Following the crowd on Twitter

Since you asked, I’m going to share some of my ideas about Twitter. This is not a prescription, it is simply a recipe that works for me. If there is one thing I have learned about and life it is that the value is in the diversity of thought and spread of perspectives. There’s no particular Twitter demographic.

Let’s get started. The person with the most followers doesn’t win. It is not a race. 

twitter-horsies Following the crowd on Twitter

I wrote my first tweet in October 2006 when twttr was just kicking off. After going through the usual adoption progression (what’s this twitter thing, this is boring, oh there are people here now, addiction) I got into the groove and started following people using the common process of:

  1. Finding somebody/getting a follow email
  2. Making sure they are at least semi-relevant
  3. Hitting the Follow button

I must say this method works great, until you end up following 1,200 people. I spend a fair amount of time online but I still can’t keep tabs on 1,200 people. Sorry guys. I’m human. 

In October 2008 I was at an STUB at The Beresford Hotel where I was talking with Elias and he asked how I kept track of so many people when I realised it was time to get my twittering back under control. 

unfollowing Following the crowd on Twitter

There was only minor setback (How do you unfollow 1200 people without spending a full day clicking? Twitter Karma my friends! Irony eh?) and the experiment was underway. I had 1861 followers and my following had just gone from 1200 to 0. 

I expected a few angry tweets about it but nothing like what happened.. Let’s just clear this up quickly and let me say that Qwitter is the devil. I can understand getting email notifications when people follow you (although I have them turned off now) but why do you want to see when people unfollow you? Seriously! What I found amusing was that the majority of people who complained had never sent me an @reply before that – so the typical ‘conversation’ line didn’t work too well :) At least some people get it. 

Results of the experiment

There sure was a lot of conversation – about followers and following and reputation and what’s ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and all that. I lost about 50 followers overnight. I didn’t mind. I hope we came to an understanding that following isn’t the only way to subscribe to a person’s thoughts and that there are a lot of reasons why you may or may not follow somebody.

There were a lot of people trying to tell me how to use twitter and that I’m doing it wrong. I’ll agree with Seth here and reiterate that the internet doesn’t care about your rules.

It’s nothing personal. I don’t mind if you follow me or unfollow me or go for the halfway point and subscribe to a search stream like this – which ultimately may be much more valuable. It’s up to you.

sms230b5 Following the crowd on Twitter

There was a nice thread of conversation about getting value from twitter and the fact that you can get consulting gigs from it. At the time @jjprojects had just announced that he was going to be working with @eskimo_sparky – so the amusing thing is that the only reason I actually met those guys at STUB was because I was on a consulting gig I got through twitter :)

Some people mentioned the fact that they can’t DM me back now – that’s no big deal guys. Email me at ross@rosshill.com.au and I’ll see your message just as fast. 

Forget the masses. Some of the most interesting tweets come from people that tweet once every few days. Who to follow is personal opinion and if you think a certain 20 people are the best then you should follow them and ignore the naysayers. Ignore everybody! 

I’m following about 50 people right now and it has been fantastic. My stream is full of people I know really well and sprinkled with @replies from a bunch of really interesting people. Sometimes it gets a bit quiet and I wish there was more, but I assume people must be DOing things and it reminds me that I should be DOing the same! 

1938tweet1 Following the crowd on Twitter

Let’s get this straight. This is no rumored strategy to get more followers. Forget the leaderboard mentality and realise that me following a thousand people is simply not practical. If your goal in life is to have a huge follower count there’s no big secret – all you have to do is follow lots of people and write lots of replies.. I have no doubt I would have more followers if I followed everyone back and followed lots of random strangers (I’m currently sitting at 2,010) but that’s not my goal here. 

How do I follow people now?

After playing around with a variety of search methods to fish for thoughts on Twitter I decided to refollow some people based on Lea Woodward’s excellent lifestyle design framework. This is working out well. 

This is how I use Twitter – it might not be how you use Twitter. The End.

By Ross Hill - January 26th, 2009 at 12:12am with 2,247 views -

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  • Kelly
    This is a good post - There are no rules. There is no right or wrong way to take part in twitter. Follow twenty million (done with evil voice) or twenty...what ever works for you. I've just got to about 120 people I follow. It's been a slow build, but I genuinely feel all of them are cool, and have good things to say and point out to me interesting stuff (make me laugh, make me think or help me do my job better). Anymore and I think it would be overwhelming.

    I wish there were more posts about "no rules" / "do what you want" rather than the ranty "this is how you do it" or "top tips to get LOADS of followers".
  • Ben, Tim - I think it would be nice if when a 'protected profile' person followed you it gave you automatic access. That would make sense wouldn't it? I've got a heap of recent followers with protected profiles and I can't even see what they talk about.. How annoying! In the real world we would call it rude!
  • I would hate to see a 'fake follow' feature. What would be great is a better understanding that a follow is not black and white. Plenty of people have told me they unfollowed me because I post too much and there is nothing else on their page - that's a perfectly understandable reason but it doesn't mean they hate me all of a sudden (I hope!)

    A fake follow would cause a loss of trust in the system, which is bad. Think about Facebook and how it has an 'ignore' button. Twitter has that feature too, except it isn't in the interface - you just ignore people! It sounds harsh but the point is that you can only consume so much information and you have two choices to go about it - either you follow a small amount of people, or you follow everyone and ignore most of the updates.

