Follow, ignore or block: Why people do what at Twitter
Posted by Oliver Gassner • Thursday, December 25. 2008
After Dhiraj Gupta supposed that if you had less than 9 updates that people would not follow you back when you followed them on Twitter I gut curious and did a very small poll on why people followed or blocked.
I will investigate some of the findings of this in more depth later.
You are welcome to add your own observations in the comments, of course.
So I asked:
When do you not follow back? When do you block?
And the answers were:
bitnacht I'm looking at their posts. Too frequent? Advertising? Nothing yet? -don't follow- potential conflict? Troll bait? Doesn't feel right?-block
tencate @oliverg I don't follow back if I don't know the person. I do follow a stranger if I like his/her tweets. I block what I consider to be spam about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to oliverg
wettach @oliverg like @AxelSchestag I check the tweets (first page) of a new follower I noticed. If interesting, I'll follow, else wait for their @ about 17 hours ago from web in reply to oliverg
rowi @oliverg: I don't follow back per se. I take a look at the person which follows me and decide if I want to read them, no difference about 17 hours ago from web in reply to oliverg
AlexSchestag @oliverg I do not follow back if I'm not interested in the person's tweets. I have blocked only one person becaus
So as a consequence I'd say:
Following many people just to increase your reach does not work. It will only eventuelly get you blocked more and more often and thus eventuelly banned from twitter with that account.
I will investigate some of the findings of this in more depth later.
You are welcome to add your own observations in the comments, of course.
So I asked:
When do you not follow back? When do you block?
And the answers were:
bitnacht I'm looking at their posts. Too frequent? Advertising? Nothing yet? -don't follow- potential conflict? Troll bait? Doesn't feel right?-block
tencate @oliverg I don't follow back if I don't know the person. I do follow a stranger if I like his/her tweets. I block what I consider to be spam about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to oliverg
wettach @oliverg like @AxelSchestag I check the tweets (first page) of a new follower I noticed. If interesting, I'll follow, else wait for their @ about 17 hours ago from web in reply to oliverg
rowi @oliverg: I don't follow back per se. I take a look at the person which follows me and decide if I want to read them, no difference about 17 hours ago from web in reply to oliverg
AlexSchestag @oliverg I do not follow back if I'm not interested in the person's tweets. I have blocked only one person becaus
So as a consequence I'd say:
Following many people just to increase your reach does not work. It will only eventuelly get you blocked more and more often and thus eventuelly banned from twitter with that account.
In my opinion the only way to naturally grow your influence is to deliver valuable information - period.
By valuable, i mean information which is from interest to the person following. This CAN be your last meal and weather, but for most people - it's not!
@patrics