Lately with twitter i have got a few pissy comments about “you dont follow me back” well… I like to use twitter as a business tool and I do not want it to turn into myspace/facebook where I just auto accept everyone and then get spammed and it becomes totally more of a hassle then a business tool.
For instance lets look at my facebook:
So in the last week or so I have 20 new messages in my inbox… 100 new invites and 40 stupid invites like “What kind of terrorist are you?” or “What kind of super hero are you most like?” but you guys know you get them too… so basically I don’t access my facebook anymore and my myspace is worse. I do not blame them or am saying they are bad products but for me they are almost turning into a MMORPG especially with all these anonymous trolls invading.
So for me twitter has replaced both myspace and facebook as far as keeping touch with the industry.
OMG I totally had a add moment the whole point of this post was to talk about how to decide who to follow and stuff… ok so basically I follow people that I care to hear what they say. I usually find these people cause they appear on other peoples pages. Its kind of like how I choose to link to blogs. Its not cause the person links to me.
These guys who follow 10,000 + people there is no possible way they can keep track of anything.
So basically I follow people that I care about what they say when they say it. People who twitter to little or too much I remove. Don’t take it personally 
So how do you decide who to follow/friend on twitter or other social networks?
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I try to follow everyone who follows me. I refuse to follow Twitter Snobs, but on the other hand do unfollow anyone who I find too spamy or who just tweets so much that i can not enjoy the rest of the tweets. I also follow those who I have things in common with so usually those are also the ones who follow me as well.
very soon these people will render twitter useless as a business tool
why don’t you just let all of them know that you don’t like to receive any such facebook apps request or you’ll just remove them from your friends lists..
that’s not a good idea to stop using facebook.. certainly not.. just because people are irritating you.
and more.. create your own fan page where you can talk to people who have invited you to become their friend.. see their profile.. or hire an assistant who will evaluate on your behalf to communicate and add people.. you won’t believe but John Assaraf of “the secret” fame has just done that.. hehe
Fan page on FB will be a cool idea Jeremy.. make one and I will be the first to join..
I think people just don’t think enough to make up a cool, fantastic and quality relationship with other people of similar interests on twitter. That’s what twitter is all about.
Some people just think twitter is a fun tool whereas I don’t believe it’s a fun tool. It’s a social network with an open attitude and what you got to do is to “build QUALITY relationships” here.
As far as following people goes, I’d follow the whole internet marketing industry as I’d get a lot of leads that may change my approach to my work. Not only that, I’d keep myself updated with the trends and technologies of the internet market.
But when it comes to inviting and being a friend, it would come down to people who have “quality posts” here on twitter. Quality posts may mean that the person does not spam, talks sensible – interesting – innovative and can be inspiring in his/her attitude.
What I generally do is follow all probloggers, VC’s, internet entrepreneurs, SEO’s, social media experts and many more from the IM industry.
I don’t give a damn to all those stupid facebook requests except for friends with mutual interests. Maybe for you, it would be a pain as people just flock to you bcuz of your popularity. I don’t do any of those stupid facebook requests as most of my friends are from the IM industry on FB and I don’t have time to look forward to all those stupid requests. Just ignore.
BTW, we are linkedin and I follow you on twitter as well. I tweet too little as I am learning to tweet rather than spam people.
I am very particular with whom I follow.
I should say that what you have written here is called as normal .
You do that with your Digg Account too ?
That’s funny. I get tons of request and other stupid stuff also. I think those whining about “not following them back” are the same idiots who whine about you not returning their Stumbles. Punks…grow up!
thats normal, you have a fan club as madonna
You should write “Why Yahoo! should buy Twitter” so they would see and finally buy something not so useless
thanks for the info.
Here in South Africa we have a service called mixit, anybody heard of it? Twitter sounds similar, will go check them out.
I agree…i am using twitter as a business tool…but it’s also fun. I am preparing to launch a mom site and so I am networking with the other moms on twitter primarily. My hope is that when I launch I can get most of them to at least come and check out the site and hopefully join!
Luckily for me the very first thing I saw when I twittered was a video by Ed Dale making exactly the same argument as Shoemoney – I have been around the web since 1992 and remember when e-mailing was an innocent pastime. How I hate what spammers and hackers have done to every good innovation of the web – and now they are ruining all the web 2.0 stuff in turn
I am like you shoe, I only follow those who I feel I need to. I am sorry if I dont follow those who follow me, but at the end of the day, I often dont care what many people have to say!
Have you tried LinkedIn? I found it a much more grown up community and the contacts I have on there are really useful. I would never consider FaceBook/MySpace as a business tool.
