I Need “tweedback” for http://twitter.com/PaulDJohnston

I’ve been wondering lately how my twitter stream is perceived and whether or not it is enjoyed by all and sundry who have the joy of reading it.

Twitter is where I do most of my social media interaction and as such, I’d love some feedback or “tweedback”. There isn’t a simple feedback mechanism (apart from “follow” and “unfollow”) that can easily be added into twitter and I’d like more than 140 characters of response (if the person so wishes).

So this is my tweedback blog. Any tweedback on my twitter stream, please post a comment here and I’ll get it!

Why I dislike Auto-Follow on Twitter

There are many websites that allow you to auto-follow people on Twitter.  Twitter essentially allows you to follow anybody who is using the service for free and without asking their permission.  The thing is, why should someone follow someone else?

Why Follow?

Well, for me (and this is my personal opinion) I want to know what’s going on with:

• my friends
• my colleagues/work contacts
• my industry
• my hobbies

So I will follow people who are interesting and tweet interesting things about those topics.  I will also follow people on recommendation of other people on twitter, hence why ReTweeting is a good thing and not a bad thing.

Auto-Follow systems

There are a number of websites out there that allow you to set up an automatic follow for anybody that follows you. This is fine, but my opinion of this is clear:

being followed by someone is *not* enough of an incentive to follow them back – http://twitter.com/PaulDJohnston/statuses/1240622560

Why should I follow someone, when I know the simplicity of how easy it is to follow them? It’s not a numbers game, and there isn’t any etiquette that says that I must.

I want to know that following you isn’t going to be a waste of time.  There is so much content in the world, and short content on twitter that I just don’t want to sit there sifting through the collected musings of someone who talks rubbish.

I’ll follow you if you are interesting

If you’re not interesting, I won’t follow you! Simple as.

Don’t go complaining if I don’t follow you.  I’m not in this to get the most friends.

I’m also not going to tell you what I find interesting right here. To find that out, read my twitter stream at http://twitter.com/PaulDJohnston

However, if you have a high ratio of followers to friends, then I might be very intrigued, and at that point you become interesting. So there’s a chink of light, if you are already interesting to others.

Auto @Replies

The Auto @Replies systems that email you whenever there is an @reply in a twitter with your username are far more useful for me. That’s how it should work. There is no expectation that you have to follow anyone then. The contact can still be made. That’s far more useful than auto-follow.

Serendipity

The idea that we can find people through chance is accomplished through the Twitter search function and the ReTweet function that has grown up. Hashtags allow you to find people related to a specific subject as well, so there’s self-organising things around Twitter that allow this to happen.

I am making a stand. I will not follow someone just because they have followed me.  I tried it for a while and it was rubbish. It does not add value and it will not make sense longer term.

I will follow whomsoever I choose

Of course, you can follow me anytime you like! I am @PaulDJohnston on Twitter!

For more people to follow, see my #followfriday search stream!