Is there a consensus on the proper etiquette for following/followers on Twitter? Are there multiple proper approaches?
Over the last few weeks I have debated whether I should follow anyone who follows me. I’m trying to figure out if Twitter is a “conversation” medium or a “broadcast” medium similar to RSS where there is no expectation of reciprocation. I noticed a few weeks back that Sarah Meyers took the step of following anyone who was following her. I found this to be an interesting move and one that got me to thinking about what other Twitter users were doing. Guy Kawasaki takes a reciprocal approach for his 4300+ followers. I chose to follow him and like-wise he now follows me. Jason Calacanis seems to have done the same following roughly 2/3rds of his 6700+ followers. Conversely, Leo Laporte uses Twitter much more like a traditional broadcast medium following only 212 of his 65,535 followers. Given Leo’s successful background in broadcasting his approach makes sense. Dave Winer also falls into this camp, following slightly less than 10% of his 4800+ followers. Admittedly, many of the people I have mentioned are folks I have become friendly with through podcasting and everyone is someone I follow – they have all added value to my Twitter experience. So for me, all these approaches work and I don’t know that there is a right or wrong answer, but I am curious if there is some consensus on the proper Twitter etiquette? What do you think?
BTW, you can follow me here.
My approach is to follow those that I know or I have a lose association with like podcast listeners that I know listen to other podcast’s in the FriendsInTech.com group.
I look at each you are being followed by and then make a decision.
If something goes sideways with their twitter posts … like automatic updates from their LastFM listens, I tend to drop them to keep the signal to noise ratio reasonable.
My approach is pure and simple: I follow people who frequently say things I want to hear, whether it’s a tip or other information that’s useful to me, or whether it’s a friend I’ve made who lets me know what he or she is up to.
If I cease to be interested for quite a while, I stop following them.
Pownce and Facebook are a different story. There, a “friend” is truly a friend; someone whom I’ve physically met or at least connected online with with a strong enough bond to feel a kinship with. If I don’t know who you are when you request to be made my friend, I ignore you or put you on my fan list.
I always click through to the Twitter page of a new follower via the notification email. If I consider them to be a potentially interesting person, I follow them.
It’s not reasonable to follow a gazillion people. What’s the point? You can’t possibly read all those, so to me one isn’t really following. At that point, it’s just a stack of numbers on your Twitter page. I follow who I want to follow and if they want to follow me, that’s fine. If they don’t, that’s fine, too. I want to read everyone’s comments that I follow, so I will put a limit on how many I follow when I can’t do that easily. Some will come and go as my interests change or if they stop tweeting much. I’ll make room for someone else.
I don’t think it is anything to get offended about in either direction.
Here’s the catch: if you don’t follow a bunch of people, then the relationship is not reciprocal, and some people will drop you (meaning the impact of your message is lessened). If you follow everyone, you can’t really stay looped into your friends’ information so easily.
Without tools. I use RSS feeds and twittersearch.com and a few other little hacks to get the pulse of twitter while still scanning somewhere over 3600 people (still working on re-synching with everyone who’s recently added me).
One set rule? No. But the polite thing to do is reciprocate. The SMART thing to do is follow, like, 20 people.
I follow many but not all of who follows me. I’ll check people out when they add me, and if their posts are relevant to my reading – social media, photography, they are in Houston or nearby, or they know a lot of the same people I know, then I will add them. I also notice who a lot of my friends are @ messaging, and I’ll check them out too.
I’m about to go to a large conference in Las Vegas, and I’ve set up a special username for WPPI just so I can follow the people at WPPI with me — it will help cut out some of the fluff so I can follow key topics for the week. I’ll return to regular twittering after I return home.
I follow most (but not all) of the people who follow me. Twitter is at its best when you are inclusive and connect to a lot of different voices. On the other hand, if someone is annoying or just creeps me out, I don’t feel any obligation to keep them in my Twitter stream.
