With Twitter, or for that matter any other microblogging platform, do you follow everyone who follows you?
I tried. Back in the early days of Twitter… a year-and-a-half ago or so… whenever someone followed me I almost inevitably followed the person back. We were all trying to figure out what this new medium of “microblogging” was all about, so I followed most of the very early adopters as we all joined into this grand experiment.
But somewhere along the way I had to stop the immediate reciprocity. As Twitter has grown and more and more people have joined the service, I found there was no way that I could really follow all those who started following me. I simply didn’t have enough attention to share. I watched (and marveled) as folks like Robert Scoble, Jeremiah Owyang and Chris Brogan all started following thousands of people. (They still do: Scoble follows 21,000+, Jeremiah almost 6,000 and Chris over 12,000.)
I realized over time that my usage of Twitter was a bit different from that of Scoble and others. I outlined the 10 ways I learned to use Twitter first in December and then again a bit more back in April. For me to use Twitter in the way I do, I like to focus a bit more on the people and services I follow. I do like to scan down through them… and for me that meant following fewer people.
The “Replies” tab in Twitter also helped. I could use that to see who had replied to me publicly with “@danyork” and from there I could learn about people that I might want to follow. (Now I have the same functionality in Twhirl and pretty much never go to the actual Twitter web site… but the purpose is the same.)
The increasing amount of “spam” Twitter accounts has also killed any kind of immediate reciprocity, at least for me. When you can tell just by the name that the account is there purely to sell you something, it’s a very easy decision to NOT follow that account. I’ve found that the spammers are getting a bit less brazen and sometimes when I do look at someone who is now following I find that even with a “normal” name… they are still a spammer.
So what do I do these days when I get a follower notification in email? Or if I see someone publicly replying to me on the Replies tab?
IF I have time (and that’s a big “if”), I will go take a look at the person’s Twitter page. (And if I don’t have time, I sometimes let the notices accumulate and then look through a batch at once… or sometimes admittedly I just don’t have the time to look at them.) What am I looking for?
- What are they tweeting about? – If the person is tweeting about things that are of interest to me – and especially if they provide links to interesting articles I haven’t seen before – I may follow them then. If all they tweet about is their lunch or what TV show they are watching, I’ll usually pass.
- Do they have a website URL in their profile? – What is the site they link to? Do they blog? Are they doing something interesting or with an interesting company or organization?
- Who are they? – If they are a friend or someone I know in some context, I’ll often add them.
- Miscellaneous – Sometimes I may add someone purely because I’m not following anyone doing the kinds of things they do… or I think their posts are funny or interesting… I don’t always have a solid reason.
Basically I’m trying to figure out… why should I let this person have some of my attention?
It sounds harsh… but to me the reality is that we all have only so many minutes in the day and we all have a zillion other things we are trying to do. If I am going to start following someone… why?
I try to look at folks who follow me… but I often can’t… and so over time the ratio of people following me to people I follow has continually grown and grown. I feel bad, sometimes, too, when I wind up talking to someone and they say “I follow you on Twitter but you don’t follow me.”
What do you all do? What criteria do you place on people you follow on Twitter? How do you respond to follower notifications?
Technorati Tags:
twitter, attention, microblogging
Just as it should be.
Imho.
Great minds think alike. My policies on Twitter are much like yours. As the platform has grown, I’ve become much more selective. I just cannot follow more than a few hundred people. One thing: I DO subscribe to the Twitter RSS feeds of some of my favourites, so that I don’t miss their tweets. The feed is easy to scan quickly.
I’d elaborate but I’m frumpy or something.
(Probably Debbie Gibson’s fault.)
… Suppose what I meant to say in the previous comment is that I couldn’t agree more. Possibly with exception to the personal url – there are some people that despise advertising themselves. And I’m cool with that. So I’ll peek at their link but it never really plays a big part in why I follow them on Twitter.
Good post Dan,
I don’t think that people who follow thousands are actually following anyone.
I too scrutinize each person who follows me. I look for some connection with my interests. If I find it, I follow them. If not, I don’t.
As a consequence, I get great value out of the Twitter stream from the people I follow and I also find myself engaged every day in @[name] conversations with one or more of them. That’s the essence of attention focused and well spent.
I’m similar. I do tend to take a quick look at people who are following me. I’ll follow back if there’s some relevance to me – geographical, business etc – or a quick scan of their last few tweets look particularly interesting, entertaining or fun.
You’re not being harsh, Dan. You’re just being realistic with what you can handle. My approach is similar. I’m only following roughly 1/3 of the people that follow me (currently following 648, with 2184 followers — and I don’t keep up with those 648 nearly as well as I kept up with a group of 400 or so).
These days, notices from new followers go straight to a filtered “BACN” folder in my gamil account that I look at when I have time (and if the 600-plus unread BACN posts I have right now is any indication, then my time for reviewing new followers is “not enough.”
When I do check that folder or receive an @ message from someone new, I make a decision on whether to reciprocate the follow in the matter of a couple of seconds. Basically, I’m looking for some kind of connection: Are they Tweeting about topics I’m interested in? Are they from Boston (my old hometown) or Austin (my new one)? Do they like cricket? If that connection is there, I’ll probably follow back. If not, I don’t.
And guys like Jeremiah Owyang and Robert Scoble? You can ask them, but my guess is that they actually read only a very small percentage of Tweets to their feed. They probably focus on their @ message and do searches/set up searches for their names/keywords through search.twitter.com. And if they’re smart, they also have virtual assistants going through the backlog of messages from new followers. @Pistachio has said she does that, and I was actually considering it for a while.
Great post – I have often wondered how people that follow thousands cope. Personally I have a very tight focus, I am just interested in social media commentators within or near my space, I have a limit I would like to reach which I believe will give me a sufficient ROI of my time.
If someone follows me I take a look at their Tweets, who they are following, who’s following them. If they have a web link I check that and scan what they are all about and make a decision based on the value I think the can deliver to me and vice versa.
For those that have huge follower bases and return the favor it becomes less valuable as filtering important, unmissable tweets becomes difficult.
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