The 3 things I learned by following and unfollowing 19,348 people on Twitter.

Nov 11, 2008 in Twitter

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Image via CrunchBase

Twitter is a mad beast. It can be a tremendous tool, and sometimes a nightmare.

I’ve been using Twitter heavily since March of this year. Following Jason Calacanis and Robert Scoble’s lead I followed as many people as my little fingers could click.

I also followed everyone who followed me.

I ended up with an unmanageable mess of 19348 twitters to sort through, and only 5705 followers, roughly 1 in 4 followed me back.

Was I trying to be a spammer? Nah. I really don’t think spamming is possible because someone has to actually click on your profile and choose to follow you - if they follow you just because you follow them, that’s their right and their choice.

Then came the follow limit, and I could no longer follow new people, sure I could create a new account and start over, or just use multiple accounts.

I largely went from being a huge user of twitter and conversationalist to being primarily a broadcaster of my blog posts via ping.fm.

I’m currently spending about 1-2 hours weekly unfollowing those who aren’t following me, then eventually I’m only gonna follow those who sincerely interest me. That’s just my opinion - everyone should make their own decision how they’re going to use Twitter. I think the beauty of twitter is that there are a million and one ways to use it.

These are the three main things that I’ve learned from twitter - as I commented on a post “To Follow or Not To Follow ALL Twitter Followers?” on AdvancedIncome.com by Yisel.

Content is king. As with blogging write good content and people will follow you. They will flock to you like bees on honey. Make sure all your best blog posts are tweeted.
Be a Conversationalist. This applies not only to Twitter, but social media in general - the keyword is Social, if you’re not building relationships, then you just don’t get it! Talk to people, help people, share your success with people, etc..
Be Popular by Talking to Popular People. We are who we associate with. It is said that your success in life is the sum average of the success of all those with whom you surround yourself.
To go a bit further - if you reply to someone famous, and they respond to you - you may get a few followers out of it - do it on a daily basis, even become someone they mention a lot and who knows - you may become a Joe the Plumber, or equivalent.

We all want to be successful. I totally believe that the day of the small A-list is over, and that the day is dawning for the everyday person to make it online. I believe that more small-timers will be able to chart their own path. Just keep being real, stay focused, and don’t give up.

Why I’m leaving Twitter…Follow me on Plurk!

Aug 06, 2008 in Twitter

Twitter’s death is imminent.

Twitter has been great to me. I’ve met many wonderful people. Build wonderful relationships. But Twitter is now dead to me…

Apparently Twitter’s new spam measures are blocking a number of users from following other Twitterers. Being able to follow others on twitter is what the service is about. The brilliance behind twitter is you can block/unfollow anyone that you don’t want to listen to. So my question: Why have spam rules?

I’m not saying I’m a spammer - far from it - but I’ve been blocked for no good reason, except that my follower to followee ratio is not the way they want. In other words my growth and reach on Twitter is now dead.

I still plan on posting all my blog posts to twitter, and following up on conversations via friendfeed. But it really saddens me that Twitter is doing this crap. I’d advise everyone to jump ship and find a better network, I think Plurk may be that better network, which is why I’m inviting you all to follow me on Plurk.

Other places to follow me besides Twitter:

Friendfeed.
Plurk
Rejaw - This one’s new but looks pretty darn awesome.
Tumblr - My new fave after Plurk.
Bebo.
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Flickr
LinkedIn
Ma.gnolia
MyBlogLog
MySpace
Pownce
Reddit
Sphinn
StumbleUpon
Technorati

UPDATE: Here is a link to the Twitter faq page about the new limits in place. Also Note ALL the info following this paragraph is an update to this post - so check it out!

Here is what twitter says about these:

What are the limits?
We’re starting with a few limits based on various parameters, and we’ll be adding more as time goes on. We reveal some limits only when you reach them, and tell you about others in advance. Twitter applies limits to any person who reaches:

1,000 total updates per day, on any and all devices

250 total direct messages per day, on any and devices

100 API requests per hour

Maximum number of follow attempts in a day

Follow limits are based on several things, one of which is our belief in a person’s good standing and intention. The behind-the-scenes portion of follow limiting varies by account, relationship, and changes over time. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we’ve concluded that this is both fair and reasonable. While we figure out what works best for everyone, the limits may change occasionally, but this is the nucleus and future limits will be based upon the success of these.

