Comments on: Understanding the Experienced Twitter User’s Vetting Process Can Help You Gain Followers

By: Mirko Ceselkoski

Mirko Ceselkoski — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:02:16 +0000

Great reading….just started using twitter…

By: Hugh Briss

Hugh Briss — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:45:17 +0000

Adam: Good point on the marketing expert, PR types. Sometimes I think that if you deleted all the social media expert accounts on Twitter there would be very few members left.

The background isn’t really important to me as long as someone has taken the time to change the default. I don’t care if they tile a picture of their pets, as long as they’ve taken the time it tells me they’re serious about Twitter. As you suggest, a background could also be a good way to tell if you want to follow someone if it’s immediately obvious their only reason for using Twitter is self promotion or if they’re a neo Nazi.

By: Adam Nollmeyer

Adam Nollmeyer — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:34:24 +0000

You mean you don’t just want to follow *everyone* who is ever on twitter?!

I’ve sometimes used http://twittercounter.com to tell me how aggressive the person is adding followers, due to the number of people spam adding, then dropping non followers 2 days later. Sometimes I will follow these people back, but it totally depends on their content.

I’m all about meeting new tweeple, however they are are, “Internet marketing expert, SEO, PR, MLM, ebook seller, php programmer, / AC repair man” I’ll typically pass over because that’s just too much junk to do well and be legit.

Backgrounds, Do I get points for @ least not having a default. I’ve seen some bbackgrounds that simply solidify the fact that the person is a MLM ebook type. BTW, nice work on twitterimage.com

By: Robb

Robb — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:51:46 +0000

I was looking to develop my own list based on my experiences in order to help my friends and new Tweeple coming in. You nailed almost exactly the mental processes I go through to Follow/Block new people who follow me. I now just link friends to your Blog.

One new twist I’ve seen is that TwitterSpammers (is there a Twitter name for this?) will sometimes follow 2,000 folks to catch AutoFollowers, then unfollow the non-followers, and start over. They can cycle through 2,000 at at time. You can sometimes refresh and watch their follow count rise with each second. I hate this!!
I used to just block, then unblock, to get rid of them fairly anonymously. But now, I’m starting to flame them as Spammers if I’m in a bad mood or have had a rash of these overnight.
IMHO
Robb
Robbdotcom

By: Hugh Briss

Hugh Briss — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:30:46 +0000

Since you didn’t fill in your Twitter name we have no way of verifying what you said, but I will tell you that I don’t “randomly” follow anyone. I either follow twits back who’ve followed me first, or occasionally follow someone that I find very interesting, like @lancearmstrong.

It also seems that you missed my point entirely because I never said there was anything wrong with following someone you don’t know, my point was that it’s usually obvious from the follower/following ratio when someone is randomly following as many people as possible in hopes of getting followed back by some of them.

By: robin

robin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:57:07 +0000

It’s a little strange to see you saying this: “The most telling ratio is one where the following count is markedly higher than the follower count. In most cases this indicates someone that is following lots of twits in an indiscriminate manner just to gain followers. Twitter has imposed an arbitrary limit of 2,000 following unless your follower count is high enough, so when I see a following count pegged at exactly 2,000 and a relatively low follower number, I don’t even bother looking further.” …when you just randomly followed me.