For the record, I dislike writing about Twitter because no one cares what I think about Twitter. I’m not a mover and shaker; a social media expert; a business; a SEO, CEO, CFO, alphabet soup; or an adult film artist. I’m regular folk but (and you knew THAT was coming) I am invested there and even if I gave up Twitter, I don’t see myself giving up ALL the relationships I’ve found through there. It is a community I have opinions about and since this is my corner of the internet, I’m going to blow some steam.
Several weeks ago someone I know joined Twitter and asked me about another person on Twitter. I responded to her that I could not vouch for that person and advised her to approach with caution. She then told me the reason she asked is because I was following them. Yikes! Well, truth be told, I followed back that person and when I reconstructed events, I remembered why I did but upon a second look, I unfollowed. Then about ten days ago another person I mutually follow asked me about some of the people I follow, I gave her my opinions and recommended a few others. She admitted to me she already followed others from my list because she trusts my judgment. Whoa. One false move and my integrity might be blown to bits. That really got me thinking even deeper about what the people I follow say about who I am.
Immediately after this event all hell broke loose (one would think) because @sethsimonds unfollowed EVERYONE. I woke up Monday morning, checked in before work, saw this, read his post and said to myself, “Good for him!” I had already tweeted to my stream that changes were afoot and people should tweet me if they saw anything that gave them concern. After work, I checked my stream and saw a lot of bile. I read several posts (including comments) accusing Mr. Simonds of being a spammer. I shook my head. There were angry retorts to him in my stream to which I pointed out, “He unfollowed EVERYONE.” The reaction was a morass of stupidity.
I don’t know Mr. Simonds. He wouldn’t know me if he ran over me. But I think I “get” why he did what he did. If I disappeared from Twitter tomorrow it would be of no consequence because I am not here to market, build a brand, promote my writing or anything but my own indulgences (which are a great deal of curiosity and my zest to learn.) Mr. Simonds is a writer vested in new media so he did the most egalitarian thing he could do when faced with the same dilemma I had. That was to unfollow everyone and start from scratch. You don’t like it, don’t follow. He said as much in his explanatory post (only in nicer terms).
Even though I am lesser known in social media, I do not have the chutzpah Mr. Simonds has and did not feel comfortable performing a mass deletion of my follow list. I have some emotional connections with the people in my stream. Some have been referred to me during bad times in order to ask questions and garner encouragement because I have been homeless and got through it on my own. Some have a mutual interest in finding a cure for cancer and supporting survivors because they are survivors or, like me, have lost loved ones due to the disease. Some have been told I am amusing and don’t have enough amusement in their lives. And some want to sell me something, want me to retweet their inanities, want me to follow back so they can increase their numbers, or want me to join their “pawparty” but that last group aren’t the ones I worried over when considering what to do about my follow list. The one thing they do have in common is they found me. Except for the rare occasion where I have been given an introduction to someone, I don’t follow anyone, even when I really, really want to.* My character on Twitter is unusual and purposely so in order to screen my vocational activities from my social media activities. My content is equally unusual and not to everyone’s taste but it is who I am. I don’t initiate follows because I don’t want to foist myself upon the potentially unwilling who might feel obligated to follow me back out of courtesy. With this in mind, if I had adopted Mr. Simonds model, I would be staring at a blank tweetstream. At the most, I would be speaking with the four people who read my blog. (*Note: this post was written when I had only a personal Twitter page and before I launched this blog. I do now initiate follows from @MsDevlin.)
What I finally did was, start eliminating people who do nothing but marketing. I did not have many of them to begin with because I don’t follow back anyone who is obviously using Twitter as nothing but a marketing platform but there are confidence tricksters who reel people in only to later do nothing but sell, Sell, SELL! Next I unfollowed people I did not recognize because they never speak with me or anyone I follow. This much more difficult because some were new and didn’t really have a chance to get to know me or maybe they aren’t on Twitter that much (and I don’t blame them because it is a time suck) or maybe they enjoy watching the tweets go by, catching links and other informative and entertaining bits, but not really joining the conversation. I know I deleted folks I would have enjoyed but now might never know and this saddens me but I had to reduce the noise so I can hear people again.