I am on Twitter intermittently, as time and health and other activities allow. I follow several hundred people. I’m also an avid blogger, I use StumbleUpon, I visit forums and online chats, exchange email, you name it. I cannot manage to keep up on every single tweet from everybody I follow on Twitter, so I don’t attempt it. But I do make sure to read replies and direct messages sent to me. And I visit people’s blogs and links from time to time.
I’ll follow anybody who follows me – except for obvious commercial spammers and those few people who do not stay within the bounds of civility online.
I’m not likely to follow someone who has a campaign button for an avatar. I probably wouldn’t have followed a lot of the people I follow now if I had known of their bent towards political commentary. I haven’t yet unfollowed people who have put them up since I followed them, but I have decided not to follow new people I would otherwise have followed. Think of it as posting your campaign sign on my front yard. Kinda tacky.
Other than that, the main thing is the person having something interesting to say, or posts useful links. I don’t formally follow rude people, but I check in on some of them sometimes if I think they have something honest to say,(Sometimes polite people don’t say things that need saying).
In summary, have an inoffensive avatar, and have something interesting to say or link to, and I’ll grant you an audience.
I think if you follow too many you are at risk of increasing the noise heard in the relevant content to noise ratio. Off the bat I follow anyone I know in real life. If I’ve shook your hand and we’ve talked and you are on twitter I’m following you. For everyone else if they are interesting to me or are in the same circle as me then I follow them. If they are far to chatty or talk about things I’m not interested in I don’t follow them.
I’d have to agree with Chris Brogan’s latter point polite vs smart… I’d rather go to smart with a dash of polite please.
I’d also like to add that the tools that twitter provides to make smart decisions about this are VERY lacking. I’d love to see some relationship data listed when making this decision on weather to follow someone or not. I’d like to see some % of mutual friends listed as part of this relationship data.
When I click through to a new follower’s page, it’s like an audition. If the new person is someone I know, I’ll usually, but not always, follow. If I don’t know the person, and I like what I see, I might give it a shot. Also, I read the bio information. I’m somewhat more likely to follow people from my hometown, or who are podcaster. Just my bias. There are other less quantifiable biases. Deciding whether to follow is ultimately pretty subjective. I follow a bit under half the people (and bots?) who follow me.
I look at the invite and see if they look interesting to follow. I look at their recent Twitters. I make the decision in about 10 seconds. So it’s like the last ten are the elevator pitch as to whether you get followed back. Twitter ID = typicalmacuser by the way.
I pretty much follow Steve Holden’s strategy; I follow people I know and check the tweets of people I don’t to see if we have a common interest and follow them if so. Generally I don’t follow anyone who is following a huge number of people. I unfollow people if the signal to noise ratio gets too low and block people if they appear to be spammers.
I also have two Twitter accounts. One I use to broadcast, the other I use to converse. What I’d like to see in Twitter is the ability to send tweets to a group, or limited subset of followers (with replies to those tweets only going to the original group).
My approach is the same as Shelly’s, every email that someone is following me is a chance for me to audition them. I check out their last dozen posts, their website, their bio.
Towards your initial questions I always assume the person who follows no one and the person who follows everyone but has 1000s of followers are both basically using twitter for broadcasting. I think Jason follows me but I would never assume that he would see what I was twittering in all that noise. Many people who are using a broadcast strategy for twitter actively go out and follow random people just because some percentage of them will follow them in return. This is the get followers by following approach. This approach would not work for me. I find value in the conversation.
My problem with the “click to see if they are interesting” approach to people that follow me is that recently it seems that is exactly why they are following me – to get me to click and see their page. I don’t want to go view “ads” a few times a day, so I guess I’ll just start ignoring follows, but then I miss people that I actually do know.
I wish twitter would give more info in the email message, or even better, I would like an option to set the ratio of followers to following, and if it is higher than a certain number, don’t allow them to follow me.
Hard to believe I waited this long, but I finally joined Twitter yesterday. Nice to hear how others are handling this issue. So far I’ve decided to follow most of my followers… I simply checkout their Twitter page and often their web site. If I like what they have to offer, I add them. If they are posting about ever little thing 50 times a day with no real value, I don’t.