Going through my Twitter followers...
Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Monday, July 21, 2008
I spent some time going through my followers list today, blocking the
outright spammers and adding a few interesting-looking folks. As much
as I enjoy the folks I follow on Twitter, I've had to come up with a
few rules for following folks:
- Be interesting. Along
with real world friends I follow parents, writers, photographers,
geeks, students, just about anyone that I find interesting. Of course,
what I find interesting and what someone else finds interesting may not
be the same thing. Case in point:
- Don't spam. Today I got the
"someone is now following you" message. I clicked on the profile and
found exactly one update: "This works!" followed by a URL. Don't. Just
don't.
- Don't collect friends. Cultivate them. If I see
someone has two updates and is following several thousand people, I'm
probably not interested. That's opposed to folks like Robert Scoble,
who follow - and are followed by - lots of people and have something
interesting to say.
- Don't use your Twitter feed to post
quotes or a constant stream of news items. This is why I have an RSS
reader. I'm interested when you run across something interesting, but I
tune out when you post ten items from your Google Reader in a row. (I
do use Twitter to follow a a few news services, but I do that by
choice. In fact, I'm thinking of moving some to my RSS reader.)
- Similarly,
five or six tweets in a row advertising your newest blog post is one of
the fastest ways I know of to get off my follow list. Sure, this may
happen once or twice if there's a software hiccup, but a constant
stream of this sort of thing suggests to me that either you don't care
or you're an attention whore. Don't get me wrong: I like it when my
friends update their blogs. Just don't create a lot of noise. It's rude
because Twitter moves so fast that people lose track of good posts when
someone sends a whole string of tweets at once - especially when
they're identical posts. (This may fall under the "when does
self-promotion go overboard?" post I'm planning.)
- Please use an appropriate picture. You know what I mean.
You get the idea.
Now,
if we know each other in the real world or online and you're following
me, please let me know if I don't reciprocate. I do try to check out
everyone who follows, but I may miss an e-mail or Twitter may burp and
not send it.
Tags: Twitter
Filed under: Twitter
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