Now I just read two completely contradictory articles – by prominent tech folks who know what they are talking about - on how to “manage your friends” on Twitter.
TechCrunch (Michael Arrington) states here that “there is an unwritten Golden Mean that shows ‘more people follow you, than you follow, therefore you are interesting and I should follow you’.” So if you auto-followback and follow people in the “vague hope they will follow you” you would not look like an interesting person and interesting people won’t care about you.
Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) states here that “you need to follow everyone, because you learn from the people you follow.” So if you follow everyone all the time, you will enjoy having a huge user base of people to interact with.
(Paraphrases mine.)
I think I fall somewhere in between, when it comes to “Twitter philosophy”.
Do you have an opinion?
Obviously, following everyone is silly since there are so many spambots. Similarly, lots of people who follow me tweet only about things that don’t interest me, so I don’t follow them. On the other hand, I follow a few people (like my wife) who have zero tweets. That messes up my ratio, I’m sure, but I guess I don’t care THAT much.
I tend to look at every new follower. If it’s a spammer, I block them in the hopes that they’ll be banned.
I also follow people that I know will never follow me back (MarsPhoenix and things like that). But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the feed. And I have had entire conversations with people who don’t follow me – it is not a requirement.
I would say much of it depends on whether you are using Twitter as a business tool, or simply to interact with people.
I don’t want to know what everyone is thinking. I find that keeping my follow ratio low ensures that I don’t miss something someone I really enjoy has to say.