Recently a couple of people told me they were thinking about unfollowing all of their social network friends and starting over. I’m not sure I understand the thinking behind this. Sometimes it’s done as a “grand gesture” to convey to the world that the quality of social network relationships matters more than the quantity. Sometimes it’s done to simplify one’s online life and eliminate the noise of too many followers. And sometimes it’s done merely to attract attention to one’s self, making it an ironic gesture. (”Having a lot of people follow my Twitter updates isn’t important, so I will do something that attracts a lot of attention, thereby driving more people to be interested in me, to prove that I don’t care how many people are interested in me.”)

Many Twitter users with a large number of followers (and similarly, Facebook users with a large number of friends) have either unfollowed in equally large numbers, or considered it.

One of the first people I recall doing this was Loic LeMeur, CEO of Seesmic. Jason Calacanis also did it. According to the tech news blog, they both unfollowed everyone but “kept” all their followers. I am not sure what that means, since you don’t directly choose or control who follows you. I suppose if you were really serious about recouping your privacy you could block all your unwanted followers, but that’s really inconsiderate and pointless as well.

Shockingly, I have been unfollowed and rarely do I give a rat’s ass. Loic was following me (and vice versa) when he unfollowed everyone. I don’t think I was following Jason Calacanis.

I will say there are a couple people who have unfollowed me on Twitter but have kept me as a friend on Facebook and even added me elsewhere, which is momentarily puzzling but does not affect my self worth.

Mass unfollowing as a gesture is like suicide. If you’re contemplating it just because you want to impress a bunch of people, don’t bother. No one will notice. (Even Loic and Jason had to announce to the world they were doing a mass unfollowing to insure they were noticed.)

Here’s why. Let’s say you unfollow 5000 people on Twitter. It’s not like there are 5000 people in an auditorium who came only to hear you, who are now gasping in amazement and stunned by your maneuver. That 5000 is made up of individuals, many of whom will be oblivious to the fact you unfollowed them and some of whom will be pleased. There is no 5000-person impact. CNN will not report it.

If on the other hand you feel the quality of your social network relationships has deteriorated, then maybe you do want to unfollow a bunch of people. Just keep it to yourself. Anyone who boasts they are going to ignore a bunch of people, essentially snubbing them, doesn’t have very good manners.

Tags: twitter, facebook, follow, unfollow, followers, mass

When I first joined Twitter, I could not imagine what it would be like to have 10,000 followers, or as I prefer to describe it, to have 10,000 people subscribe to my updates. (Jesus had followers. Twitter users have subscribers. It’s not the same thing.)

I got there honestly, and therefore, a lot more slowly than people who were better at amassing followers for the sake of numeric bragging rights. I never participated in any schemes to add followers, and in fact, did not participate in “Follow Friday” and came out strongly against what I saw as a pyramid scheme. When I was within a few hundred of 10,000, I offered a copy of my SocialCorp book to my 10,000th subscriber and a copy to a randomly selected person who tweeted about it, but by then I was certain to reach 10K any way. If you do the math on the cost of a couple of books, my 10,000th subscriber was really expensive.

When I signed up in June, 2007, Twitter, launched publicly in July, 2006, was less than a year old. Everyone was an early adopter. The conversations were engaging and stimulating. This has changed, and it’s partly my fault for following people whose tweets do not interest me, or in some cases, offend me.

It’s time to review my criteria for following/following back people on Twitter. Way back when (sounding like a wagon master on the Oregon Trail), I actively sought people in two distinct categories — friends and present/former colleagues, and people in allied fields, like public relations, social media, corporate communications, writing and publishing. As I spent time on Twitter, observing early adopters and the triumphs and missteps of the first businesses using Twitter as a communications tool, I became very well informed in these areas, and was often quite amused. As new users joined Twitter, many of them gravitated to me and the other one million or so people who were already there. So much of the early communications on Twitter involved discussions like “What is Twitter?” “Is it for real?” “How does a business use Twitter?” “What a waste of time!” and “What’s the etiquette here?”