@Chetan,
I guess it depends what you can do with 1500 people following your every action….
And I am still confused.
Do you know a detailed and simple guide explaining twitter ?
The auction page shows that its not sold.. And who would be that foolish to buy that account.
Yeah, I’m one of those idiots who requested a follow. Sorry about that. Shoulda known you get a zillion requests. It’s just cos I’m billy-no-mates on twitter.
I’ve decided to keep facebook as the tool for my friends and family and twitter for industry. Hopefully I can avoid too many overlaps.
I compartmentalise:
Facebook is for non-tech RL friends (and old high school not-exactly-friends).
Twitter is tech-savvy friends and random people whose updates expose me to interesting things or ideas.
Forkd friends are, unsurprisingly, people I don’t know but who publish tasty-looking recipes.
Upcoming – purely people I’ve met at events.
Pownce/second brain/social bookmarking… I’m still looking for a reason to engage with people on those sites.
I agree with you on this. I like Twitter because i sometimes find interesting or sometimes just fun people to follow. My heart sinks when I get someone following me who has loads of people following them just for the sake of it. It is OK if they are interesting and have attracted followers for that reason.
I struggle with FB but feel I have to get round to sorting a profile on it and myspace and linkedin since the general advice is that you should do this if you want to promote a business.
it will just go along your way… if you really want to, then try forums..
P.S does any one here know whether that guy eventually sold his twitter account?
That’s quite a selective list. I am yet to catch the twitter bug it’s something I tried for a bit but just couldn’t get into, but I can imagine like all these sites quantity to begin with will out rank quality (digg friends for example.)
I keep my facebook very private indeed. I even refuse to add people I have met in the past but am unlikley to ever meet again. I would rather use facebook as a tool to communicate with my current friends than as a tool to make new ones.
How many people are you currently following and how many people are following you right now?
Also, do you see Twitter as another temporary MySpace or Facebook until something better comes along?
~Terry
I’ve added industry leaders only.
When they rattle, you need to be quick to roll.
I doubt i’ll add more than 100 people and I don’t talk much but hey, would it be wise to NOT use something that gives you clear access to the who’s who right now? Didn’t think so.
It’s against the law to follow anyone here due to the stalking laws. Oh, Twitter following. Nope, I’m still not stalking…um…following there either.
~Terry
I think a reasonable amount of people to follow is 50ish
I check the person’s friend’s versus followers as well as their update count. If they follow hundreds or thousands with a small number of friends. I most likely will not follow them. If I know someone either personally or professionally, I will follow them as well.
Twitter would be a bit confusing in the start, until you get some good number of followers your way!
Bland
I guess to understand shoemoney.com now, I have to have twitter… Just got an account, will see how it goes. was able to avoid facebook for the most part.
I hear ya re: facebook.. That kind of stuff is the reason I didn’t even accept my own mother as a friend on facebook
Since I’m learning aff marketing. I follow who “counts”. I joined twitter because of you and found out about The Black Ink Project because of Twitter, in fact the day I joined.
So if I feel you have something useful to say, I follow you. If you are following 1,000 and only have 50 followers I stay away.
I’m getting a lot of spam follow notices from Twitter now. I’ll go see who just opted to follow me on twitter, and discover the person has posted nothing but a list of their urls.
With regards to the app spam on facebook…. It doesn’t bother me at all. I have more than five hundred requests for those things right now, but it doesn’t interfere with anything I do on Facebook. I just put “sorry, can’t keep up with requests” in my status now and then and don’t worry about it. The list of requests I don’t even see much. I don’t think people really care that I don’t put their stupid garden on my profile or join their Ninjas vs Lizards games anyway. They just send out a request and forget about them the moment after. When it comes to friend requests I’m just happy to get them, I recently got a couple of friend requests from people I don’t know, they had just read something I wrote, and I actually thought that was a little flattering. It certainly didn’t hurt my ego, and one of them (both are women) is even quite hot.
Heh, but the reverse happens!
I think a reasonable number of people to follow is 20-30.
That’s one reason why I haven’t joined Facebook yet. I don’t know if I can manage all that.
Twitter got it right by restricting direct messages to followers.
depending who they are. Matt Mullenweg does not twitter much but when he does its usually good so ill keep him. Then you have people that dont update for weeks then just put a blog post… out
I tend to track subjects in which I’m interested & then take note of who has relevant and interesting content. I’ll follow those folks.
I think many of thes social networking sites get stale fast or become spam havens.
