Let’s talk about Twitter… because I have nothing else to talk about. But I want to get your take on something: if someone follows you, do you feel obligated to follow them back?
I used to have this list of personal guidelines for Twitter — my personal preferences, not rules for everyone else. Over time, I’ve bent and/or broken a couple of those guidelines… like, I now follow more than 100 people. I used to think that following more than that wouldn’t allow me to personally interact or catch everything. But, I’ve found that not to be true, so I’ve upped my follow list. There are a lot of interesting people out there and not all of them tweet consistently, so it’s easier to follow more, but I’ll never be that person who follows thousands of people. I still believe in quality over quantity.
And to that end, I won’t just follow someone simply because they follow me. I’m not tweet-easy… tweasy? And I treat Twitter the same way I treat prospective shags — with a thorough once-over. No one is getting into these twitter pants without an evaluation.
I don’t like Follower’s Remorse; I prefer to be more selective with my follows rather than explain an unfollow later on. If you talk to me via @reply, I always answer back (or try to, I might miss one or two here and there), regardless of whether or not you’re following me. It’s how I decide if I’m going to follow someone new. Unless your tweet stream blows me away with it’s awesome wit at first glance, chances are I’ll wait for a few exchanges between us. Then, if I’ve decided we have rapport, that your twitter stream has info that interests me and you don’t overtweet, play incessant hashtag games or tweet for Jesus, I’ll usually follow you back. If I don’t, it’s not personal, it just means I haven’t gotten a chance to know you well enough yet or we don’t have a lot in common. Or you like hashtag games. *groan* (Yes, I’m looking at you, friend of mine who likes hashtag games. Fortunately, yours are actually funny. *wink*)
Yesterday, I was unfollowed by some random guy I’d never heard of, never met and didn’t even know was following me… and he had a handle that begged for mockery. Upon further inspection he appeared to be, in my opinion, kind of a douche. That’s just my superficial, knee-jerk reaction. No big loss, but I made a snarky comment about how I was so sad to lose him. Nice? No, probably not. I’m not perfect.
He replied, “Its Follow For Follow In 2010 Buddy”. (The lack of punctuation and rampant capitalization speak to my “douche” opinion — but if that’s not enough for you, check the photo.) It wasn’t so much that he replied — I kind of expected that — it was more the tone, sort of shaming, because I didn’t follow back someone I didn’t even know was following me, though his tone could have been due to my snarky tweet in his general direction. I don’t care what he thinks, but I don’t understand the “follow or be unfollowed” philosophy, I guess.
I follow a lot of people who don’t follow me back. Quite a few, actually. I follow them because I like their tweets, not because I’m trying to “network” (read: hoard followers). Again, quality over quantity. Why aren’t they following me back? I don’t know — they may not realize I’m even following them, may not know who I am, may not care who I am. That’s ok. I’m not following them to make a new BFF, though there are some people I follow that I would love to know better. I follow because they’re funny or smart or talk about stuff I’m interested in or… whatever. I’m not going to throw my sucker in the dirt and unfollow simply because they don’t reciprocate.
After posting those tweets, I got a few surprise “unfollows” from people I was actually considering following back. We’d shared a few exchanges, they seemed cool, I always replied to them… I was just getting to know them before I made my move. But before I could reciprocate, I was unfollowed. That’s ok — to each their own. I wondered if it was my bitchy tweets that made them unfollow or they just lost interest in my shenanigans. Either way, it’s fine — I’m not going to stop being who I am or tailor my tweets to please other people, though I can see where my response to that guy might have made other as-yet-unfollowed folks a bit incensed. That was unintentional, but I made my bed… they’re just not in it.
I have no idea where I’m going with this. But I guess I’m just wondering — do you unfollow people because they don’t follow you back? It seems demanding. I have a ton of spam bots and businesses and things following me, but I don’t follow them back… because that’s what they want. And they never interact with me, so why should I bother? Eventually, they unfollow me… and I’m ok with that. But if you’re a real person who adds me only to unfollow me within a few days simply because I’m not following you back yet — well, I clearly did the right thing in not following you immediately, didn’t I? Give me a chance to get to know you first! If you unfollow me because I tweet about bunnies and booze, well… that’s your prerogative, but don’t do it just because I’m not following you back yet.
I won’t follow you simply because you followed me. I’m not that kind of girl.
I completely agree. I have no shame in not following any individual and don’t care one bit if a person unfollows me. The capability to respond to @replies regardless if someone is following you or not, means I don’t have to follow everyone who finds my tweets interesting.
Agreed. I like that I can @reply to people who don’t follow me. How can I know that you’re following me, that you even give a crap if you don’t *say* anything to me? Otherwise, I just assume you’re following me because you like my tweets or you’re trying to sell me something.
Er, that should have said, “I can @reply to people I don’t follow yet”.
I’m glad I passed the evaluation to get into your Twitter pants!
But seriously, I have the same philosophy on Twitter that you do. It used to be link exchanges (remember those?) and now it’s Twitter / Flickr / Facebook follows / contacts / friends. I will only follow / contact / friend you if I want to because I find you interesting in some way, and no amount of asking, begging, whining or harassing is going to change that.
AMEN! My friends always pass the eval!
The funny thing is, more people would get into my twitter pants if they just had a little patience.
Totally agree. I actually love that you don’t have to have a reciprocal relationship on Twitter unless you want to. I mean, are there people I follow that I wish followed me? Sure, but I’d rather just read their fun musings and @ reply them when warranted than miss out on their wit because they don’t follow me back.
