I know you’re looking for a follow back
But it’s not just gonna happen like that
I ain’t no followback girl …
I’ve noticed a couple of puzzling things on Twitter … Ok maybe more than a couple, but I’m writing about a couple now 
The first thing is people who follow thousands of people on Twitter. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the almost-200 people I follow. If I see that someone follows thousands of people, my immediate impression is that they actually don’t read anything any of them post. How could they?
The way I figure it, they’ve followed-back everyone who follows them, or they’ve followed lots of people simply in hopes of getting a followback. Either way, it seems to me it’s about nothing other than collecting followers – kind of like Pokemon or something.
.. Which brings me to the second thing (really just my own experience of the same thing, but the impetus to post this): I get perplexed when someone starts following my tweets, then a few days later I get another notification that the same person has started following me … and on and on. Clearly (it seems to me) they’re just looking for a followback, and it would seem, are a bit perplexed about not getting one.
So, here’s what I do when someone starts following me (and I really don’t think I’m at all unusual here … am I??)
1.) I will check out your Follow Cost before proceeding any further. If your follow cost is nuclear, there will be no followback.
I don’t know how many tweets per day mean a nuclear follow cost, but it’s definitely too many for me to wade through. I recently (and regretfully) unfollowed someone who actually posts some interesting stuff – because the sheer volume of tweets was completely overwhelming my timeline.
Edit 2 December 2009: I just checked my follow cost again, and my tweets per day has jumped to a level that made me feel like a major hypocrite After much searching around I managed to clarify that @replies (which are 56% of my tweets) don’t show up on followers’ timeline unless they’re following bother the sender and recipient of the @reply. This led to two things: (1) I felt better about my tweet volume; and (2) I realised that I can’t just look at the number of tweets (and whether nuclear or not) – I have to check the proportion of @replies too, as if that is high, then correspondingly fewer tweets will hit my timeline
So, if your average daily tweet volume, less the @reply percentage, seems overwhelming (however many that is 
) there would be no followback … except that this rule becomes so unwieldy that I don’t really know how to apply it any more. Ah well, never mind
2.) If a signficant proportion of your tweets come from API there will be no followback.
I’m really not interested in reading endless automatically-generated tweets which either try to sell me something, or inform me about every last detail of your online life. I want some real interaction with some real people, thanks. Yes I want news and interesting info, but in a social, Web2.0, “I saw this and thought you guys would like it” kind of way.
3.) If any significant proportion of your tweets – API or not – are marketing crap, there will be no followback.
Really, I don’t need to elaborate on that, do I?
4.) If your tweets make plain a large generation gap to this here old fogey, there will likely be no followback.
I’m really not interested in “New Moon”, or how like omg drunk you got and stuff… This is more flexible, as sometimes wading through (not too much of) that can lead to some worthwhile stuff. It’s really about proportions and balance.
5.) If your tweets just don’t happen to interest me, there will be no followback.
If we all liked the same thing life would get pretty dull, no? So if you’re interested in what I post, and follow me, and I don’t follow you back (even though you don’t meet any of the first 4 conditions) don’t take it personally. We’re all different, and that’s part of what makes the world interesting.
If, on the other hand, you’re actually not interested in my tweets, but follow me simply in hopes of a followback, and subsequently unfollow me when one isn’t forthcoming … I promise to not feel bad. At all.
Maybe this is why I only have 176 followers at time of typing, but if they want to read what I post, that’s 176 more than I thought there might be 
Popularity: 3% [?]