That makes good sense…
I have some folks I no longer want to follow and now I have to figure out how to delete them…
I am still trying to figure out how to find “friends” on Twitter.
I started off on Twitter with a few people I met at PodcampToronto. I saw them Twittering with other people, I read what they were talking about so I started to follow them, which led me to others which led me to others, etc.
I’ve blown away a few people who follow me because of incessant self promoting posts or just nonsensical ramblings.
It would be interesting if you could follow people based on their interests.
I am still learning the ins and outs of the whole social networking deal, and Twitter is by far the oddest one to me.
I am still working with it, it just feels like I am spying and being spied upon. “What are you doing?” Yikes…but I guess that can be fun too
Is there a way to reply to those you are following and be followed by? I get the hang of it one of these days.
I don’t think we do the same TheJustineSane might but it certainly doesn’t hurt anything to have a nice looking mug…
I know what you mean… with facebook I am constantly spammed with aps and other invites. It just became annoying to me.
Do you actually remove people that twitter too little? I wouldn’t think that would be a problem… it’s not like there is a maximum amount of people you can follow.
What do you consider too little? Once a week?
And then to sell your account if you have good number of followers in return! lol
These are the facebook applications that need to be forwarded to 20 other people and these are just annoying!
Well, talking about twitter, i just dont decide whether to follow a particular person or not, i just follow them as i find twitter more easy way to find new things and blog posts that people share
i agree….
thats a good way to decide whom to follow.
I also does the same thing, equal sharing of comments is must, if not, remove him.
I’ve been writing some posts and commenting about twitter recently, but my take is that if people want to hear what you have to say, then they may take the opportunity to follow you if that is presented by adding links to your twitter profile with badges, etc. But you have got to have something interesting to say! no one cares that you just made toast.
Also if you write an interesting post, then yes mention it, but every post doesn’t necessarily need to be ‘tweeted’ although if you participate enough in twitter, then I think it’s okay (it just sucks to get tweets for post after post, usually they are (as mentioned above) already in your RSS reader anyways if you read their blogs).
peace
Aaron Kronis
Amen brother.
“What kind of terrorist are you?”
thats very strange – and ridiculous.
With Twitter, I’ll follow just about anyone and reciprocate the people who follow me.
Facebook, however, is much more private for me. If I don’t personally know you, there’s no chance I’ll accept your friend request.
So that means I’m both right? LOL You just started following me today…
I was initially following anyone who followed me, but I started getting spanish updates and crap like that, I’m gonna weed out some over the weekend….I can’t keep up with my friends anymore because everyone’s updates start pushing them down before I read them.
I’m not on twitter 24/7 I have a feeling my boss would have a problem with that, lol. Speaking of…
I do not take offense if someone does not follow me back. I am not choosing to follow someone so that they follow me back.
I started out doing the Co-Follow thing until after only like 5 people i realized there are ALOT that just do the ‘follow a billion people and some willl follow me back – then i can constantly talk about my product or affiliate link”.
So I stopped the co-follow right away. If someone follows me, and I look at their latest tweets and check out their ‘about’ and it;s legit and also in my smae area of interest – cool I’ll co-follow.
Primarily, I’ll probably want to keep who I am folllowing around the 50 mark as after that it will get too much. But who knows, i’ve just started (Actually thanks to Shoemoney talking it up enough to finally convince me).
Shawn http://www.twitter.com/highlyinspired
I have been on Twitter since the BlogWorld Expo in November as I found it an excellent way to find people during a conference. I also only follow those who I either know or whose information is interesting to me. .
Facebook has definitely become somewhat useless with all the stupid apps and invites.
I’ll let anyone friend me who isn’t a spammer and I follow large numbers of folks in strategic areas of interest for me.
With the ease that Twitter messages can be integrated in Facebook, there is value in “autoaccepting” anybody trying to friend you (though I agree that many of the social uses of Facebook are truly annoying). Sphere of influence isn’t much of a problem for you but other folks trying to build personal mindshare should keep this in mind.
BTW, what kind of terrorist are you? :.)
I follow people who are gonna give me good ideas, and those can come at any time. I hope that’s why people would/will follow me back, but I don’t expect reciprocal automatically, how could that possibly work for some people! Sometimes in twitbin though I turn on public comments for a good laugh and refreshing gaze over humanity
It’s funny that you even have to explain this. In a perfect world, people would get this without being told. And to call someone rude because they don’t ‘follow you back’ is an example of astounding stupidity. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with crap like that.