.-= Ginger´s last blog: 9 reasons I wish BlogHer 2010 was over already =-.
WORD. and can I just say, I love the title of your recent post. I AM SO READY for it to be over. I want to go, don’t get me wrong, but the lead up and constant chatter makes me wish it was over. Kind of like the holidays.
I have the same philosophy in that I follow people that I find interesting and whether or not they follow me back is their decision. Twitter is about the conversation, so if I reply to a tweet it’s nice to get a response back. If a person is following a huge number, unless you’re spending enough time on Twitter to consider it a part-time job, it’s unlikely that you will actually have the time to develop any of those thousands of relationships Kind of defeats the whole purpose, I think!
Totally! That’s why I won’t ever be that person, unless I suddenly get uberfamous and even then, I would still only follow the people who impact me in some way. otherwise, I can just reply to followers on an ass-needed basis.
As-needed, but I liked that typo enough to keep it. lol
Heh. Ass-needed.
I used to follow back most people that followed me (that weren’t obvious spammers), but then I realized that there are a lot of people that follow you just so you’ll reciprocate and then a few days later they will unfollow you, hoping you don’t notice. After that happened a bunch of times I started doubting new followers.
Now, I pretty much have the same philosophy as you. Though I guess I kind of agree with that douchey guy to a very small degree? If someone who originally followed me and then I followed back, decides to unfollow me, then I will almost always unfollow them as well. Especially if it’s someone who has never replied to me or vice versa, I just don’t see the point of still following them. But I follow plenty of other people that don’t follow me back and that’s totally okay with me.
I agree with you there. If Bob follows me and I follow Bob back and then Bob dumps me? Bob’s out on his ass unless he’s really worth following. But I probably would unfollow anyway.
But if Bob follows me, I never follow him back, he never makes his presence known and I don’t even realize he exists, I don’t really care if he unfollows me. That’s his prerogative. But while his comment was provoked by my snidery, I’ll admit, I don’t abide the “well, I wouldn’t have unfollowed if you followed me back” finger-pointing. Perhaps if he’d said something, I might have followed him back.
I only follow people when I am interested in what they have to say. I actually have two twitter accounts: one for my personal use, and one for political commentary/local issues where I live. I follow selectively with my personal account, and I never feel obliged to follow back. With my ‘professional’ one, I follow as much as possible, but only for networking purposes. Again, I never feel obliged to follow someone just because they follow me. I usually do follow people as a courtesy, but if I don’t enjoy their tweets, I will unfollow them.
I have multiple, as well. TM is my personal one and I follow who I want, when I want and why I want.
We have @moxiegirls for clients and work — I follow back a lot of people there, as well as on @donutless for my fitness tweets and w/l stuff.
I have nothing new to add to this conversation other than “yeah, me too.” My attitude towards Twitter started out being “if I think you’re interesting, I’ll follow you, otherwise, I don’t care.” I actually created a Twitter account with the purpose of trying to build a large following and do that thing that marketers do in an attempt to see if it would drive a lot of traffic to my blog and my business website. After spending 30-40 minutes a day doing what would be described as “farming” were I playing an MMO, I determined that, in fact, no, there was no considerable difference. I just wound up with a ton of crap followers and ended up following thousands more who sucked just as much (and I mean that literally, I can’t tell you how many times I found Brit.ney Fu.cked following me. *Block user*).
I’m a bit less picky (well, a lot less picky, actually) with my @ArcanePalette account for our biz, but I’ve been using TrueTwit for both my personal account and @ArcanePalette which makes people fill in a CAPTCHA verification to prove their human. If they don’t, I generally won’t consider following them (unless I already decided to follow them because they’re interesting or I know them personally or something).
I gave up trying to block all the weirdos. LOL It got too time consuming. I figured they’ll unfollow me eventually. I like this captcha idea , though…
it irks me that twitter has become so cliquey! i’m the type who, like you said, is quality vs. quantity. i don’t care how many people i follow, so long as their tweets are something i enjoy reading. it’s not high school, i shouldn’t have to jump through hoops and try to be popular on a social network!
but for the record? i love your bunny tweets.
Squee! see. who doesn’t love bunny tweets?
Yes, I have similar feelings about cliques and certain social networks, specifically those for women. I’m one of those people that naturally make friends and I don’t like having to work at it. It’s just not in my nature. Follow, don’t follow, whatever. This isn’t cheer tryouts.
Just to add that I also have a personal and professional account, and wow is it a lot of work trying to keep up with both! If it’s going to do any good from a professional standpoint, you really have to be on top of things and be active every day. I have 2 little kids and 3 part-time jobs. Twitter is hard work – no need to add random uninteresting/unrelated follows into the mix, too!!
Completely agree. I don’t feel obliged to re-follow. Actually, that makes Twitter very pointless, it’s just building numbers. And, thanks for asking, I don’t need a huge number on my Twitter page to think nice of myself.
Nor do I take it personally if somebody doesn’t follow me back or unfollows me after a while.
Twitter is a simple game and most enjoyable if taken that way. People post things shorter than 140 chars. If you find those interesting you click follow. Straight and honest. No strings attached.
I never follow people back unless I already know them. (Except for Roger Ebert. I don’t know him. YET!!) But, I’m uber lazy and don’t tweet very much since they blocked it here at work so I mostly can’t be bothered. I’m always shocked when someone new follows me, because I’m never there and when I am, it’s the opposite of interesting. heh