Who And Why I Follow Back on Twitter

Catching up on some work this morning and going through new people that started following me over the past two weeks.  I've got my account setup so I get email notification when someone follows me and I look at each one, determining whether I want to follow back. Out of the 302 new followers I picked up in the past couple of weeks, I followed back only 27 this morning. That's only 8.95% and it is pretty typical.

Here's how I personally sort this stuff out:

When someone follows my feed I've got Twitter setup to send me an email notification.
I've got my email client (Thunderbird) setup to automatically move those Twitter email notifications to a separate Twitter folder. When I have some time (like this morning) I go through the notifications, determining whether I want to follow back. Here's my follow-back determination procedure:

1. I've got Thunderbird setup to preview email. The first thing I look for is a name (a person) attached to the account. If I don't know your organization and there is no name listed, I'm probably not going to follow back. Some details:

• I try and only follow back those with similar interests, these interests can be both work and hobby related. If you are a business, organization, academic institution or individual involved in Science, Technology Engineering or Math (STEM) I'm definitely following you back. I'll also follow you back if you are focused on one of my hobbies - for example - saltwater flyfishing. 
• Sorry but religion and politics are always a do not follow back red flag for me. I know many use Twitter and other social media for this kind of stuff and I don't have a problem with that. It's just not what I personally use it for.

2. If I like what I see in the email preview I'll click the link to your feed and take a look at the last 5 or so posts. If it is junk - spam, any hint of profanity, etc. Done - I'm not following you. The best chance for a follow back is if you have something posted I'm interested in. Maybe it is a short description with a link to an interesting post on the web. If it is something I really like and retweet it, you are definitely getting a follow back.

3. There are some exceptions and I typically follow back the following:

• Local businesses (not based on religion or politics). This includes my favorite Pizza shop in Western Massachusetts. 
• Known organizations, like the National Science Foundation (of course!)
• Some celebrities - how could you not follow back someone like Weird Al Yankovic? 
• Old friends and sometimes friends of friends if I can sort the connections out. 

4. Once I start following you - if I do see any spam, profanity, religion, politics I'm un-following you. I also occasionally go in and cull the list of people I follow and this is the kind of stuff I'm looking for.

 So..... back to my experience today - only 27 follow backs out of 302 new followers..... 8.95%. Yes - there is a lot of junk out there but..... mixed in with the junk there is a lot of good stuff.

You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/gsnyder

Microblogging Study Released

You're reading this so you may have noticed my Twitter feed over in the left column. Wikipedia defines Twitter as a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

One of my favorite "tweeters" is Laura Filton, Principal and Founder of Pistachio Consulting. According to her website, Laura Fitton is one of the first prominent “microbloggers,” with roughly 8,400 readers on Twitter. She specializes in connecting people to new ideas and innovations using all the tools of (what Laura calls) microsharing. Here's more from her site:

Brands and businesses are flocking to Twitter. Internal “enterprise 2.0″ microsharing can make your company run better. But most companies have little or no clear idea of how these tools really work, what they could accomplish or how to do so. At best, many efforts are shots in the dark. At worst, they’re squandering time, resources, opportunity and brand equity.

Laura recently released a report titled Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison - Nineteen Applications to Revolutionize Employee Effectiveness. In the report, she takes a look at 19 different microblogging applications and how they are being used for things like HR, Marketing and Sales, R&D, Innovation, Customer relations, etc. You can get online and PDF versions and more information on the report here: http://pistachioconsulting.com/services/research/.

You can find and follow Laura (@pistachio) on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/pistachio.

I don't tweet anywhere near as much as Laura but you can also find and follow me (@gsnyder) on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/gsnyder

Mini-Blogging with Tumblr

On Friday and Saturday last week I photo-blogged the National Center for Telecommunications Technologies (NCTT) Winter Conference held at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, CA. I used Tumblr, a free service that allows (among other things) the posting of photos, audio mp3 files and text from cell phones. I did my photo-blog posting using my iPhone - I was snapping pictures and then emailing them to a Tumblr email address. Picture captions are added by typing text into the email subject line.

Tumblr also allows text posting via instant messenger clients, the setting up of a custom domain and the posting of text, photos, videos, quotes, and links from any web page. Demogirl.com has a nice video describing how to setup and use Tumblr:



In addition to using Tumblr I also use Twitter to post short (up to 140 characters) text updates. I find myself posting to Twitter two or three times a day and commonly use it to post links to interesting web articles that relate to my work.

The combination of Blogger for full-blown blogs, Tumblr for mini-blogging and Twitter for micro-blogging along with the ability to incorporate them all into a single page, while still keeping them separate, is nice. Each serves a unique purpose and they complement each other well. And....... they are all free!

Follow my Twitter "Tweets" here: http://twitter.com/gsnyder and my Tumblr photo-blog here: http://gsnyder.tumblr.com

Micro-Blogging with Twitter

You may have noticed my Twitter Micro-Blog over to the left hand side of the page. Mike Q wrote a blog titled Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku: The Birth of Micro-blogging a couple of months ago that sparked my interest. Mike had an interesting quote in his blog:

"I'm not sure I understand the attraction of these sites - maybe it's generational, but they're very popular and seem to be addictive."

I remember reading it and nodding my head thinking he's right - who's going to do that? Well..... I've started and have found it to be "addictive".

Wikipedia defines micro-blogging as:

"a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web."

I have only been micro-blogging links I find interesting so far. I have not started texting to Twitter (yet?) from my cell phone but I just might.