As for Twitter, I currently follow a grand total of thirteen people (I could probably drop a couple of them too). I follow people who I genuinely care to get that kind of info and updates from. This means I actually manage to keep up with what they’re twittering… I’ll follow more people when I find a good reason to spend the extra time. None of my offline friends are on Twitter, and so it’s really just a professional tool at this point – even though I do appreciate it being SOMEWHAT of a social thing as well.. After all, some of the people I follow are pretty cool and good to interact with on a mere personal level. I wouldn’t use it if it didn’t smell of money, though.
Sympathies on your facebook experience……ah, the price of fame! It seems like twitter is filling the void for you though. Appreciate the feedback.
I haven’t really taken a look into what twitter has to offer and have never even received a tweet from even you that I follow. I obviously do not use it correctly which reminds me, I follow you why don’t you follow me!!!
LoL
So basically Twitter is like a mass text message?
Hey man, totally agree. A ton of biz op people out there hopping on the “next best thing” trying to get little spurts of traffic/cash rather than trying to build a sustainable business. Sustainable businesses are built on relationships… not anonymity (sp?) + spamming.
Anyhow, at first in Twitter I usually followed most people back… but now, I’m getting so many blatant spammy followers (people following 1k and being followed by 2) w/ no real name or person behind the account… these people I never follow. Don’t they know they’re wasting their time?
The twitter account has to have a real person behind it, has to have at least 75% followers to following, has to have at least 20 updates, post a bio, and link to a personal websites/blog… not an affiliate landing page or biz op. That’s just me.
On twitter I only follow people that I care what they say as well. If I get tweets in my Twitter client I read all of them. If someone I follow tweets too much (@Scobelizer) then it just gets to be too much so I quit following.
Agreed. I only follow the people that can provide related content or interest to what I’m looking for or writing about. Having 10k+ followers is just to grow your Twitter power and rankings.
I follow twitters who I know about or if they’re following someone I respect/follow myself. I don’t follow everyone that follows me (not that I have too many followers). If I don’t know who they are, I’ll check their last few tweets to see if they’re interesting and/or if I recognize some of their followers, I’m in.
I’m worried that soon enough twitter will be spammer haven so I’m a bit gun shy right now about who to follow.
Alan
@alanpetersen
I don’t like it when someone on twitter just uses it to announce blog posts, I’ve unfollowed many people who just use it as another place to broadcast their work (I already subscribe via RSS, i don’t need another notification k thx).
I enjoy sugarrae and her rants though, haha and her constant fiending for caffeine
lol a lot of men follow images of attractive women. Do women do the same?
Sugarrae is so much fun to follow, her rants really are great.
I pretty much follow everyone I think has interesting insight or is intelligent. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve got inspired for a blog post, or learned something new from what I saw on Twitter.
I try my best not to follow too many people so I don’t miss too much. If twitter scrolls too fast what’s the point in following people? You won’t see what they said anyway.
Good points. I guess that provides motivation to those who want you to follow them. Put up good, interesting content, and the Shoe will follow you.
I follow someone if I recognize their name, or if their avatar is a picture of an attractive female.
I weeded out over 150 ‘friends’ on facebook and deny any request for those dumb apps facebook has. I use facebook for people who are within my imediate circle of friends etc and are interesting in seeing what I am up to.
Twitter I like to use to follow people in the industry and I only follow you if I follow your blog or have talked to you previously. It’s probably why I only have 40 followers and less in followees
I don’t follow you Shoemoney on twitter, because I’m fairly new to your blog and I haven’t had the opportunity to meet you. If I were to meet you in person and got to know one another (via conferences or whatever) then I might be inclined to follow via twitter.
I use Twitter is more a public tool and Facebook is more of a private area for friends/family and colleagues that I know well. On Facebook, I an more picky about who I friend. On Twitter I follow people who inspire me and I don’t expect to be followed back.
if I know them personally, or care to actually read what they twitt. Ofcourse, i only follow SugerRae because her rants amuse me. And I follow you to laugh at your UFC picks
The only people I add to Facebook are friends I know.
I’m more of a “friend whore” on MySpace. They have addicting application games that require high friend counts to advance.
I only follow a few people on Twitter. I don’t know how people can follow 1000’s of people. I have around 20 and its annoying.
Well let me have a stupd take on this one… for me i dont really intend to follow people much on twitter.. twiiter is basically what i use to piss off all my opponnts on a betting game in NBA.. since most of them are fulltime in twitter I used to say stuffs like “only 2 min.left!” and so on.. to sum it all i follow someone who worths it..
anyway i dont use myspace or facebook, I use multiply… and hey i am making money from it through sponsoredrevies bcoz they are accpting it..