.
http://tweetergetter.com/Fr...
Frank Tocco

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Twittergator — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:22:02 -0000

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.

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Jason Tryfon — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 01:41:07 -0000

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

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

markdavidson — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:15:32 -0000

"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.

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

@BillCamp — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:35:53 -0000

@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.)

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

@BillCamp — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:30:46 -0000

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.

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Believe Kids — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:59:59 -0000

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!

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

FatFighterTV — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:51:15 -0000

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.

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

grapplica — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:23:26 -0000

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

Re: The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic

Erica — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:16:03 -0000

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 ;)