According to that it says that they are imposing a maximum follow attempts per day limit, which I’m fine with, facebook has the same limits, but I and others I’ve read about have been blocked completely from following others..which is completely unacceptable.

I’m not the only one apparently having frustrations:

Twitter Follow Limits are Jacked
This is from Brad Williams Ceo of WebDevStudios.com and an adviser on Sitepoint forums.
Even the Blog StopTwitterSpam.com thinks it’s jacked. This blog supports anti twitter spam and they even think its wrong.

Here are some comments on the twitter forums backing my claims:

Hi Crystal and Ev -

Thanks for posting on GSFN about this. I’m glad you’re putting limits in place to discourage spammers.

However, there are many of us who are using Twitter in a legitimate and respectful manner who are being blocked from following.
I didn’t receive any notification that I had reached any following limit. I got the “Something has gone wrong” message repeatedly until I surmised what was happening.

I’ll email Support to discuss this, but I wanted to point this out here since a discussion was already in place.

We have such a fun Pandora community going on via Twitter, I’d hate for it to be hampered. In terms of proving I’m not spammy, I’m happy to provide previously-twittered testimonials regarding how “useful” and/or “fun” my 2,000 twitter followers have found my twitterstream.

I’m very careful, as a Community Manager, about how I use Twitter. I hand-pick who to follow. My followed-following rate has always been close to 1-to-1. I only tweet a few times a day. Iâ€™ve repeatedly posted my personal email address in the stream, for conversations that require more than 140 characters.

Thanks very much for your attention, and for all your hard work!
I hope this gets sorted out soon. I’ve been enjoying the community of Pandora-lovers who have been bonding via your service.

Sincerely,
Lucia Willow
Pandora Community Manage

Comment 1:
Nice way of putting it. But I’m really much more frustrated than this at this point. I’ve been a HUGE advocate of Twitter despite many issues. I spent my time blocking and advocating the blocking of those ‘gaming’ the system. In return, I’ve always respected Twitter boundaries and have a 1-to-1 following ratio - but now I’ve got 50 people who have followed me in the past few days that I can’t follow back. This is very annoying - given that I gave an Unconference Panel on it at BlogHer on Sunday that lasted 2 1/2 hrs and got many of these users to sign up. If I can’t follow back the people that are following me - twitter becomes useless for me. â€“ GeekMommy, 16 days ago (Delete or Edit for 15 minutes)

Comment 2:
I already have an issue with how you handle it: You post your e-mail so people can have private conversations, or do you post your e-mail for conversations that SHOULD be public, i.e. handled in a public place like for example get satisfaction? If they should be public, you should direct users to make threads on GSFN so more than just you and the other person can participate. â€“ Thomas, 16 days ago

Here’s a thread by StopTwitterSpam on the issue:

#

stopthespam replied 12 days ago
Twitter - you guys have said many times that you will be continually reviewing your approach to fighting spam and refining yout tactics over time. I’ve been tracking the new follower limits very closely and I can’t imagine that you guys were targeting @pandora_radio, @comcastcares, and dozens of other legitimate businesses and individuals with these limits. And telling them to just wait a few days to add new followers is asking for a tremendous amount of patience from some of your most loyal users. Please tell us that you guys are looking closely at whatever algorithm is behind the follower limits to insure that only the *real* bad guys (like the6figureteam.com spammers) are being flagged, not the good guys.

# Comment_1
I totally agree. While Twitter isn’t *just* blocking/targeting comcastcares, pandora_radio, etc, the limits are for everyone and not just flagged users. They should update their system so that only the actual spammers get caught, as you said. â€“ Chris Thomson, 12 days ago (Delete or Edit for 15 minutes)
# Comment_2
Very well said - and much more rationally than I could’ve put it. Thanks. I completely agree with this and hope they respond to you. â€“ GeekMommy, 12 days ago (Delete or Edit for 15 minutes)
# Comment_3
How about watching to see which accounts are getting the most “blocked” votes and limit their following ability? Anytime I find a spammer, etc following me, I block them. Track that, and let people who have large accounts like Geek Mommy, Scoble, etc do what they do.

You can follow the rest of that thread here: What if I hit a Twitter Limit; and if you look it over you’ll see I’m not the only one with a lot of angst, apparently many of the top twitterers are frustrated at this.