My FriendFeed buddy Robert Scoble announced last night, that he was going to unfollow around 105,000 people on Twitter. He has his reasons for doing this, most of which are valid in my opinion.
Robert also publicly said (very generously) that he now realises he was wrong, when he said that I should not have reset my Twitter account way back in January. That meant a lot to me, as Robert’s one of the brightest people I know, and I value his opinions a great deal.
Robert’s decision comes after other well-known Twitter users unfollowed their followers too, including; Loic Le Meur, Jason Calacanis and Natali Del Conte. By the way, all of these people simply unfollowed their followers. I completely reset my account – zero followers / zero following – and started again from scratch.
But Jim – Everyone’ says you should blindly follow on Twitter!
I reset my Twitter account because of the time it took me to deal with all the spam and ‘noise’, that came from following everyone back, when I was the 3rd most followed person in England. Back then, almost everyone, including a man I really respect Guy Kawasaki, was telling people that the ‘right’ way to use Twitter, was to follow everyone who follows you. I disagreed with Guy and with ‘the crowd’ on this.
I believed then, as I do now, that different people should use their Twitter accounts in different ways, based on what they want to achieve. In fact, if you have the same business model as Guy, following everyone who follows you might be the right thing to do.
But here’s the challenge
It might not be the right thing for you to do: Just because ‘the crowd’ are all taking one piece of advice, does not make it automatically the best advice for you or the right thing for you to do. I am not talking about Twitter here, I’m talking about the commercial importance of having faith in your own judgement.
Never be afraid to stand out from the crowd
If you know your subject, have done your research and you truly believe that you are right, do it!
You and I have chatted a bit about this Jim. My approach is perhaps a bit different. I have one large account, 53K+ followers. It was at 56K before twitter had their recent purge of spammers. Virtually all of my tweets come from that account.
Obviously it is impossible to actually follow all 53K … there must be hundreds of updates a minute. I don’t even try. Instead, I have four other accounts, each relating to particular subject matter of interest. Those accounts are used for following only. If I spot someone or a source of interest that I’d like to follow they are added to the appropriate account.
For following In therefore just keep an eye on those accounts, which each follow an average of 215 people/sources. That makes it nice and simple to keep up to date with the people/topics of most interest.
As for the big account … I often see the odd tweet that looks of interest. After checking out the person’s other tweets, I may decide to add them to one of my follower accounts. In that way find quality I would never otherwise find from among the quantity.
Having said that, I will be drastically reducing the number I follow on my big account … I just need the time to do it and a tool that can cope with my numbers. I’ve found most of the tools fall over with large follower numbers, and just plain don’t work!
This is an interesting debate!
Robert
Hello Robert,
Thanks for the comment.
I really don’t want to turn this into another debate on what’s right or wrong on Twitter. If your 5 different Twitter accounts and various rules work for you, great.
The post is actually about trusting your own judgement – rather than following the crowd, simply because it’s easier to just ‘toe the line.’ I used Twitter as an example because it’s current (Robert’s deleting started this morning UK time) and because he referenced me when discussing his decision.
Is it actually possible to blog about twitter without people feeling like they have to justify how they use it?
No
I still don’t understand why people place so much value on Twitter followers and such. It makes absolutely no sense to me to follow bloody everybody.
I follow a) my meatspace friends, b) people whom I’m interested in and who tend to have a high signal to noise ratio, and c) bots for various services that I use (such a TwitPay).
Furthermore, if anybody wants to follow me, they’re welcome to it. I really don’t care who reads what I have to say. But I’m not actively trying to build up my numbers or anything, because that’s an idiot’s game, at best. Popularity through artificial inflation is not true popularity. It’s also entirely meaningless and egocentric.
One should use Twitter because it adds value to your life, not because you think it’s some kind of freakin’ contest. Anybody following ridiculous amounts of people like 100,000 is getting so much stuff that it’s impossible to sort through.
I’d recommend starting out with following less than 100 people, tops. Add more as needed, but only when they’re actually needed. But hey, that’s just my opinion though. Use Twitter however you want, I’ll use it in a way such that it has value to me.
Hello Otto,
Thanks for the comment. There you go – another way to use Twitter.
