Every once in a while, perhaps after a Sunday night #blogchat, I’ll see what new followers might have come because of the #blogchat conversation. I may follow them back.

I was also amused by Ted Rubin’s comment on this string. Hard to remember back when he was a neophyte, 28,000 followers and multiple write-ups later!

If I keep it open all day, I’d jeopardize getting my work done. See http://joehageonline.com/2009/01/04/do-more-than-just-get-through-the-year/ to see what I mean.

Thanks for the comment!
Joe

For me, I follow everyone who follows me, unless I have a major issue with their tweets, or they are clearly spammers (@_bob_proctor and the like come to mind…)

I use tweet deck to keep closer tabs on some vs. others, and to keep people in categories to better communicate with them.

My goals are networking and marketing oriented, so the more followers the better. That said, I think I’ll go follow you now. If you choose to follow me, I’m @richhopkins.

Rich

I did not see a mass exodus when I un-followed people, but that's just my experience.

Just heard about this conversation on twitter. The whole follow-unfollow thing reminds me a little of middle school. I started my follows with a list, I think it came from Peter Shankman of Help a Reporter Out (HARO). It was his advice on thought leaders in journalism, public relations and marketing, which are the areas of focus in my work. I then added some of my biznik friends. Since then, I have had a few follows whose tweets, blogs and websites impressed me and I have actually developed friendships with a couple of them. Throw in a couple of the bizarre ones (like Trudy_Campbell), and there you have it.

I usually check the profiles of people who choose to follow me just to see if we might have ideas to share with each other. But an interesting thing: One of my “follows” bothered me a little. One of her tweets was all about how proud she was of her 8-year-old son for killing an 8-point buck at “deer camp.” Being a vegetarian and animal lover, our values really didn’t mesh. Unsurprisingly, I chose not to follow her.

Who would have thought this whole issue could be so complex?

There is a free application at http://useqwitter.com. It provides a daily notice to let you know who stopped following you.

I use it for two reasons: One, I want to know if someone I care about stops following me. (In those cases, I might ask why they left.) Two, I like to get a sense of *when* someone leaves. It may indicate that the last thing I posted was offensive in some way.

At first I found Twitter hard to use because of one-sided conversations so I began to follow the people who seem to start the conversations. I have meet some new lovely people this way.

I choose to follow people I can learn something from. I don’t mind a few “family or dinner” type tweets here and there but not all the time.

I do feel I am building relationships with some new people who know things I need to learn about. I like it when people send links to interesting blogs they have read and can suggest good book etc.

I do like the idea of community so therefore I like the fact that there is a group of people who I follow and they also follow me.

I am impressed that you could notice that someone quit following you. Without getting a notification you would have to think about looking. I am not sure I’d even remember who to look for!

This is the system I’ve adopted: when someone follows me, I’ll follow them for a short time to see if we have anything to tweet home about. (bad joke ) Then, I’ll make my decision to follow or unfollow. I find that this takes less time out of an already packed day & gives you an idea of how that person interacts with you. Different people, different dynamics.

Thank you to all for bringing your perspicacious (how do you like that word, Joe? One of my faves!) points of view forward.

Marianna Paulsons last blog post..Rejuvenation – Appreciation!

There will be reasons why I follow certain people (fellow PR/marketing types to see how they’re working and progressing within the industry and journalists to try to get to know them). On the other hand, some people might follow me because they’re interested in my topic or looking into hiring a publicist and want to know what I have to offer. If I developed a relationship with any of them or they became clients, I would then follow them if I wasn’t already.

My general rule of thumb is as follows (no pun intended!)

* If someone follows me, I will look at their profile and go back over the last 2-3 pages of Tweets. If it’s mostly self-promotion on their own blogs or website, or incredibly inane chatter, I won’t follow.

* When I’m looking for someone to follow, I’ll use the search option (when it works!) or tools like TweetThis. The main reason for this is that I want to follow people who either offer something to me personally to help me grow professionally, or that has something genuine to offer the whole “community”.

I must admit, I don’t bother putting too much emphasis onto stuff like unofficial Top 50 lists, nor even “official” ones (and I mean that with no disrespect to your position in one).

Lists on Twitter users say 1 of 2 things to me – it’s one person’s point of view as to who makes up that list, or it’s people that would probably be followed anyway.

I use Twitter to connect with people that I can learn from and connect professionally with, and who knows, maybe people will even learn something from me at times. I certainly didn’t join up to lead the race on the amount of followers I have.

It’s one of the reasons I have regular cleanouts – one of which I should go and do now.

Thanks for an interesting read and allowing me to share my view.

Danny Browns last blog post..5 Ways to Ruin a Perfectly Good Twitter Relationship