Somewhere along the line, that all changed, and now about 25 percent of my new followers are multi-level marketers (MLMers), spammers, people actively trying to sell me goods and services, pornographers, and “make $3000 a minute while you sleep” hucksters. At the same time, Twitter grew from well under a million users to around 20 million today.

My original followers policy was to follow people in the categories I’ve described who interested me, people who came to my attention through an interesting article or presentation; and people I met at conferences and on panel discussions. I also looked for people who lived in my area, rural Santa Cruz County. I would follow back any new follower who appeared to be a “real” person and not a spam or porn account, or some kind of bot.

My online conversational style is to engage with anyone interesting. I don’t segregate by political affiliation, religion, profession, gender, etc. While this is an inclusive policy, it has led to too much noise in my Twitter experience. My inclusive policies regarding political discussion, for example, which once allowed me to see many sides to a political issue, have now subjected me to fringe discussions which are often hateful and offensive.

And I know I’ll get a bunch of grief for revealing this, but I don’t really care for pets. And I don’t have any. But I have early Twitter friends who have pets. (This is like saying I know people who wear shoes.) Others who have come along have observed that I have pet lovers as followers and have assumed I am one, too. But I am not. So people who sell/market to pet owners target me, and they couldn’t be further off their demographic.

I forged some great friendships during those early times, and had my brushes with celebrity, like many Twitter users have. It was great watching Comcast, Dell, Ford, and others as they joined Twitter and began to use it seriously. Recently, for example,  I noticed someone tweeting about their enthusiasm for Kentucky Fried Chicken. I replied that they should follow @kfc_colonel, the official Twitter account for KFC. @kfc_colonel replied to me “Joel, you’re the Colonel’s guy. You were there when we had more herbs & spices than we had followers. Thanks!” It’s nice to have a personal connection with a company. I’ve had the chance on Twitter to “talk” to Tony Hsieh of Zappos, MC Hammer, and Curt Smith of Tears for Fears. Alyssa Milano even sent me a direct message! (I sleep with it under my pillow.)

So Twitter is what I make of it. And it’s sort of cool to have 10,000 subscribers, but the number of followers I have is not as important as who they are and how I interact with them. And that’s up to me. Anyone who says “Twitter sucks, there are too many spammers,” or “Ashton Kutcher ruined Twitter,” can easily take back control of their Twitter existence. That’s what I’m trying to do.

I recently posted my Brief List of 53 Twitter Rules, guidelines for how I choose to use Twitter. I got a great response, and one person commented they liked Twitter “because there weren’t rules.” There are all kinds of rules, formal and informal, from a multitude of sources, that we follow every day, often without thinking about them. Some of these are legislated, and some of them simply come from community values.

Twitter, like all social networks, has a Terms of Service (TOS) that reflects the company’s intent of creating a safe environment in which people can communicate without harm to themselves or others; protections to shield the company from lawsuits and other legal liability; and the desire of the company to preserve its intellectual property and ability to make money. In addition to the TOS, there are also The Twitter Rules.

When I wrote my earlier post on this, I was clear that I was writing my rules, adding “I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to use Twitter.” My rules are based on a combination of factors, like why I am on Twitter, my personal standard of ethics, my perception of community values, and Twitter’s TOS.

Rules have numerous origins. If you believe human life is sacred, you probably agree that murder should be illegal. There are both moral and legal proscriptions against murder. Other rules are strictly legislative, like the imposition of fines for overtime parking. Most drivers would agree that parking for more than one hour in a one-hour zone is not immoral, but there are still penalties for doing so.

And finally, some rules, which we informally agree to follow, are either self-imposed or imposed by society. For example, if I told you there were rules concerning conduct during a business meeting, you might take the libertarian or anarchist view, “Hey, no one makes rules for me!” So if I suggested you shouldn’t show up for a meeting drunk and unshowered, would I be imposing arbitrary rules on you? It’s not illegal to do so. It’s not even immoral. But there are penalties.

