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Changing It Up on Twitter & FriendFeed

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'Simple Deal' by Yan =] As the new year starts, I am increasingly thinking of changing my follow habits that I have maintained since I first logged in on Twitter and FriendFeed. 

Mutual Respect

My attitude was, mutual respect. You follow me, I follow you. I can learn from everyone. I still think it’s a good attitude to have, and I wish it was the right one. But increasingly, especially on Twitter, I don’t think it is. 

I’m going to rant a bit here, just warning you.

For months, I have been using FriendFeed and Twitter actively. At the beginning, I followed anyone who looked interesting and didn’t care about who followed me back. I maintained what I thought of as a fairly altruistic policy toward both services, just concerning myself with finding great people.

More recently, my active search for new great people has begun to taper. First, I found tools for both services that figure out who my ‘mutual followers’ are.. and I have to admit, they have shaken my original innocence.. people who I thought I had connected with weren’t following me. I was disheartened. 

I briefly thought of whining.. but that doesn’t feel right to me. It’s very difficult for me to impose myself on other people. That’s why I can’t effectively use services like Digg and Mixx.

Anyway, I maintained my mutual follow policy. On FriendFeed, I just try to keep myself ignorant of any gaming that happens. I follow those who follow me, and I hope they respect that. Twitter, though, is a different story. With the rise of tools like Twitterless and SocialToo, I can see exactly how much ‘gaming’ is going on.

Gaming

And Twitter gaming is seriously on the rise.

I could (and perhaps will) write a whole different post on how people are gaming Twitter.  But the behavior that is really irritating me recently are these folks that follow a lot of Twitterers and then, 10 minutes to two days later, un-follow all of them in the hopes that a certain percentage follow them back.

Why do they do this?  Because Twitter now has a follow ratio that prevents people from following X number more than they have followers.  It seems fairly arbitrary and people now see it as a challenge to defeat.

It irritates me no end. I’ve taken to blocking the people who exhibit this behavior with me. For example, recently one dude (TheBobBlog on Twitter) had the balls to follow me, send a robot DM when I followed him back, ignore a separate DM that I sent him asking about tumbling his photos, and then un-following me the next day!  BLOCKED.

Ultimately, I don’t want to be reactionary with a new follow/discovery policy going forward.  That’s why I have taken a step back and started thinking about what I really want to do going forward.. and help me in more ways than just addressing the gaming going on.

Two Paths

The way I see it, there are two ways I could go. I can go all-inclusive: Open the floodgates and follow thousands of people on both services a la Robert Scoble and just filter out the stuff I find interesting on the back-end; Or I can go exclusive: Start hand-picking those people I find interesting, go in-depth with them and re-grow my social circle with care.

Either way, I would not actively try to influence who is following me. And I am aware that going to exclusive route can have some negative backlash if folks place a lot of emphasis on mutual follows.

However, I am starting to think it is worth the risk.

Why?  A few reasons:

  • I fear I am missing too much from folks I respect as well as new people I follow, due to the increased amount of noise.
  • I am spending more and more time just trying to keep up with what is happening in FriendFeed, much less exploring what the folks on FriendFeed are doing on their own blogs and other services.
  • I wonder if I am missing opportunities to connect more with great people, as the crowd I follow gets ever larger.
  • I find myself getting frustrated just using the social media tools that I found so enjoyable a scant few months ago.

Taking A Risk

So, you might notice a change as I radically upset the balance of followers to following.  And if that’s the limit for you, I don’t blame you.  But I can promise I’m not ‘holing up’ and disconnecting – just the opposite.  I won’t be surprised if I end up following more people than I am now.. but I will have arrived there with a different methodology, and hopefully with more to offer those following me.

posted January 7th, 2009 in Opinion, Rant | Tags: ,

  • Fully agree Phil. I have to say that there is intrinsically a lot of noise in Twitter and that this "gaming" is just increasing it. I decided early on to follow only a small number of people. The implication is that I sometime unfollow people where I see I have limited common interests.
  • Interesting post by @eng1ne on follow-unfollow "gaming" on Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/8qmt4n
  • Thanks for sharing Phil. I came to a similar conclusion early on. I don't follow everyone that follows me. I check out their stream and if I "smell" gaming going on I avoid them. On the other hand, I follow several thought leaders that don't follow me back - and I'm fine with that. I'm following them because they are providing great information and commentary.
  • Right, exactly. I guess it's not rocket science -- people will follow who they want for whatever reason they want. So really just knowing that should prove reflexively that I should also follow who I want.

