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”.

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 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’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..

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?

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?

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”