The Politics & Practice of “Following” on Twitter

I’m almost embarrassed to write yet another post about Twitter.  Sigh.  I mean, seriously.  It’s clearly documented all over the Twitterverse that I worship Twitter.  If it was possible to take Twitter, squeeze it and love it so, wrap it up in a terrycloth blanket, put a diamond collar on it, make it wear a pink fedora with a feather in the brim, and tote it all over town in my classic throwback Marc Jacobs bag, well, we all know I would do exactly that.  So, err, there’s no real need in re-traversing old ground here.  Right?  Ahem.  Is this thing on?

There are countless, brilliant informational treatises out there about Twitter – doing Twitter up right for your personal brand, Twittering for business, increasing your blogosphere love via Twitter, maximizing Twitter for marketing and PR, and seemingly, everything else in between.  And I mean, everything.  Including the kitchen sink.  At this point, the wonder of Twitter is indisputable – for those of us that actually get Twitter – and it has become invaluable, irreplaceable, and carries with it an energy and influence unlike any application we web denizens have encountered in the internets of yore.

Since that’s all so well-explained by the Twitterati, then what else is there to discuss regarding Twitter?

How about the issue of diplomacy and courtesy?

Yes, diplomacy and courtesy.  Of course, those concepts are ever-present when considering the content you push out through any online publishing platform, whether it be microblogging, on a traditional blog, via consuming and commenting, on forums, or whatever means you use to broadcast your vox pop to the Great Web Beyond.

But that’s not quite the scope of this post.  Nope, not this time.  I actually wanna get a little more touchy-feely than the words “diplomacy and courtesy” convey.  Right now, I’m actually interested in discussing “follower etiquette” on Twitter.  Or, rather, “follower psychology,” perhaps.  A discourse aptly spurred – but not entirely fueled – by the recent propagation of Qwitter, a voluntary sign-up service that so kindly alerts you as to when current followers become former followers by “qwitting” you.  Luckily, I am enough of a sadist to jump into bed with an entity providing such a grim notification.  Because, well, I care.  Hey, that’s my excuse, and I’m stickin’ to it, yo.

More than mere “follower etiquette” or “follower psychology,” however, I reckon I’ll just attempt to channel Bjork and take a stab at understanding human behavior.  In the Twitter context, I mean.  I want to discuss the reasons why we do and don’t follow a fellow Twitterer.

Reexamining the strategy behind who I follow on Twitter was an idea posited to me while I, appropriately, was lamenting losing a follower after the heads up from Qwitter:

A follower of mine – ironically one that I had not yet followed – reacted:

Touche, my friend.

For once, I didn’t have an immediate response to that.  I developed a few in my head, but none of them seemed right in 140 characters or less.  So, I did the unthinkable – I said nothing.  I stewed and I stewed, but the pot never boiled over.  Not surprisingly, a few days later, I received the infamous Qwitter notification, alerting me that jameskirk was no longer following me.  He asked me a direct question, and I failed to engage.  I don’t fault him for that.

I can’t say there’s a set rhyme or reason behind whom I follow or choose not to follow on Twitter.  I don’t follow everyone, and I don’t expect everyone to follow me.  That much I understand and that much is clear.  But it’s hard to explain the exact science behind who I do and don’t follow.  Because, actually, it is quite the opposite of “an exact science.”

I suppose it’s easier to define whom I do follow as opposed to whom I do not.  As expected, I follow all people that I know “in real life.”  I follow people and organizations in Houston, the city in which I live and work.  I follow prominent and emerging voices in social media, the field in which I dabble professionally and find fascinating personally.  I follow some twittering attorneys – those that understand the medium and use it more similarly to the way I do, that is.  I follow witty randoms, because they add a sense of humor to my Twitterstream.  That list isn’t exhaustive, by any means, but it does seem to characterize the majority of those that I follow on Twitter.  There’s no scheme or method behind that whatsoever.  It’s more discombobulated than it looks.  Call it haphazard; I simply call it a mirror of the way the world works.

