What exactly does it mean when someone follows you on Twitter?
Answer: it depends.
Chris Brogan wrote a blog post – Is Engagement More Important – where he talked about Twitter followers. He described the following exchange he had on Twitter concerning the author Tom Peters:
I told my gang over on Twitter that they should follow the legendary Tom Peters, author of several books that impacted my life. Some of them wrote back, “why should I? He doesn’t follow many people back.”
Chris made two major points in his post:
1. Following someone on Twitter isn’t necessarily engagement (i.e. interaction with the person who is using Twitter):
When I choose to follow, it’s because I grant you the permission to send me a direct message. I will not likely see your standard every day tweets. At over 110,000 followed, it’s a technical and mathematical impossibility… So, when I follow you back, it means that I’ve given you one step up on the hurdle. But that’s not the whole game.
2. You can get a lot of value by following someone because of the knowledge that they share, even if it’s not directed specifically toward you:
But what if Tom Peters’ Twitter stream is full of useful nuggets and links to really useful stuff. Is it any less valuable? … But my point is: the information is more important in many cases.
I believe that Chris is absolutely correct with the second point.
I’m not so sure that I agree with the first point. While it may be valid for him, I don’t think it’s representative of all Twitter users and I don’t think it’s the way that some (or a lot of people) think.
Consider the following:
- Chris has over 100,000 followers and he follows back almost everyone, so his ratio of following to followers is close to 1:1
- In my case, I follow 2140 Twitter accounts and in turn I am followed by 3490 Twitter accounts at the moment; my ratio is not quite 2:3 but it’s close to that. There are plenty of people who follow and are followed by many more people than I am, but I’m kind of in a middle range in terms of size.
- I would wager that the vast majority of Twitter users follow and are followed by less than 200 people (note: I have no research to substantiate this, but it seems reasonable to me)
I agree that Chris could not (and probably should not) try to follow every Tweet that is squirted out by each of the people that he follows. Even with my smaller set of followers, I know I can’t do it either. The third group of people just might be able to do that if the people they follow only publish a few Tweets each day.
I would argue, however, that there is still intent to at least try to follow some of the Tweets from some of the people that you are following. I don’t believe that most people will follow someone else for the sake of allowing them to DM you (put differently, for the sake of being able to receive private messages from the people that you follow). You follow someone because you might find their stuff interesting and with the hope of interaction. From a practical point of view, someone with Chris’s network of followers might be providing a courtesy by allowing the DM.
There’s still a problem with that, though:
How could anyone keep up with the DMs (the direct messages that Chris refers to in his post) when you are following 100,000 people? And trust me, a guy like Chris will be getting plenty of DMs because it’s a chance to ask something private that you might be embarrassed to do in public. Like, say, trying to get Chris to link to your junk or otherwise trying to do business via the DM. It’s like the classic “red phone”: the direct line to the president or the king, so to speak. Except, of course, the red phone rings constantly with DMs and, although it’s like having a voice mailbox with no size limit, how could you ever check them all without a massive amount of time and effort? Another case in point: check out Gary Vaynerchuk’s Twitter page. He very clearly states that he never checks DMs. Finally, try doing a Google search on Twitter DM spam: you’ll soon get the feeling that the direct message might not be the best way to try to contact someone, especially if they’re following tens of thousands of people.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I think that most people aren’t motivated to follow you so you can send direct messages to them. Maybe the likes of Tom Peters and various celebrities do follow people so they can be contacted directly via DM: I don’t know, but a lot of them don’t follow very many people. Twitter Lists are still a new phenomenon and not everyone uses an application to manage Twitter, so for many the best way to keep track of what’s happening with someone is to follow their Twitter account.
I think it’s still perfectly natural to assume that people are following you on Twitter because they want to see what you have to say (yes, I know, there’s at least one other GLARING exception to this rule: people who follow you with the hope that you’ll follow them back and help make their followers list much, much larger in some vulgar attempt to eventually make money off of it). I accept that other people will have different motivations (e.g. Chris Brogan or Tom Peters) for following people. Experienced Twitter users know how to follow you without following you, so they’ll do things differently. And so on.
But back to one final point: I can certain emphasize with people who wouldn’t follow someone like Tom Peters, who apparently follows a fraction of the people who follow him and interacts with very few. The prospect of engagement and interaction is pretty enticing and it’s natural to get a little thrill when you are followed back by someone that you started following first. If they don’t reciprocate, you then have to compare this to your goals for following and then decide what to do next. Again, I still agree with Chris’s second point: sometimes the information is valuable enough to outweigh a lack of interaction.
Now, over to you: what do you think? Do you follow people on Twitter just so they can send you DMs? Or do you follow people on Twitter in order to see what they are Tweeting? Or is there some other motivation? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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RT @markdykeman The role of the Twitter follower [link to post]
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The role of the Twitter follower [link to post] http://j.mp/KnowMore
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A good deal of the speculation that surrounds following and followers seems to assume oodles of time to follow tweet streams. For myself, I simply don’t have that kind of time (or inclination). I currently have 332 followers and follow 279 (which is still too much, to me). Seth Godin in a recent item (Modern procrastination) suggested a lot of Twitter and Facebook usage is wasting time, putting off other things. I think agree with him.
