Being "Nice" on Twitter

Hi Allan,

Great post! :)

I do a similar thing: I look at their page, read their latest comments, see how many friends (and who) we have in common and then either follow them or send the a direct saying “Thanks for the follow.”

I’ve actually stopped even getting the new follower emails, when I “notice” someone’s twitter account, and it’s even remotely interesting, I follow it, but I’m full of righteous judgment for boring / lame / over posts, etc, so I remove a few people and add a few people almost every day.

I almost wish there were some code I could tag my account with “Follow me if you want, I will not follow you back, I may add and remove you in the same week depending on my mood” etc. I need a quick, simple way to explain that these relationships don’t necessarily mean I think you are valid or invalid (as a person).

I follow a few, and receive notifications of a few of those. If you are worthy of interrupting my “flow”, I get notifications. That’s not to say what you have to say is not interesting, it’s just not something that I’d be willing to risk loosing a train of thought over. Twitter is kind enough to put everyone’s tweets in chronological order, so I can check the website (when it’s up) when it’s convenient.

I’m not a constant, heavy twitter user, so what works for me might not work for all.

dhw

Here here!

The signal to noise is staggering for some with updates such as “LOL!!! Buttons the cat just threw a hairball! LOL!” There’s nothing offensive about not following someone in return.

Consider the real life situation, a stranger walks up to you:
“You’re my friend”
“Do I know you?”
“No, but you have to be my friend too!”

Take no offense please, it just wasn’t meant to be…

Cheers,
-Jonathan

P.S. I’m following you but you didn’t follow me in return, humphf!

Really? People get offended if they don’t get followed back? As for me, I follow a bunch of people and don’t really expect any of them to follow me, but maybe I just don’t ‘get’ twitter. I use it cause it’s fun.

I follow a fair amount of people (twitter.com/kohlhofer) but I am still hand picking. And only for a small subset of those I have notifications turned on. Which means the ones I care for a lot find me (mobile, email, etc) while the other ones I do read when i have time. But if I am offline or away I do not try to catch up. It is like a stream running by. Sometimes I look and it is great – often I do not.

And then there is friendfeed where I get yet another group which I do actually try to keep an eye on even if I was offline.

I’m with Justin Weiss, they followed you on their own free will and you never forced them, so you know, it’s fine.

I follow almost everyone that follows me, if not spam. But I only get notifications from peeps I am interested in hearing from.

I don’t know who you guys are, but I followed @alexdesigns tweet about your design here and found this great post.

I used to follow-back everyone that followed me. My current follow-back is much like the others: I look at these in order: location, bio, tweets, friends.

Instantly add if:
- If they’re in Memphis (although that’ll change later)
- Bio interests are similar to mine
- Tweets are enjoyable (funny, interesting, useful)
- Friend to Follower ratio not too lop-sided

If you look like you’re an A-Lister, you’re instantly on probation. Cheers Guys!

I generally initially follow-back anyone who follows me, but not to be courteous – I’m just interested in seeing the tweets of people that wanted to follow me. I think it’s a twisted variation of the old phrase “I wouldn’t want to join a club that would have me as a member”. I sort of want to know who would join a club that has me as its only member.

That being said, I do a cleanup every couple weeks like you do and will un-follow those folks if I’m not getting value.

I follow people for various reasons, but I don’t expect follow-backs. I don’t get testy when someone drops me and I hope those I drop don’t either, but it’s not going to curdle my cream if they do.

I don’t do notifications. Maybe some day. I have too much to do and it’s too much of a distraction. I treat those I follow like the daily paper – I try and carve out some time every day to scan through and see if anything interesting is going on.

Frequency is huge problem for me and is why I’ll follow folks without notifications.

This works because its less of an interruption for me.

I’ll still catch tweets that are of value to me in apps like twitterrific (eg the tweet that led me to this article).

Great post! Nice to see you are on Twitter!

Nice post, Allen.

Generally I’ve been trying to actively follow local people (east coast and Phila in particular) that are involved in design/software/thought leadership/community in some way. I toss in the occasional high profile west coaster because I have a fan-boy streak in me. When people follow me, however, I always scrutinize their recent tweets to decide if I follow back. Self-promoters, those who only tweet their blog posts or their products automatically get the boot. People who seem to be in a contest to see how many followers they can get are similarly ignored.

I need my productivity, too, so separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, is paramount. This seems to work pretty well for me. I get a lot of relevant (to me) tweets about design/development/philadelphia events and people but don’t get stuff I couldn’t care less about. When I hear a “ding” sound I want to know that the person I’m hearing from is meaningful to me in some way. Which of course is why I follow @lessallen and @stevenbristol ! ;-)