12 April 2009

This Twitter thing

cool-twitter-icon   I have been watching this Twitter thing for a while. I have had my own little Twitter account, merrily minding my own business, but have noticed that there seems to be quite a bit of social pressure around Twitter, who you follow and who you don’t.

When I signed up for Twitter, I believed it to be a micro-blogging tool. Something to allow me to jot down quick thoughts, share a link here and there, maybe keep track of story ideas and so on. So, that is what I have been using it for and as.

I may, on occasion, reply to someone else’s tweet, or direct content at a specific person, but, overall, my interaction with others on Twitter is much like it is elsewhere – non-existent.

I follow others quite randomly actually. There are a number of literary agents I follow on Twitter, as well as a couple of my favourite authors and other celebrities. I follow those with whom I already have a relationship in real life – friends, blogging acquaintances, etc. In fact, if we have anything in common or say 80% of the tweets are interesting, I may just follow. If you follow me, I will generally follow back, unless there is anything in your stream that I disagree with: hate speech, inappropriate sexual comments and so on. That said, I do not believe it is possible to manage a vast number of relationships on any platform, even when the relationships I build are as non-existent as they are, and always try and keep the number of people I follow on Twitter down to a manageable number – as I do on all the social networks. Breaking point, for me, is around 200.

If I choose to unfollow you on Twitter, it is nothing personal. It may be because you haven’t updated for a while, or because I am going through an unfollow phase – which happens regularly. And if you choose to unfollow me, I promise I won’t take it personally either.

How do you choose who you follow on Twitter?

1 comment:

Mandy said...

I sort of used Twitter to give and receive status updates on people who I don't know well enough to add on Facebook. I've recently cut out everyone I don't know at least on some personal level, be it through Blogger or LJ. For my own sanity I had to remove Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry which was sad.

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