Step into My Twitterverse
If you know me or have been following my twitter for any length of time, you may have seen me refer to my Twitter rules. And I wanted to finally clear the air and make these known as best as I can. Granted, my mind is a strange place to enter so be forewarned.
Some have called me a snob because the ratio between the number I follow vs. the number who follow me is so wide. Or that I am somehow making things like high school (cool kids vs. the nerds). I still consider myself one of the “nerds” so this just seems incredibly unfair.
I currently have 700 twitter followers and I know each one equals a very real person. And I love you! I do! Last thing I would want to do is hurt someone’s feelings. You should also know that I suffer from a great need for approval and acceptance. The idea that I not be liked for something as trivial as following or not following someone on Twitter, keeps me awake at night.
But for me to follow each and every person who chooses to follow me is far too chaotic for me to handle. And so I put some rules in place to help keep a balance.
The rules are as follows (and subject to change):
* I follow no more than 75 people at a time.
* Direct messages are not my email and I don’t need yet another inbox to maintain. I also use my phone to receive direct messages. So keeping my follow list low, prevents unnecessary direct messages from coming in and taking over my phone as well.
* If someone @replies me, I will almost always reply back. Which to me, means more than an actual follow. I am a big about twitterversing and interacting with all peeps who interact with me. Don’t believe me? Check my work. I also keep searches saved on topics that I want to follow (ie. porn addiction, church communications, etc.).
* I only follow people I know will @reply me back. So, no celebrities or twitterlebrities. And if you look at my follow list, the majority are people I know IRL or are in close relationship with on the internet.
* I will stop following a person if they don’t update their twitter at least once a week. Because my Twitter follow limit is so low, I don’t want to waste it with someone who isn’t engaging in the Twitter process.
* I will stop following someone who only talks about one thing: ie. Sports. I want to have something in common with the people I follow.
There’s probably more but this is the basic run-down of how I use twitter. Does it make me a snob? No. I don’t think so. OCD? Absolutely. And I hope that answers any questions still lingering.
it was an “honor” to have been followed by you just for a lil bit ;) haha!
love the twitter rules!
Yep! I’ve changed my rules since we’ve talked about this.
They can’t live on my island! I check to how we are connected.
I’ve deleted like 150 of my followers and a lot of whom I follow. More to come because most of who I follow, I like never tweet with.
I’ll follow the bands I love. I know they read their @replies even if they never respond. But, I may follow a couple of celebrities but, since Ashton pushed for 1mil I really could care less about what they have to say!
My twitter rules:
1)I usually follow the people who write the blogs I read. I don’t catch everything they say because I only check it a couple times a day.
2)I follow the people I know in real life and actually have conversations with them.
3)(back to the blogs) I sometimes will reply back to something they say but know they have so many followers I don’t expect me to follow them. For me it’s more of a learning from them. Seeing them more as people than as a blog.
4)I don’t follow everyone who follows me. When some new follows me I check out their status page and their webpage. If they look like spam then I block them. I would have a lot more followers if I didn’t block so many people. However, even though I do twitter I am a fairly private person.
5)I don’t think others should expect you to follow them if they follow you. I’m not out to get a high number of followers. I’m out to learn how to use twitter and connect with others.
6)I’m picky about who I let into my real life and extend that to my internet life…at least the best I can by typing something that everyone else can read…
I like your rules and actually used several of them this weekend to umm do a twitter enema :P I really like the last three rules….a great way to bring the list of those I follow down…as many of them do not tweet very often.
And one of the “celebrities” I follow is a Christian speaker and she often responds so that is why I follow her :)
Hahaha, I @-ed you when I first started following you last week, but then I realized that was when I locked my profile from the spammers.
My twitter rules:
-Interesting tweets
-If you tweet too often, you may have no life, and therefore nothing interesting to say
That’s pretty much it. :)
I don’t really have rules, but…
I have a look at my new followers once a week to work out who I’ll follows
I use TwitApps (and did use SocialToo) to determine who has followed/unfollowed me…often people follow then unfollow immediately, for whatever reason.
Um, that’s about it – if you’re interesting and have something that might be useful for my life (work, church, personal), I’ll follow.
Oh…I immediately unfollow anyone who uses bad language too…despite my own slips from time to time with cultural differences there…haha
Is this why I couldnt direct message you for a while…cuz we weren’t friends….cuz you had DELETED me!? *gasp!*