I generally try to follow anyone who follows me, and I’m consistently looking for interesting people to follow, but I do have a few rules which I tend to use when deciding who to follow.
- If you are following twice as many people as are following you, I will not follow you. I am guessing you are just trying to get new followers by following random people. The exception to this rule is if you are new and have only a few followers.
- I won’t follow you if your time line consists of only links. I love the content I find through Twitter, but the real conversations that occur are worth much more.
- If you are local, and you don’t completely violate my other rules I will always follow back. I have found out more interesting things about the Twin Cities in the six months I’ve been on Twitter, than I did in the year and a half before.
- If you do not have a bio, a link, or your real name in your profile, why are you here? You do not need to do all three, but you should at least go for two out of the three.
- If you follow more than 1000 people, I will assume you don’t care what I say and will do the same. The exception is if you are truly famous and have close to a 1:1 follower to follow ratio.
- If you do have a link in your profile and it goes to a page that is 80% ads. Well you do the math.
- If you tweet in all caps more than once a decade, you can guarantee I will not follow you.
- Swearing, though funny occasionally, is no substitute for actual content and humor. If you swear because it’s easy I will not follow you.
- If your tweets consistently cross the 140-character line into a new tweet, I will find you annoying and I will not follow you.
- Do you constantly pick fights on Twitter? I left trolls behind with vBulletin. Healthy debate is acceptable and encouraged though.
Well after writing down these rules, I realize I need to quit following myself. Does Twitter allow me to do that?
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LOL! I was afraid I was violating some of them! But I’m a keeper, since I’m local to you. ;)
Pam
I just became consciously aware, after reading this, that I follow people with @freshmn more to find good blogging material than to get followers. I can still read all that even if people don’t follow back. Though I know it looks bad if they don’t follow back and my ratio’s all askew.
Of course all rules are made to be broken.
Swearing, though funny occasionally, is no substitute for actual content and humor. If you swear because it’s easy I will not follow you.
While I’m not quite sure what that means I at least know why you don’t follow me ;-)
I didn’t realize I wasn’t following you Bill, that has been remedied.
I don’t know how to explain the swearing, it depends on the person really. Some swear and it seems natural, other swear and it seems extremely juvenile. Your definitely a member of the natural group.
I guess I really never thought of it one way or the other. It was just something I grew up with and it’s something I don’t really think is a big deal. I realize it’s an issue for some but in my family the f-word (I will save you from having to see it here since this is your blog) was used as punctuation.
Glad to see that the South Metro twits (heh) are growing in number. When I looked through the burbs’ users I was shocked at how few of us there are. I guess most people just probably don’t put their city in their profile. To each their own there I guess.
As far as not realizing you weren’t following me, no worries. It’s not like I routinely broadcast my twitter usage on my site with a feed. I have entirely too much crap over on the right sidebar as it is and I didn’t want to add yet another thing :)
BTW, still loving the new and frequent content.