Twitter, and every other social network, has written/legislated rules, moral/ethical rules, and some rules that are derived from community values. You don’t have to follow these rules, but if you don’t have an understanding of community values on Twitter, and the basic standards of conduct people expect, you will have a lonely existence and could find your account suspended.

Here are three of my rules, from my previous post, and an explanation of where they came from:

• Don’t tweet anything more than four times. I came up with this rule for myself before Twitter banned recurring tweets. I tweet a link to a new blog post a maximum of four times, at different times each day, over the course of three to four days, to make sure I reach the most people. As the Twitter Rules state, you are spamming “If you post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account.” This is an example of a rule that was based on community values and became a legislated rule. If you break it, you are considered a spammer and could have your account suspended, or at the very least, annoy your followers.
• Put enough info in a tweet so that it can stand on its own. No one can see your ongoing “conversation,” so a tweet that simply says “I hear ya” is of no value. This rule is suggested for those using Twitter for business or professional reasons. If you use Twitter as a kind of AIM/MySpace 2.0, and tweet with a few friends informally, who’s to say there’s anything wrong with a tweet that doesn’t stand by itself?
• Delete lame tweets. Clean up your timeline. This is an example of a rule that most people probably don’t follow. Social media purists might object to this practice. But I don’t.

For many, social networking is a leisure activity that takes place outside of school or the workplace. After a day of following someone else’s rules, it’s liberating to sign on to Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace and engage in a little free expression. But one of the things that has made social networking so popular is that it is so social, that it partially replicates the social interactions we have in the physical world, and therefore requires similar structure and self control. Or you could be a sociopath.

Tags: The Twitter Rules, Community Values, TOS, Terms of Service

I discovered last night that Twitter is not simply blocking recurring tweets as reported elsewhere, they’ve actually implemented filters that physically block recurring tweets.

I was using Tweetie, an iPhone Twitter client. I copied and pasted a previous tweet and tapped “Send.” The tweet did not appear on my timeline, so I tried it again directly from Twitter and again it didn’t show up. I guessed that Twitter was filtering tweets, so I rearranged a few words, and reposted it successfully.

In case you’re wondering why I would republish the same tweet, I generally promote new blog posts three to four times over the course of a few days, hoping to catch different people each time. There are other times when people (other than spammers) might want to publish the same tweet multiple times.

I’ve always advocated for better spam protection on Twitter, and I’m pleased that the company is doing something about it, although I have mixed feelings about filtering tweets on-the-fly.

Tags: recurring, tweets, Twitter, TOS, spam

Like everyone who has spent a fair amount of time on Twitter, I have developed a system for amassing huge numbers of followers quickly*. For the first time, I am going to disclose the details of that system. Anyone can do it.

Why build your followers list?

In my book, SocialCorp, I explain why companies need to consider social media initiatives in the context of their objectives in order to get the most out of their experience. There’s no reason individual users shouldn’t do the same thing. I am on Twitter to communicate with people with whom I share common interests, attributes or objectives. I am there to learn, to share and to help others achieve objectives similar to mine.

How to find people to add

When I joined Twitter, I had to find people worth adding. At the same time, as my followers list grew, people found me and added me. Use the Twitter “Find People” function to find people of interest. Use terms like “books,” “attorney,” “beer,” or “Republican,” single words that people use to define themselves, as search terms. You can also use Twellow, Just Tweet It, or any number of Twitter directories.

The ideal person to follow

When you find someone you think is worth adding, check for the following:

An avatar (aka thumbnail photo) of the user or representing the user. Unless you personally know the user, an account without an avatar might indicate a spammer, or someone who simply hasn’t really made a commitment to engage on Twitter.

