Jul 05
Listening to TWiT by Leo Laporte last week (it was probably aired a few weeks ago, I listen every Monday on a run), I found myself agreeing with a lot Dan Shapiro was saying, I actually learned a great deal too (more about him here). Dan has an interesting blog and the most recent post had a great flow chart describing how he follows people (or not) on Twitter. Again, I found myself agreeing, apart from the number of tweets per day part, if I created one, i’d probably restrict those to < 15 tweets rather than < 3. Take a look at his post or flow chart below and let us know how you decide.
Image with permission of Dan Shapiro
I’ve almost lost all interest in Twitter ……. far too many retweets and stuff ….. there are probably less than ten people I’m actually interested in and what they are up to ……..
I still love Twitter, but follow far less than I am followed by. I make a point to respond to as many people that ‘@’ mention me as possible, but following everyone is an impractical use of my time. I tend to use Twitter as a tool to keep up with people or businesses in a low-effort way. I don’t care much for Facebook (never have) and, generally speaking, get more value out of Twitter. They’re different, sure, but the brevity of Twitter allows me to process far more information in a short burst than FB.
My personal flowchart for following would be: Read email follower notification and look at their follow:follower and do I know them > 98 percent ignore rate at that point. Most of the time, I make the decision without leaving Gmail. The 2 percent get me to their page, where I scan their tweets to decide.
Goodness, I should blog about this…
Uh oh…according to the logic flow; if Kevin adopts it; DP and I are about to be unfollowed. *gigglesnort*
The logic flow is simple and realistic, so I give the guy a 10.
JC – time to sharpen my unfollow pencil!
Jen – go on write one
@kevind: *sting* Now I’ll be all ADHD monitoring Twitter. I’ll send you my therapy bill.
I’m still new to Twitter, but I strongly disagree with the followers/following ratio. Someone could be totally awesome and have very few followers. (We all start with 0!)
When I look at an account I also check how often (if ever) they respond to someone. I want to know that if I talk to them, they’ll reply. Sometimes I’m chatty. ^_^