    The upshot will be services that I enjoy more and provide me with more of a return on my time.
  • I've been working through this same thing myself. I used to follow most who followed me. After a while it was too noisy and I was trying to keep up. So I unfollowed some. Then I realized I'm not going to keep up so I refollowed some. Now I'm using FriendFeed to filter out the people I want to keep up with. Even that is noisy. Same with Facebook. But I'm kinda going back now to "who do I want to be connected with" not "who do I have to keep up with". Or something like that. BTW, nice blog, just subbed.
  • Sounds like the process I'm going to kick off soon. Keep working on it, you'll get there! And thanks for the compliment, much appreciated!
  • I wonder if I come across as a gamer. I routinely follow people I meet in various services and through occasional searches. Aside from reading a page or two of their tweets, I don't do much research before adding them, opting instead to learn about them from their updates. If after a few days I notice I haven't paid much attention to their tweets or if the content is mostly negative, I tend to unfollow them as my mind has now categorized them as noise. Nothing against what they have to offer. It's just not ringing home with me. This doesn't happen very often but it does happen.

    I know you're speaking of accounts that blatantly game other users at a much higher rate and we need to help fix that. I hope unfollowing doesn't suddenly carry a negative vibe.

    It's not you. It's me. ;)
  • First thanks for the thoughtful reply, Dave.

    The situation you describe is reasonable, and one I don't think anyone should really take offense at. And I may actually be guilty of labeling people with a lot of followers who follow/un-follow me quickly as gamers instead of people who decided I had too many FriendFeed links in my Twitter stream, etc.

    But the bottom line is that, at least for me, I need to un-couple the activities of people following me with my own activities on Twitter. The two shouldn't have a direct relationship. And when I re-visit who I *want* to follow, I will also throw away any expectations of them following me back, or following people who follow me.

    In other words, if someone on Twitter or FriendFeed comes to my attention, via a blog or because they follow me there, I then will attempt to make a judgment based on my interests and what I am looking for, to follow them. And by doing that., by making that single decision, I am free of the dual burdens of mutual following and stress over why they aren't following me.

    It reduces the only question down to, who do I really want to follow?
  • Had to check out @TheBobBlog. I'm seeing his following/follower ratio. Yup, that's a good example right there.
  • The reason I used Bob instead of some jackoff enterepreneur-type is because he is really trying to present a 'normal guy' front both on Twitter and on the blog. But from what I can tell, he is far from it. He's gaming.
  • Don't unfollow me! PS. You can say Hi too you know :)
  • I hope I don't accidentally un-follow folks that are actively engaged with me and my blog. As for saying hi.. HI! But this is exactly my point -- I want to be able to be MORE responsive to those people I follow. And I know the path for doing that is following the folks I find really interesting and who engage me in conversation and ideas.

    So in other words, I intend to dedicate more of my attention to (perhaps fewer) people based more on what I find interesting and compelling about them, rather than a somewhat arbitrary rule of you-follow-me, I-follow-you.
  • Honestly, I've been doing this from the start -- although I'm much more picky now than ever.

    It's hard to not follow folks when they've decided they are interested in what you have to say. But the way I see it, I'll just be ignoring those people anyway and I'll have more time to offer those who I'm really interested in.
  • That's it in a nutshell! Excellent, I'm glad we see it the same way, then, and that it is working for you.
  • Phil, not only did you voice my own concerns with the services quite eloquently, I have to say that I really like your blog layout too. Nicely done on all counts.
  • Thanks Martha! If this is your first visit to my blog, then welcome! Please feel free to subscribe, I promise not to overwhelm your feed reader. ;)
  • Oh my god, I think if I read another FF article about FF or twitter post about twitter, I'm going to scream.
  • Don't you know that all us social media nerds are part of the same Borg collective, and we all think the same thoughts? We love mulling over the same material again and again but in different virtual places!

    It's like a game. Of course we know where WE post our stuff, after all, WE posted it! But it's a very sophisticated technique we use to ensnare more people in to the collective. We present the facade of individuality by using different types of blogs of different sizes and authors to lure unsuspecting people into our evil trap! Mua-ha-ha!

    Ok, I'm pulling your leg, obviously. And I'm sorry if, as a group, writing about Twitter and FriendFeed is now 'beating a dead horse' so to speak. But as long as those services continue to be popular, you will probably have to steel yourself against forever new posts being written. I mean, I am totally sick of newspaper articles about outgoing president W, but they keep writing them! ARGH! Why can't I just not read them all!
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