I generally check Twitter a few times a day and scan recent tweets — older ones too if I have time — and read or check out links that catch my eye (interest). Some people get my attention because I know they generally have something interesting. But for the most part, I simply don’t have time for all that is there and I’m always amazed by people following thousands. Many of the most interesting people on Twitter have tens of thousands of followers … and follow maybe ten people.
Overall, I think quality trumps quantity. @jayrosen_nyu once tweeted that who you follow is more important than who follows you. I think he meant the same thing. Myself, I use DM every so often but for direct contact I find email is far more effective (as are leaving comments on blog posts). btw … Last August I did a post on some Twitter stats I had found. However, my post was an effort at interpreting them differently than others at the time were. (The stats showed 94% of Twitter users had 100 or less followers.) For what it’s worth:
http://writelife.net/2009/08/31/twitter-statistics-and-speculation/
Bill´s last blog ..Road construction on Writelife
@Bill – the Jay Rosen quote makes a lot of sense to me. I only wish he would follow me.
One thing that I’ve started doing is to move “big names” to a separate Twitter list called The Famous I Follow and then I stop following them. It’s a more efficient way to track what they are Tweeting.
That is probably a good idea (the lists). I’ve yet to really start using lists though.
Bill´s last blog ..Road construction on Writelife
I think this preoccupation with the follower and following numbers is completely bizarre. There’s is nothing to ‘get’ here – it’s simply pointless (except for the one reason you cited). The DM idea – email works just as well doesn’t? Am I missing something?
I totally agree with what Bill mentions Godin said – social media is procrastination tool and a time waster. Sorry to be negative. I am betting that the more people are engaged with SM the less is their productivity. I don’t believe it when I read otherwise. If you are marketing yourself or your business through Twitter, I can see strong reasons to be involved. Otherwise, being on there seems similar to time spent watching tv or reading a magazine.
My follow ratio is about 1:4/5. I plan to pare down my following again soon to weed out accounts that don’t tweet, etc.
I follow people for 3 reasons:
1) Information/humor. If you’re consistently tweeting things that I find either valuable or amusing (and I limit amusing ones), then I follow.
2) Celebrity. There are a few people I follow because they are celebrities who are actually good tweeters and fun to follow. I don’t follow ppl like aplusk because I don’t care. But Neil Gaiman, Felicia Day–definitely.
3) Friendship/similar interests. Most of the people I follow are either friends in other internet ways–fellow bloggers, etc–or people who have similar interests and whom I’ve gotten to know. In most cases the similar interest ones followed me first.
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@Monica – there’s no question that social media has the potential to be a time sink, if used without constructive purpose, but it’s really up to each person to decide how to use it.
@Mrs. Micah – your reasons sound just fine to me. But, to Monica’s point, how much time do you spend monitoring Twitter?
I don’t spend much (any) time monitoring who follows me. I only follow based on other people’s reccs (rarely #FF, just everyday reccs) and followers who engage me w/interesting @. I do spend a fair amount of time w/Twitter running.
Mrs. Micah´s last blog ..Creating a Personal Balance Sheet – Textbook Personal Finance
It’s funny, just today I was thinking about that whole “number of Twitter followers” thing and it brought to mind high school days, and how it was so important to have “followers,” to be in the in-crowd. Yes, Twitter is nothing more than a grown up version of that. What’s the first thing you look at when you click on someone you’ve just discovered is following you? I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts it’s the number of followers that person has. If it’s a high number, one is honored to be chosen for their crowd and is more likely to promptly join it. But really, who can follow, I mean, really read that many tweets and still get anything accomplished in a day? Answer: no one can, and so they don’t. The great irony of “social” networking is that everyone’s on it because they want to be heard and yet no one is listening. Well, hardly anyone.
Just to clarify my own feeling … while there is the “don’t have time” issue I mentioned and the time sink problem, who I followed is very important to me. I’ve found links to information and ideas on Twitter I wouldn’t have found elsewhere. I’ve also followed as news stories developed (mostly through following reporters’ tweets). It’s definitely of value to me for news, career and general information (whereas I find I use Facebook more as a personal tool – with family, friends etc.). But I have to be selective when it comes to who I follow and how much time I give to it.
Bill´s last blog ..Road construction on Writelife
@MrsMicah – stay strong, resist #FF!
@Carol Surface – there are certainly some parallels to your comparison of “followers” to high school “followers”. There’s always someone listening, I think, even if we don’t realize it.
@Bill – good advice.
I loathe #ff. Used to be smart, now a bit much.
You’re right. And I do *kinda* do that. What I do is this: I’ve started a few lists to try to surface people I know more than the horde. Like you. That makes me see you at least a bit more than it used to. Make sense?
Chris Brogan…´s last blog ..Martin Luther King Jr- Kitchen Table Talks
@Chris – it’s a privilege to be added to anyone’s list (I assume that you must have added me to a private list), so I do appreciate that. However, my point wasn’t to entice you to add me to a Twitter list, just to suggest something else.
The value of following someone so they can DM you gets negated when you follow too many people. I assume you must dip in and out of your DMs the way that you dip in and out of your Twitter stream, correct? After awhile, the DMs must become a wall of noise that’s hard to manage.
The fallacy of arguments such as yours and Mr. Brogan’s is in the traditional means of Twitter following, e.g. not following by list.
I admit I’m anomalous when I cite I follow less than 20 by stream and several hundred by list, and have nearly 2,000 followers by stream and who knows how many by list.
The list feature confuses every “rule” out there.
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