Who don’t I follow?  Well, I don’t follow bots or anyone that’s blatantly trying to sell me anything.  I don’t follow people that haven’t updated once, unless I already know who they are personally (and I continue to follow them in the hopes that they will tweet!).  I don’t follow people where it isn’t clear to me what they’re trying to convey – but that doesn’t mean I never will (case in point: I recently began following a long-time follower because, well, he won me over, and because I paid attention to him, even though I wasn’t actively following him).  You know that adage, “It’s easier to hire from within”?  When I’m looking for additional people to follow, my list of followers is the first location I consult.  I can’t follow everyone, because then I’d end up following no one – the sheer volume would overwhelm me, and my Twitterfeed would become unruly to the point of being painful to read.  But I can listen to anyone – following or not.

Frankly, it takes a lot for me to stop following someone altogether.  Either my follower unilaterally severed the following relationship, or the follower has repeatedly offended, bothered, or insulted me.  Or perhaps the person hasn’t tweeted anything for months and months.  Honestly, it takes a lot for me to click that “Remove” button.  I use it sparingly, and I don’t take unfollowing very lightly.

That’s the way I do it.  I fully comprehend that everyone’s self-regulations on Twitter differ.  And perhaps that’s one of the most difficult things about “playing” in this “game” of Twitter – the ground rules vary on each and every playing field.  Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of followers, and you see the dilemma.

But my expectations of fair play govern my Twitter field.  So, when people never follow me that know me, or when people “quit” me that know me, I’m often left scratching my head as to why.  Accepted Twitter etiquette paints crazy the Twitterer that actually asks, “Why aren’t you following me?” or “Why aren’t you following me any more?”  Thus, it’s not quite proper to confront the matter in most circumstances.

Qwitter could be argued as one of the worst things to happen to Twitter, and one of the best things for inquiring, obsessive minds since Twitter Search.  I mean, knowing that someone isn’t following you any longer isn’t new.  You were always able to determine when someone wasn’t following you by the fact that you’d be unable to direct message them, when before, you had that capability.  Sometimes, they’re random spammers or entities, and the loss isn’t a big one.  But what happens when they’re people? People that you know “in real life”?  What if these people that know you “in real life” stop following you, or never followed you in the first place?  What would make them choose to take (or fail to take) such actions?  Qwitter permits you to elevate your level of knowledge by discovering the exact tweet that made the former follower pull the plug, giving many a creative mind avenue upon avenue to traverse in search of reasons.

The truth of the matter is, these actions (or inactions) make a Twitter user like me second guess myself.  I want to ask, “Am I annoying to you?”  Yeah, sure, I tweet a lot.  Maybe, some would argue, too much.  But I have stuff to say!  I really do!  And isn’t that why you began following me in the first place?  Sure, I’m also a marketer.  I work for Schipul; web marketing is what we do.  But I’m a marketer second; I’m a human being first.  And that’s how I approach my tweets – flesh ‘n blood first, everything else second.  Did I fail to convey that to you, dear ex-follower?

You may be someone that follows everyone that follows them.  You may have a 20:1 ratio of followers to following.  But for those of us that treat Twitter as a personal playing field rather than a professional one, we care about the content we’re putting out, and the feedback you’re giving to us.  And there are millions – probably more like bazillions – of questions that swirl through the heads of those you unfollow or never follow at all.  “Am I not good enough?”  “Don’t I add value to your community?” “Don’t you want to hear what I have to say?”  “Do you only want me to hear what you have to say?”  “Aren’t you interested in getting to know me?”  “Am I boring?”

I suppose the beauty of social media is that sometimes, just like any break-up, you never get answers to any of those questions.  Your only recourse is to accept it and move on.  And find the next set of big brown eyes under which you will swoon.

Proverbially speaking, of course.  Next!

P.S. – Check out this incredibly healthy, incredibly empowering, incredibly balanced post on Twitter following and unfollowing, too.