A profile. Twitter profiles are short, but should include the person’s name (first name at least), what they do, and a link to a blog, Facebook page, FriendFeed profile, or some other secondary source of content and authentication of the user. Use MS Word to compose yours so you can keep the character count to the limit. Use words that get you found. Take advantage of every character. I threw “Zamboni driver” into my profile and I meet a lot of hockey players and fans and people who are fascinated by Zamobnis and curious about whether I know how to drive one.

Balanced follower/following ratio. Someone who follows 1997 people and is followed back by 13 is a follower collector. They are on Twitter only to amass numbers to engage in spamming users. Some even believe they can amass enough users to make their Twitter account attractive enough to sell. It’s been tried, a couple of times on eBay even.

Celebrities, on the other hand, quickly cross over and become unbalanced in the other direction. (Most celebrities are unbalanced in other ways but that is not the subject of this post.) They will be followed by tens of thousands of users and only follow a few in return. These cases can be quite extreme, with people like Ashton Kutcher being followed by over a million and only following a handful back. These people are the most offensive of all Twitter users as they take advantage of their status to amass followers but seldom offer anything of real value in return. At least spammers and schemers are open about what they want from you. Witness this self-absorbed pap (via Tweeting Too Hard) from recording artist John Mayer:  “Hey, it’s weird. Know what else is? Two homes. Millions of fans. Getting to be an artist for life. I think I’ll jump on the treadmill. :)” (Note that John has over 1 million followers and follows 45 in return.)

Who not to add

As people add you, you will be faced with decisions on who to follow back. I follow back any user who follows me with the following exceptions:

Spammers. Yes there are spammers on Twitter. Check out the person’s timeline. If the tweets are all selling something, whether it’s cell phones, arts and crafts or colon cleansers, that person is a spammer.

Racists, extremists, hatemongers. I don’t follow anyone who hates a particular religion, race, nationality, political party, etc.

MLMers and get-rich-quick con artists. I really despise multi-level marketing schemes, aka network marketing. This country is suffering its worst economic hangover in 75 years because of get-rich-quick, money-for-nothing-and-your-chicks-for-free scams. These people are a scourge on Twitter and should be reviled. Often, they can be detected easily by their user IDs and profiles.

What to tweet

One of the most overlooked areas of how to use Twitter is kontent. I sometimes use the “k” form of the word to indicate my distaste for the notion of content. Information, perspective and analysis is hard stuff to convey to people. It has depth, meaning and thought behind it. Content sounds like some kind of generic commodity you stuff a pillow with. But I digress.

Here are a few ideas on what to tweet:

Links to your blog (if you have one). Link to new blog posts to drive people to your blog and encourage discussion, which will happen both on the blog, via comments, back on Twitter, and even on FriendFeed, Digg and elsewhere. The best thing to tweet is your original content. It shows originality, creativity, awareness of the world around you. It brings real value to the Twitter community. You’ve introduced something that wasn’t there before. Post these no more than three or four times over a period of days. After that, stop promoting your latest post and write a new one.

News stories and blog posts of interest to the people who follow you. Tweet about stories that you found interesting. Provide a link and name the source. Characters are at a premium. For well known outlets, like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, WSJ and NYT are acceptable. For more obscure sources, name them in full. Don’t bother with the onerous “RT” (retweet) convention for stories from well known sources. The more people trip over themselves adding RTs to a tweet, the less useful information it contains. And statistically, there is no possible way your friend was the first person on the planet to read this morning’s Washington Post (or Huffington Post), and even if they were, it’s not such an important accomplishment that it needs recognition.

Tweets with cogent observations on the news and events of the day, humor, etc. authored by the person tweeting them. Unlike news items, these are your original thoughts. These should be reasoned, and not inflammatory. If applicable, link to the item you are commenting on. When passing on the thoughts of your friends and associates, you must provide attribution. You can use RT, or the much classier “via” with the person’s ID. Strip off the other people who RT’d to free up characters. They are unnecessary and anyone who really wants to track the progression of any tweet can do so by using Twitter search.