I lost a lot of followers last week. So be it. Anyone who has been paying attention could have seen this coming for weeks as I’ve tweeted for people to introduce themselves and let me get to know them. If they haven’t been paying attention the only reason I can assume they are following me is to boost their own numbers. I’m not done yet. I am giving myself until June 8th, 2009 to have my follow list refined. Going forward, I am only going to follow people I would recommend to others. There may be different reasons why I would recommend them and like me, not everyone will be to everyone else's taste. Some might be amusing. Some might provide links to interesting news or applications. Some might be activists for things I believe in. Some might be good writers. Some people might simply be warm hearted, friendly souls who make me feel good just for knowing they are in the same world I am. It will be up to you to decide whether they have something to offer you. Or you could simply stop taking advice from an ordinary person who spends too much time dwelling on her integrity.
good for you my friend..i am only here for a few minutes before i go back to bed...
ReplyDeleteI must say it is a very good piece. I agree with it. A good thing about twitter is we can follow whoever we want to. Twitter is different things to different peoples.
ReplyDeleteOne of the main reasons I shut down my old twitter account was, I was not happy with alot of the ones I was following. there got to a point that there was more not nice peoples in my timeline than there was good ones.
So I shut it down and started a new one. I still want the numbers but I will be more carefull of who I add.
Keep up the good writing. lol PS this is R_W_H from twitter.
Interesting that you should write about this now because I've begun doing a bit of housekeeping myself. For me, it has been an emotionally freeing process which I will continue on an ongoing basis.
ReplyDeleteGreat piece.
@cwrite101
I used to feel obligated to add anyone who added me. As a result, I ended up with a bunch of "coaches", self-proclaimed social media experts, SEO folks (whatever that is), and other garbage. It got overwhelming to where I couldn't stand Twitter any more, and hence left for several months.
ReplyDeleteUpon my return I began doing regular trims of my follow list using Twitter Karma, and found myself not feeling so obligated to add everyone who followed me. I also dumped all the coaches, and anyone else who seemed to add me with the only reason in mind being to pad their own numbers. Suddenly, Twitter wasn't so bad again.
Lately I've been trimming it down even more, and now have a pretty "clean" stream of only those folks I am truly interested in following. I do not add many, but those I do add are usually ordinary folks who are like me. I add some new followers, but only those whose content is to my liking. I will unfollow later if I find myself skipping over most of their tweets due to lack of interest.
And don't feel obligated to follow all of my accounts, either! The gracies_mom was set up when I was on my "sabbatical" and wanted to keep up with a few favorites. I just use it now to "get away", or when I want to post something strictly personal or of local interest only. The pig accounts are mostly for fun. That's what Twitter is to me-fun, leisure-no business. I get enough of that at work. :)
Nice post! :) What I really dislike is when some people try to tell others how to use twitter. Telling others about the "Rules" of twitter-don't to this or that. The beauty of Twitter is that you can use Twitter as you please. You can use it for business, social networking or just for fun. It's up to the individual. I don't follow everyone back right away, that's because you get some people that follow you for 2 hours, you don't follow back, they unfollow you, which is fine, their choice. And it my choice to follow who I please. When I follow someone, it's because I want to learn, engage and like what they tweet. And if I don't get a follow back, I won't unfollow. I only unfollow someone if I just don't have anything in common with or don't engage at all. It happens, nothing personal. I try to read updates, answer @replies and engage, when you do that, it takes up a lot of your time. And before I follow back, I do read the bios, updates and websites, which, also, takes up alot of your time. Bottomline, twitter is a social network tool, which means you can use it how you please and there should be no hard feelings. Peace!
ReplyDeleteI find all of this to be perfectly reasonable, and in reality I don't think it's too far different from most "social tweeters". That is, the normal population of twitter that is here for what I consider all the right reasons, and none of the annoying idiotic reasons.