    I think the reciprocal follow argument falls apart when you consider the bigger picture. Why follow anyone at all if you just want 'the river' of updates? Why not just click the 'everyone' tab and 'follow' everyone? That way you can have mutual respect with the whole twitter community instead of just your little piece. Let me know how that goes for you :)
  • I disagree with the point on protected updates. I don't need to control my followers. I control who I follow, and that limits my twitter stream. Having 500,000 followers in no way impacts on me otherwise, with the exception if possibly crowding up the @tdm911 search as there would be plenty of replies.

    I understand protecting updates from a privacy point of view and if someone wished to not be known on line then that's a good way to shield your identity, however I believe Twitter (and these communities that have been created around 2.0 technologies) are public, because without interaction from all angles they are a closed loop and therefore much less social.

    Do you think there is merit in the idea of a 'fake follow' or 'soft follow' that allows you to follow someone (so they feel part of you twitter community, so to speak) yet would not show their updates in your twitter stream?
  • I don't think anyone is expecting the 'twitter community' to revolve around them. The original idea of 'following' was that it could be unidirectional - that is what set it apart from 'friending'. One way I consider it is as if it were an IRC room but without the spammers. But that's just one possible perspective.

    I'm not sure how setting your account to protected makes it a quiet river, compared to having a small following - and having a public profile sure doesn't mean you are obligated to follow thousands of people. If I follow 50 people it is manageable, if I follow any more, then the collective crowd gets neglected. It's a scale issue. I don't scale! Remember that I have changed the default @replies so that I see everything, which probably triples the message flow.

    Where did fake personas come from? I thought they were finally dead :) You can screenscrape Rentoid all you like, but I'm not sure you will get far without member contact details..
  • Yes, indeed, maintaining a "circle of trust" around your social network is what makes it a "social network" (application), rather than a newsgroup, blog, or indexable public document.

    I *feel* (note the fact that, in this impersonal communications mode, I have to use a key-moderated word, and formatting, to express opinion) that there are responsibilities with Twitter: one cannot fire missives off, and expect the community members to revolve around you.

    This goes for all of us.

    So, one must take communication to a level of mutual respect, or opt-out of the two-way aspects of Twitter. I chose to do exactly that, by maintaining a healthy and manageable balance between followers, following, and the to-and-fro of participation.

    My account is not public, as Twitter to me is a river, where I happen to hang out in a quiet stretch, rather than go over-and-over-and-over the waterfall, trying to maintain a fake persona and keeping abreast of two-point-three kajillion updates and followers/followees.

    I thought web 2.0 was about sharing, not unfiltered "open"? The value, as you express it, is in managing social capital against a marketplace, within a context of information or value exchange. I mean, Rentoid would be suing me, if I screenscraped the listings, posted them on Craigslist, and broke the businessmodel, right?

    Hey, perhaps I have carte blanche to do so! :-)

    I've yet to perfect the signoff which expresses "THIS IS ALL JUST DISCUSSION, NOT A PERSONAL ATTACK, SO RELAX"; similarly, I did not track you, or other Rentoiders down to email a sidebar comment about me renting myself out. Why would I, should I, think that's appropriate?
  • Ben, yeah that's unfortunate. I also missed meeting someone for coffee in Brisbane because of the protected updates issue :(

    That said, there isn't much I can do about private accounts - because being public or private is YOUR choice, not mine. If you decide to have a private account then you are aware that people not following you won't see your messages, just as you know you can't send them a DM. I'm not sure why you would send a @reply in that case, instead of something like an email that you can be sure gets through.

    I can't say I really understand the motivation for protected accounts. Sure, some people have good reasons for them and are happy to put up with the consequences but for the majority why not go public? The whole web2.0 trend is about public being the default with private being the option and that is where the value comes from.

    Am I missing something here?
  • The paradox is, that if you unfollow someone, and they still follow you, you miss their @ replies.

    Even if you use search.twitter.com, or another tool.

    If they have a private account.

    So, you missed this, which I feel is an opportunity lost.

    "@rosshill @sammartino I'm already renting myself out at http://ow.ly/53T. Interested in making it a rentoid co-promotion? 4:59 PM Jan 22nd"
  • Kevin Rose wrote a solid post on how to get more followers, for those that care. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/25/kevin-rose...
  • Great post mate.

    Personally, I'm really split between whether I grow my following of people or cutting it to make it more usable. I'm leaning on the former because
    - you can't track everyone and you don't need to. Think more about it being a conversation then and there, not anything else. If you happened to miss the river of conversation, no problem - it's a river and you can't catch every current. The water will still be there though.
    - the technology will get better. Through grouping for example which is planned to be released and is already supported through various third-party apps now, I can follow people but in a more targeted way.

    I think your summize search tactic is a brilliant approach. It's certainly a good technique to keep up with this exploding new form of communication.
  • I should have also pointed out that for the ~50 people I follow I see all of their updates, not just '@replies from people you follow' which is the default. This makes it a lot noisier and means I get to see which interesting people those I follow are talking to.

    I browse with Twitter.com on the desktop and Twitterific on iPhone.

    @aqualung suggests "you don't keep up - think 'river' not 'lake' ... I treat it like a stream I fish from at times; and don't worry about fish I miss" and that's a great analogy. I used to do that and sure it can work, but right now I prefer to fish in a river where I don't have to throw any fish back because they are undersized - if that makes sense. There are a bunch of ways you can use twitter, make up your own mind!
  • Great post Ross! I agree that once you stop caring about follow counts and concentrate on following/watching interesting people and most importantly PARTICIPATING then twitter comes to life!

    @tdm911
  • I kind of agree with your method, I am just new to twitter, and have only a few followers, and following a few more. However the feed that i get tends to tend me to interesting places, and i find most of the tweets are topics i could reply to. Just for example this post.
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