I recall when you did this earlier this year, Jim. I think at the time we had a “conflab” about letting it get so noisy in the first place but that was then and things change
I can see both sides of the follower argument. Personally I’m against the auto-follow tools as I find this takes away from the connection side of things (and looks like Chris Brogan has changed his policy on this, for example).
I therefore go with people that I am interested in, or who I feel could offer some great value further down the line.
But let’s look at it from a non-profit view, for example. Would it make more sense to go for as many people as possible, to try and help spread the message further? Obviously without a relationship or connection, people might be unwilling to Tweet or reTweet.
But a charity that builds 200,000 followers may have more success and awareness raised than a charity with 2,000 dedicated followers through sheer brute strength.
Or will it?
Hmm, conundrums
Hello Danny,
Thanks for the comment. Here’s what I have learnt, having spoked with people who have over 100,000 followers. Firstly, these accounts (not the celebs, just the regular people) tend to have a massively disproportionate number of ‘bots’ following them. It’s been suggested that most of the followers of those non-celebs on Twitter’s SUL (Suggested User List) are bots. Here’s Veronicas http://twitpic.com/a4k87 there are pages and pages like this.
Equally, people with big follower counts, who offer auto-follows appear on various lists; which are used by spammers to build up a ‘following.’
All in all, I think that organically growing a list of people, who you engage with, is a better strategy for a non-profit. Whilst you can get a bigger follower number by auto-following, I wonder how many are actually going to respond to anything?
That’s just my opinion Danny.
I gave up using Twitter because it just doesn’t scale.
Think about it. If you have to use apps like tweet deck, just to use a service, then the service itself is broken.
As ya know Jim you can catch me on friendfeed
Hi Jim,
I see lately so many Twitter users that have thousands of followers (and they follow them back also) but this was not the weird thing. It’s the number of their tweets: just a few dozens. How do those people interact with their followers? Where is the value on that? Do they really think that they have 20k followers and they’ll get 1k clicks on a tweet? They are in for a big surprise.
I think that lately many automated tools and lots of spammers took over Twitter. I now have a list of friends in my Seesmic Desktop: people that I really want to see what they are saying.
Thanks
Hello Toma,
You are right. There are so many tools a person can use to get 50/60k followers that these ‘follower’ numbers mean nothing now.
Thanks for the comment sir!
Here’s a splash of irony for you Jim.
I just found this post on friendfeed because robert scoble ‘liked’ it.
Im glad I caught this post Jim as this “phenomenon” seems to be gathering momentum.
I have been putting together a post based on this very subject over the weekend as well highlighting other established users who are considering the same course of action, and it includes you by the way (hope thats ok).
Have a read over it if you like and feel free to correct me or comment if you like.
http://www.justinparks.com/should-i-unfollow-everyone-on-twitter/
I agree that it is a mistake to follow those that follow you on twitter. By doing this, it weakens the power of you following someone and also makes your twitter account appear spammy.
Some great comments here – Thank you!
Thanks Jim I totally agree. I’ve asking even in twitter that what is the chance do I have to be listened by a person who is following more than a three thousand users.
Now it’s time to research to find wheres the people who have something of value to say and share, and find people who really wants to listen what I have to say.
Regards.
Jim – Social Media is changing so fast, it really has become necessary to rethink engagement on a regular basis. I remember when Robert promoted ‘turning up the noise’. I did it in one Twitter account (just to see) and also on Friendfeed. At the time, there’s no disputing he was right. With the recent wave of spam and wacky authority apps, it is once again time to realize the difference between productivity, fun … and / or … just a time suck. Good piece.
Hello Charlie,
You make an excellent point – that social media is changing at such a pace that it’s essential to review how you use it on a regular basis.
Thanks for the comment!
Excellent article. Thank you for writing it.
I’m fairly new on twitter but decided early on that I wasn’t going to follow my followers, I worked this out because 2 of my first 4 followers appeared to be spammers. Instead I have a quick look at anyone who follows me and if they are saying things that interest me I’ll follow otherwise move on.
Since then I have looked on with amazement at people who claim to be following 1,000+ others … obviously they simply aren’t reading their accounts they purport to follow.
Tonight I noticed that two people who should know twitter very well @ev (C.E.O.) & @biz (Co founder) have highly asynchronous following/follower ratios of 908/1,176,614 and 296/1,438,651 respectively.