ReplyDeleteI keep an eye on my tweeple pretty closely and hand weed people about once per month.
I do this by going to my following page. If you go to your following page, you will notice that page one is all of the most recent followers. The last page of course should list the people you've been following the longest.
I consider anyone on page one untouchable unless by some chance they really blow it posting stuff that is just begging me to unfollow them, and that's not common.
When I get to about page 4 or so, that's when I'm getting to people who have been there for several months.
I feel by this time I "know" how the person conducts themselves on twitter and I can make a good judgment then.
My normal criteria for deleting someone is as follows...
1. Spammer? Well, normally they won't make it past the first page if they're a spammer, but if they somehow do... GONE.
2. Annoying? Linker. Quoter. Obnoxious use of hashtags. Conceited in an unflattering way. Any of these are reasons for me to delete someone from my stream.
3. Never posts? Like ever? With a few exceptions if someone seems to have abandoned twitter I delete them. The exceptions of course vary in reason, but that gets to my next point.
4. Insect politics. Not THIS one, the next, next one. #5.
5. It's my collection of users to follow. I can choose who I follow and who I don't. I follow several people who do not follow me back because for whatever reason I admire them. Maybe I like their attitude, maybe it's a cute chick that just strikes my fancy for some reason, or maybe they're just someone who really cracks me up.
Ultimately though, I wish more tweeters were genuine people, and less were just losers trying to find a system to exploit. But that's just humanity in general, huh?
Anyway, nice post. Sorry I got long winded in the comments.
Good on ya, Pecan :)
ReplyDeleteI'm one of those who decided I'd start by being irritating. Not auto-following people. I look at their recent posts, and if they have nothing to say that I'd ever be interested in, out they go. If I see 40 posts in a row in my stream that are ridiculous, I'm ruthless with my unfollow button. I'm sorry if it ticks people off, but...I don't have time for that. I don't get offended if they unfollow me (well if my best friend did, I might!) but otherwise---tough cookies. I have a world to get out there and save. No time for being nice to spammers, manic depressives, and people who swear too much. :)
Oooh I think I just ranted. I might need a nap.
Very well said. Like you, I am here strictly to satisfy my own insignificant needs and to do a little socializing. I sometimes talk a lot, and sometimes I just watch, but I too try to weed out those that use this medium for strictly business purposes...not that there is anything wrong with that...lol.
ReplyDelete...even though I had to look up egalitarian...lol
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mr. Hill. I thought about you the entire time I was writing that post. The timing of your account deletion could not have corresponded with my actions any closer. I’ve met so many wonderful people, like you, on Twitter but then some jerk pops up and ruins it. I’m hoping I am better at screening them out in the future. I wish YOU luck with that also.
ReplyDeleteIf someone other than an offline/online friend follows me on Twitter, I visit their page. If they have tweets that A. are not comprised solely of ads and B. are written in a language I can read at least some of the time, I'll probably follow them back.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, the people whom I wasn't previously acquainted with ran across my tweets because they are interested in a topic I posted about. So normally, THEIR tweets contain at least some comments related to topics we have a mutual interest in. Win/win. :)
I could not agree with you more! Is there a quick way to purge the follower list?
ReplyDeleteWell, I do like Twitter, as it has helped me spread the word about our little Renaissance Faire in Norton, and now I have a lot of followers.
ReplyDeleteI do like it that I can plug it, but I try not to do that too much!
If you would like more information about the Festival, please do let me know.
Wow. I had no idea Twitter was so involved. I'm learning a lot from you. :)
ReplyDeletePS: How did we end up following each other? I think I came into this world about the time you were going through this.
Thank you for visiting, destinationlife!
ReplyDeleteTwitter does indeed get involved. I've been there over a year and an half and have seen much of its evolution. It's a microcosm of every thing else you see in life with egos and jealousies but also friendships and kindness. Real life friendships can develop out of it and I've met people from all across the country. Once you get used to the ins and outs Twitter has much to offer.
I think you told me you found me through a coaching class. Must be or it wouldn't stick out in my mind. I'd love to hear more about that!