Trivial tweets. This is the subject of raging debate and subject greatly to personal preference. I’m not a cat person, so I find tweets about cats crawling across keyboards particularly annoying. Almost everyone needs coffee first thing in the morning. No one wants to know that you do. These observations are so common as to not be useful.

Other so-called trivial tweets have more utility. Even a mention of your current location, directly or through a service like Brightkite, is useful if you are hoping to find friends at that location. This is a way to let people know you are visiting their area, or to brag about all the exotic places you get to visit. Keep privacy in mind when you do this, though. Don’t tweet that you’re in the lobby of a competitor for example.

It is through these trivial exchanges that we come to know and trust people, but too much of it can be very annoying and grounds for unfollowing in some circles.

One word of caution. Tweets are permanent. If you tweet something you regret having tweeted, deleting it will not remove it indelibly. Unless you catch it in a few seconds, it will be picked up and cached (stored) in Twitter’s database and available on Twitter search even though the original tweet was deleted. (I once beat this game by deleting a tweet instantly after regretting it, and it did not turn up in Twitter search, but I have only performed this dangerous maneuver once.)

Direct Message do’s, don’t’s and please don’t’s (Those apostrophes look weird, don’t they? What is AP style for “do’s and don’t’s?)

Direct messaging is only enabled when two people follow each other. Most people dislike auto-DMs, messages generated automatically when a new follower is added. These can be annoying and mistargeted. I have often received auto DMs that say something like “Thanks for following me. I’ll be sure to follow you back.” This makes no sense as it is not possible to send a DM unless you are following each other. (Update: apparently, if someone follows you, you may then DM them even if you are not following them back. My mistake.) Other auto DMs say things like “Check out our system for making $5000 per minute online.” Still others try to be personable with offers like “Great to meet you. Let me know how I can help you.” I respond to these by asking that $100 be sent to my PayPal account. For these and many other reasons, don’t enable auto DMs.

On the other hand, if you get a new follower, you can make their day and foster a relationship by sending a DM that says “Thanks for following. I really enjoyed your blog post on corporate social responsibility.”

Grow!

Once you’ve figured out all of the above, you can start adding people. I recommend adding no more than 25 people a week when you are new. Be very selective. Mathematically, the first 25 people will do more to influence the quality of your experience on Twitter than the next five thousand (if you go that far.) This is because each of them will have a network of potentially interesting people that you will be automatically connected to. The followers of the people you follow will see your communications and will add you if you’re interesting. It’s geometric. A few hundred people can connect you to a million. The reason I recommend adding people slowly is to get accustomed to increasing numbers of followers and see if there is a point after which you have diminishing returns in your Twitter experience. For many people, just 10 or 25 people is perfect. It all depends on why you are there.

Twitter does put up some barriers to surpassing 2000 followers. You must be followed by 2000 before you can follow more than 2000 (basically, it’s not exactly that simple, but close enough).

Don’t participate in “Follow Friday” or other pyramid schemes designed to randomly add users. You will find yourself with thousands of followers, and no idea whatsoever why you have them. Maybe you collect thumbtacks and you have three million of them. It might be an awesome way to spend your time but in the end, what’s the point? (Give me credit. It’s not often you encounter a guy doing clean thumbtack jokes.)

Each of the topics above could be expanded into a blog post of its own. Maybe I’ll do that, but of course, before I do, I’d love to know what you think about all of this. And please don’t rip off my patented scam for adding followers. I wouldn’t want the word to get out that you can build a network by being genuine, useful, kind and knowledgeable.

My usual disclaimer applies: Serving suggestion only. My strategy for managing followers is intended to serve my objectives for using Twitter. The extent to which you follow these recommendations depends greatly on whether you agree with how I use Twitter, and whether your use is for a different purpose. My views on RTs in particular are considered heretical by many. Oh well.

Tags: add, Twitter, followers, surefire, scam, thumbtacks