Comments on: Deciding who to follow on Twitter

By: Jordan Willms

Jordan Willms — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:41:58 +0000

Many ppl, when joining twitter, face the problem of “who to follow”.

Try http://www.TweetTop.com for whom to follow on various topics on twitter.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

By: Brandon Carlos

Brandon Carlos — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:42:27 +0000

Joe,

I’ve had a similar problem as of late. For me, it’s a two fold one:

1. I’ve seen a drastic rise in the number of followers
2. I’m in corporate, so Twitter is a banned website on our server. This means that I have the weekend and a few hours in the evening to visit their profiles.

What I’ve done is just make it a habit to go through my followers list once a week and scroll over the names of my most recent ones. If the description bubble is blank or doesn’t look like it matches my interests, I don’t follow. If their description intrigues me, I’ll take a further peek at their recent tweets and decide, based on the quality of conversation, whether this is the right person for me to follow.

By: Joseph Thornley

Joseph Thornley — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:27:04 +0000

Hi Francis, I usually only Unfollow someone in Twitter if he or she is being profane, nasty or saying things that might be an embarrassment. Other than that, I pretty much continue to follow everyone I started following.

By: Francis Wooby

Francis Wooby — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:50:57 +0000

Hi Joe,

I’m wondering if you or any of your readers periodically revise your Twitter communities, unfollowing some who’ve waned in their (quality of) contributions, while adding other Twitterers you’ve come across.

If so, how do you determine who gets cut? Does systematic unfollowing make it easier to add new connections–and make Twitter more relevant for you overall?

Being a mere blip on Twitter myself, I haven’t had to start thinking about unfollowing in this way. It’s one of those items for consideration on the horizon though.

By: Kyla Kryski

Kyla Kryski — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:14:31 +0000

Heather – I think we need to follow each other! You can find me @kkryski

And add @JohnCleese to your celeb follows! He’s brilliant! (And has over 70,000 followers)

It certainly is hard to keep up, though! I feel your frustration!

By: Heather Whiting

Heather Whiting — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:43:27 +0000

Kyla – I am also following many for educational purposes – hence the frustration at not having the time to read read read.

To continue with this theme of who I follow – I’m busy mining all the follow referrals I’m finding on this thread now.

Stephen Fry is following over 54,000 – I won’t bounce this time though. Anyone else have a must follow to suggest?

By: Kyla Kryski

Kyla Kryski — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:01:45 +0000

As an entry-level communicator, my choice to follow certain people comes mostly from an educational standpoint. I choose to follow people like you and @DoctorJones and @MartinWaxman because you share valuable content. It is a great place to see what senior-level PR people are doing, seeing, learning and thinking. You’re all mentoring me without the requisite time commitment!

I then follow things that are of interest to me at a more personal level – certain people/companies that post about things like fashion and fitness.

I’m not inundated with followers yet but I do unfollow people who flood my feed with things that are of little to no interest!

Great post – thank you for keeping us thinking!

By: Web 2.What? » Blog Archive » The new rules of twitter follows

Web 2.What? » Blog Archive » The new rules of twitter follows — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:40:46 +0000

[...] Joe Thornley did a very similar post yesterday too, perhaps it’s a widespread problem… author: Kelly Rusk [...]

By: Kelly Rusk

Kelly Rusk — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:21:56 +0000

hehe I would chalk it up to “great minds think alike!”

By: Joseph Thornley

Joseph Thornley — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:19:56 +0000

Kelly, I’ve updated the main post to include a linkback to your post. Thanks for pointing it out to me. I had a choice last night of writing or reading my feeds. I chose the former and missed the latter.