Honestly, I Probably Won’t Follow You

When it comes to Twitter, I suppose I don’t really follow the unwritten law of “you should follow anyone who follows you”. In fact, I’m really picky about who I follow.

If I check out your page and you’ve posted too many times that day, I won’t follow you. If you haven’t posted enough, I won’t follow you. If I don’t like your display picture, I won’t follow you. If you have all tweets with no replies, I won’t follow you. If you’re following too many people, I won’t follow you.

Too bad if you happen to have a bad day or exhibit some once off behaviour. Chances are I won’t check you out a second time.

I always judge books by their covers. Does anyone else? And do you ever stop and think about what your profile looks like right now? I know I don’t do it enough.

No Comments
  • Daniel Oyston
    Posted at July 21, 2009 9:18am, 21 July Reply

    If I get a new follow then I will have the courtesy to click through and read their short bio. I will then scan the first page of Tweets only. If I roughly think I would have liked to have seen these Tweets then I will follow.

    It is amazing how many pages there are where I read the first 5 or 6 Tweets and close the window. Fucking boring.

    The frequency doesn’t bother me. It’s all about whether their Tweets would have interested me regardless of how often they Tweet. Quality over quantity (high or low).

    And I would have no idea if everyone I follow then follows me back. To me that is irrelevant

  • lyndellnm
    Posted at July 21, 2009 2:05pm, 21 July Reply

    Interesting observation. I don't follow people just because they follow me either. And I don't really give a rats whether the people I follow follow me back.
    If I compare how I use Twitter and Facebook – it's completely different. Facebook to me is all about creating connections with my friends. (It might be old fashioned, but you have to be my actual friend to be my Facebook friend.)
    Twitter for me, though, is really about collecting information. I follow people who I think are tweeting information that's useful to me. (Zac, that includes you. Old dogs like me need to learn new tricks from young dogs like you.)

  • katherineliew
    Posted at July 21, 2009 9:16pm, 21 July Reply

    If someone had just heard of you, clicked on your blog and saw this post as the first one…

    😛

  • Kate Kendall
    Posted at July 21, 2009 11:52pm, 21 July Reply

    I love Twitter and want to make a go of it, but I can't keep up with the aggressive following. I go away for three weeks and check out some users upon my return and they've gone up 5,000 followers or the like. I'll click on what I think are random people in Australia and they're following 12,000 people! You can always tell the culprits because they follow around 300 more than follow them, and build up their numbers one by one.

    It's become all about hierarchy and attention, less about the conversation and interaction. Mechanical and clinical, not organic and hearty. I love LinkedIn though, check out the majority of the Twitterati on LinkedIn and they've got five connections. For LinkedIn to work, you have to do things external to build a profile. 😉

  • Andy Braithwaite
    Posted at July 22, 2009 11:50am, 22 July Reply

    I think it's your own responsibility as a follower, if you are hoping for a follw back, to review your recent tweet history.

    If you have been in a tweet slump, it's only fair to be ignored, even if you are usually Mr or Ms. Personality. I know that I have held off on following someone when my personal tweet history wasn't its freshest.

  • Jimmy
    Posted at July 22, 2009 7:59pm, 22 July Reply

    Do you ever screen followers? Was just on Twitter and saw you had 700+ followers (puts my 22 to shame!) However I looked at a couple of your most recent followers and it looked like they were simply adding you to boost their own profile as some were following thousands of others and seemed unrelated to yourself.

    Come to think of it I have a criteria as only let people I know follow me. Further my tweets are blocked. Am I missing the point of Twitter? Think I'm stuck in the Facebook mindset!

    Jimmy

  • Anonymous
    Posted at July 22, 2009 8:11pm, 22 July Reply

    Ignore my above post – was just informed by Zac that you can't control who follows you if your tweets are not blocked.

  • Tim Burrowes - Mumbrella
    Posted at August 2, 2009 11:15pm, 02 August Reply

    I think that judging a book by its cover is an excellent policy. It tells me as much as I need to know of the genre and likely content to make an informed decision. Ditto your Twitter policy.

    Cheers,

    Tim – Mumbrella

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