Ever read something that you can't quit thinking about, writing as it were your own thoughts on the subject in your head? Well, this happened for me yesterday when one of my Twitter friends forwarded a link and in particular, pointed out the fascinating conversation going on in the comments. I was drawn in; I couldn't stop reading the really voluminous comments, and then I couldn't stop thinking about it . . So . . here are my thoughts on the subject.
The original springboard for this controversy was Mitch Joel's 10/24 blog post which he entitled, Being a Twitter Snob is a Good Thing. I read this post last week and honestly didn't think a lot about it except to perhaps feel affirmed in my decision not to automatically follow everyone following me on Twitter. (I read the post in my RSS feed, and thus didn't read the comments until today, but they are interesting as well.) However, the post my friend tweeted was Mark Schaefer's Bringing down the Twitter snobs, in which he took issue with Mitch's analysis. A passionate discussion ensued in the comments! Check it out!
Mitch Joel advocated limiting the number of people he follows on Twitter and not automatically following back everyone who follows him, acknowledging the possible hypocrisy (he doesn't use this word in his post) of appearing to be generous by following everyone when in reality you're filtering people out.
I don't agree with all of Mitch's reasons for limiting follows - I rarely use who someone follows as a criterion for following them myself, and I'm not interested in gaining credibility as a result of whom I choose to follow (be careful not to misunderstand Mitch here; I believe he's talking about being helpful to potential followers, not about judging followees). However, he says that being selective in following actually indicates an interest in true connection; it's a much better signal than following more people than you could ever hope to connect with, and I agree with this wholeheartedly.
Mark Schaefer seems to be advocating following back everyone (barring obvious spammers and porn sites) who follows him. Everyone is amazing, and everyone is worth a follow. He also seems to misinterpret (in my view) Mitch's rationale for not following. He selected a person whom he assumed Mitch would never follow because this person wouldn't be deemed an "A-Lister" - note that Mitch never used this term; Mark interjected this term on his own - and then proceeded to build a hypothetical argument for why Mitch would be wrong not to follow such a fine man, and is in fact missing the point of social media by not following everyone.
(Note: I don't know who it was that coined the term "A-Listers" in connection with Important Bloggers or Important Tweeters or whatever, whom one assumes are better than the rest of us, but I would like to punch that person in the nose!)
So what is my view?
One of the early social media concepts I learned from Mitch Joel (Six Pixels of Separation, pp. 50-51) is to think about why I'm on Twitter at all. Strategy must dictate tactics. My first goal on Twitter is to learn from others, to educate myself. My second goal is to build relationships with people in my network. My third goal is to establish credibility in my field. So it seems obvious to me that these strategies should dictate who I follow on Twitter, which is why I find myself for the most part in Mitch's camp rather than Mark's. There is a limit to how many people I can learn from or build relationships with on line - not because there are a limited number of interesting people out there - far from it - but because there are limits to my available time and attention span.So for what it's worth, this is what I do on Twitter.
When I first started, I searched for people to follow, people in the legal industry, people in marketing whose expertise seemed relevant for my small business situation, other bloggers. And I started following them. I don't actively search any more; I follow a few more people each week, but I generally find them through the re-tweets or #FollowFriday recommendations of people already in my Twitter stream.
And I really don't care that much how many followers I have - I suppose my feelings would be hurt if I only had 2 (I have more), but it isn't a goal of mine to reach the 16,700 or the 21,800 followers (at this writing) that Mark and Mitch have, respectively. I do gain followers every week, and I'm pleased about that, but I don't try to strategize about how to gain more.
As for following, I follow somewhere around 350 people now I think. And already I can't possibly read or process more than a small sampling of tweets from all of those people - god help me if I followed 14,600 as Mark does!
I have lists - mine are public rather than the private lists discussed in the comments to Mitch's post - I don't have anything against private lists, but I don't have any. (People follow several of my lists, too. And I'm on several lists made by others.) My lists enable me (in my beloved TweetDeck) to focus on particular topics, depending on what I'm doing or am interested in at a given moment. Some of my lists relate to my legal work. Others relate to marketing and business. Still others relate to wine, or are location-based. It is sometimes fun to look at my entire Twitter stream as it flows by, but for the most part, if I follow you but you're not in one of my lists, chances are small that I'll see your Tweets.
In light of the difficulty I have paying attention to only 350 people, I can't possibly get my undies in a bunch if I follow you and you don't follow back! (Some of the commenters to both blog posts seemed genuinely insulted about this!) There's only so much information a person can absorb, and we each have to determine what our priorities are, and if I'm not your priority, that is A-OK with me. In fact, I may not even know whether you're following me back or not. I do not check. If I get a notification that you've followed me and I see I'm following you too, I think "Oh that's nice!" but beyond that I don't give it a lot of thought.
And I don't automatically follow back everyone who follows me. How do I decide? It's admittedly a very quick, very subjective snap decision. When I get notice someone is following me, I glance at any followees-followers we might have in common, mainly for clues about how she found me. I'll look at her profile, see what she does, read a sampling of tweets. If she's a legal professional of some kind, I'll probably follow. If she's not, but there's a variety of stuff in her tweets (RTs, links, @replies), I'll probably follow. If all I see are what appear to be sales tweets, I probably won't. If there is no bio, or there are no tweets, I probably won't. If all the tweets are in - say - Portuguese, I probably won't follow either . . . I'm sure she's interesting, but if I can't read it, I don't see the point.
At this point I follow people in a variety of professions and locations. Of course I follow a lot of legal professionals, but also people who specialize in marketing, sales, business, copywriting, web design; it's an increasingly eclectic list. If we've interacted in a chat arising from a webinar or some other common interest, I'll definitely follow. If when I look at a profile and a sample of tweets, I have an "I like this person!" reaction, I'll definitely follow. Maybe I wouldn't even make the same decision on two different days - as I said, it's pretty subjective.
However, I definitely don't feel an obligation to follow everyone back. I think that's a numbers game, and I don't take it that personally, and if you do - well, my apologies.
Periodically, I'll go through my followers and look once again at who's following me that I'm not following, and reevaluate it. I'll also periodically cull down who I follow a bit.
My final observation: I really enjoy Twitter! I try to be helpful and friendly and pass along things that interest me, and I do experience a gratifying connection with many of the folks in my network. All of which reveals how very far I've come since I wrote my Confessions of a Lurker post!
So there you have it. Follow me on Twitter if you like! :P And tell me what you think in the comments!
