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Keeping Twitter Alive
Posted on May 1, 2009 by heyamaretto in 4 real estate, 5 life, social media, twitterI’ve been trying to be more careful who I follow on twitter.
I dont want to be labeled a twittersnob, but I’ll tell you what. It is getting harder and harder to tell the real friends from the androids out there, and while I don’t have that much against androids, I don’t have the time to be following them around.
One example. I was recently followed by @SkyBlew.The bio claimed that they were “Preachers of Social Media, Pop Culture Junkies, E-Commerce Experts;” 200 updates, all different. However, all of these posts were from twitterfeed, and none were as a reply to anyone.
So I clicked on the link in the bio. This is the site I got:
Blew Sky
Apparently the twitter entity that I nearly followed was a non-entity, really- something “Set Up Once… [to] Make Money EVERY Day.” I just got followed by another couple today.
This honestly made me angry, and here’s it in a nutshell. I don’t make friends to have money- I make money to have fun with my friends. And most of the best friends that I have have been made online. It’s really the only way a working mother of four can socialize.
And twitter’s excellent for forming connections. It’s like a huge conversation, and it is about the farthest thing from random that you can get. The followers separate pretty quickly by common threads- not by occupation or background, but by spirit. Maybe I say this because the majority of my friends are smart, driven and funny, but I also know that I have lost some people because of both the volume and the content of my 140-character-or-less nuggets. That’s life- you have to treat all people with love, but you don’t have to tweet with them.
I know that if I broke up with my boyfriend- were I to have one- I could immediately find a half-dozen or more friends with shoulders I could cry on. When my brokerage was absorbed by another one, and that night I came home to learn that my mother had died, I shot out one sentence about it and was propped up by people all over the country. One even called me and kept me company on the phone until bedtime, and I’ll always remember him for that kindness. And this is not unusual- I observe it happening all the time.
So I guess before I follow anyone I am going to check somehow to see if they have a heartbeat, probably by messaging and expecting a response. And I also guess that I will probably lose a few live souls that are shy or haven’t figured it out yet, and that’s too bad.
But I feel like if we don’t screen like this, the medium will become a mass of autoresponders autofollowing each other, with little oases of interaction. And I love the heartbeat of twitter.
I, Robot
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I don’t auto-follow anyone. In fact, I started deleting people from my Twitter-stream whom I have no sort of interaction with (quality vs quantity ya know).
At this point, I welcome new followers by sending them an @ message. If they respond, then I follow and we become friends. Otherwise, “thanks for the follow” but that is all!
Some people try to be real sneaky and go through a series of follow then un-follow then follow again routines so that I get the email announcing a new follower. FAIL!
It just is unfortunate in that what should be a simple return of a handshake ends up being some sort of routine where you are in essence checking the extended hand for a pulse.
I have heard both sides of the follow-but for me, I try to “know” a little something about everyone I follow, and I just haven’t figured out how to interact with 900 people and actually develop a relationship. So for me, I have gone slow, and it works…a little here and a little there :)
Enjoyed your take on this……
I know that many of the people that I follow may not even be active, and I haven’t really followed up on that or snipped them out. Many people may not interact the way I do- just like in a face to face situation- and I recognize that and am cool with it. When I went to NYC, I was updating a lot, and no one was really responding.I just assumed no one was following, so I went dark- my last post was something about knowing why you don’t stand on an air vent wearing a skirt. When I checked back in, I had maybe 20 people wondering what had happened to me. So there are all different types of interaction, and I think that is difficult, because you can’t exactly see who’s “in the room” with you.
That is bizarre if you think about it: not knowing who’s in the room with you. That’s why it’s so great to follow peeps like you @HeyAmaretto who reply and engage.
For a while now I haven’t been auto-following anyone. Maybe that’s a twittersnob but I like to have some utility and value. I know I haven’t gotten the onslaught of annoying auto-responder DMs I hear folks moan about.
I’ve also learned to follow others without expecting a follow-back. Maybe if I have something interesting to say at some point, then they might choose to follow me, in any case it doesn’t really matter. I love my twitterworld and I can grow it or shrink it at any time.
The thing is, you could be fooled into thinking that it’s someone real, especially if you are new. Some follows I know are bots, like news aggregators- that’s cool, that’s what you would expect.
You really CAN’T autofollow, I think. But a cursory checking of following/follower proportion and number of tweets isn’t sufficient to weed things out. I am looking at an automatwit that has 5561 following, 5063 followers, and almost 1000 updates. Before too long, I am sure they will be tossing in the random tweet that looks like a reply.
I love my twitterworld too, and am so glad you are part of it, @kvbuckley!
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