Twitter

If you’re here, it’s because you clicked on the link on my Twit­ter pro­file. Wel­come! I’ve been using Twit­ter since August, 2008. It has taken me sev­eral months to work out how I use Twit­ter, and in that time I’ve acquired sig­nif­i­cantly more fol­low­ers than those I fol­low. So I decided it was time to cre­ate a pol­icy on fol­low­ing. For­tu­nately for my lazi­ness, Vicki Brown (@vlb on Twit­ter) had already pretty much writ­ten what I wanted to say, and gra­ciously gave me per­mis­sion to use major parts of her policy.

How Do I Decide If I’ll Fol­low You?

• I do not auto­mat­i­cally fol­low back just because some­one fol­lows me.
• I pre­fer to fol­low real peo­ple. It helps if you have a bio and a URL on your page.
• Before I decide to fol­low you, I will read a few pages of your tweets. If I like what I read, I’ll prob­a­bly fol­low you.

What does that mean… “If I like what I read?”

• I like read­ing about what you are doing and what you think.
• I like to fol­low peo­ple who are inter­ested in the same things I’m inter­ested in: lam­p­worked glass and other arts, cats, tech­nol­ogy, social soft­ware, books, sim­plic­ity. How­ever, I don’t limit myself to fol­low­ing peo­ple with only my inter­ests, expe­ri­ences, or background.
• I fol­low peo­ple I think I would enjoy talk­ing to in “real life”.
• I fol­low peo­ple who obvi­ously know how to write and enjoy doing it. Rea­son­able gram­mar and spelling are greatly appreciated.
• If your tweets make me smile or laugh or want to share with other peo­ple, I will most likely fol­low you.
• If you’re one of my stu­dents, I’ll prob­a­bly fol­low you unless you vio­late one of my “why won’t I fol­low you” con­di­tions. Like­wise, if you’re a friend IRL, I’ll fol­low you unless you really piss me off (and if you’re a real friend you won’t).

Why won’t I fol­low you?

• If the major­ity of your tweets are pro­mot­ing your Etsy or Art­fire or 1000 Mar­kets list­ings, I won’t fol­low you for long. I expect you to tweet when you list some­thing new — I do it also. But if that’s all you have to say, you aren’t inter­est­ing enough to me to take up my band­width. Talk some about your process, not just your product!
• I’m not inter­ested in pol­i­tics, reli­gion, or porn. I don’t really care what music you’re lis­ten­ing to. I’m not into sports. I don’t bicy­cle or run. I don’t watch tele­vi­sion. If these are your main inter­ests and you talk about them a lot, I prob­a­bly won’t fol­low you.
• I don’t care for exces­sive pro­fan­ity and I don’t fol­low peo­ple who tweet con­sis­tently in exple­tives (although I may make excep­tions if you make me laugh). I avoid fol­low­ing dis­agree­able, carp­ing, rude or gen­er­ally insult­ing peo­ple. Rule of thumb — if you’re tire­some, I won’t fol­low. Well-​done snark, on the other hand, is an art.
• With rare excep­tions, I do not fol­low non-​humans (can­di­dates, brands, causes, or com­pa­nies) or auto­mated tweets. The main excep­tions are for the tools I actu­ally use, like Ping​.fm and Twit­ter itself.
• If the major­ity of your post­ings are @ replies, where I only see one side of a con­ver­sa­tion, I prob­a­bly won’t fol­low you. Some @ replies are cer­tainly expected. If that’s all you’re doing, you’re using Twit­ter as a one-​to-​one chat pro­gram. Since I only sub­scribe to the default “@ replies to the peo­ple I’m fol­low­ing”, if you’re mostly talk­ing to peo­ple I don’t fol­low, why should I care?
• If your tweets are pri­mar­ily l33tspeak, too full of abbre­vi­a­tions, or “me too” tweets I won’t fol­low you. Tweet because you actu­ally have some­thing to say in a coher­ent fash­ion, not just to take up bandwidth.
• If you tweet so often that you monop­o­lize my incom­ing stream, espe­cially if those tweets vio­late point #1, I will prob­a­bly unfol­low you.
• If you are fol­low­ing thou­sands of peo­ple, I prob­a­bly won’t fol­low you. If you’re a real per­son doing this, and you tweet reg­u­larly about what you’re doing per­son­ally, I’ll let you fol­low me. If you’re try­ing to sell me some­thing, tweet­ing auto­mated bab­ble, or just try­ing to entice peo­ple to fol­low you back, I will block you if necessary.

If I don’t fol­low you, it just means your way of using Twit­ter doesn’t match mine. It’s not a com­men­tary on you as a per­son. To quote Buzz Bishop: “…If I think you’re valu­able, I’ll fol­low you — if you think I’m valu­able, you’ll fol­low me. The two are mutu­ally exclusive.”

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