Gaming Twitter For Followers – How do YOU feel about it?

brett

This is a guest posting Brett Borders (@BrettBorders).  Brett is an independent Web Traffic Developer based in Boulder, CO, specializing in SEO and social media consulting. He’s also the brains behind Social Media Rockstar, a weekly social media blog . Read original post and the discussion here.

A few weeks ago, I mutually befriended a fellow blogger on Twitter thinking that we had a lot in common…but yesterday I woke up and discovered that I’d been wiped from his friends list. I felt slightly concerned that I’d somehow offended him, until I saw a blog post where he describes spamming 45,000 people for the sake of self-promotion and then using scripts to drop everyone. It’s worth reading, as an amazingly slick PR piece, where he paints baiting-and-switching people to build one-way followers as a virtuous self-discovery process… and many of his fans applaud him for it.

I’m not writing this to pick on any one person - but to call out and discourage the practice of passive-aggressive follow spam from gaining any kind of social legitimacy. I feel strongly that if more people try to gain one-way followers like this, the quality of the average user’s experience on Twitter will go down the dumpster - fast. 

Is there anything less cool than aggressively mass following people and swiftly mass booting ALL of them? Why is this kind of behavior passive-aggressive? First, because he aggressively power networked with people, spending months madly mashing buttons and sweet talking anyone with a pulse, often adding hundreds or thousands of new followers per day.

Then he passively used multiple scripts to drop everyone (because it would take too much effort to whack everyone by hand) - keeps the benefit of having most of his followers - and then invites those who notice what he did to “re-apply” for friendship. To me, that’s far sketchier and more insidious than some “Make Money Online” guy building up mutual friends and dropping MLM links. The active of aggressively following and then mass unfollowing deserves a gold cup in the “Social Marketing Hall of Shame” (see picture above).

The Defining Traits of Social Media Spam

  • Spam is self-promotional. The sole motivation is to benefit the person who does it. Oftentimes it will promise false benefits to the recipient (”You Have Won $5 million!, “I’m a nice guy who really wants to connect on Twitter and be your friend!“) to entice people to take action that benefits the perpetrator - i.e., having more people follow them.
  • Spam is done on a mass scale. Spam gets its name from the Monty Python sketch where a restaurant bombards customers with thousands of ‘Spam’ dishes that they really don’t want. Passive-aggressive Twitter spammers hustle thousands of people they have no real interest in connecting with.
  • Spam is automated. Spammers use scripts to follow and unfollow people… to do the dirty work that would be too exhausting to do by hand. Scripts have legitimate uses, but it depends on the intention they are used with: Is it to make connecting and reciprocating easier, or to make baiting-and-switching people easier?
  • Spam is calculating. Spammers know that a lot of people will be irked and inconvenienced by their actions, but they calculate that the long-term personal gain will outweigh the bad karma and short-term fall out.
  • Spam is deceptive. Spammers often use deceptive headlines and double-speak to obscure what is really going on. They’ll try to take your money, clog your inbox and waste your time… and make it seem like it was a good idea or something you signed up for.

How Passive-Aggressive Following Ruins Twitter

  • It’s a game. Twitter spam is a game to see who can “get” the most attention followers while wanting to “give back” as little attention as humanly possible. It’s the three-card monte of microblogging.
  • It wastes people’s time. It clogs people’s timelines and inboxes with notifications from insincere spammers who aren’t really interested in connecting, causing real friends and fans to get buried in the noise.
  • It disregards people’s feelings. People don’t like being dropped. Fellow spammers don’t notice… but it leaves a very sour taste for those who legitimately cares about the other people in their online network.
  • It decreases community trust and goodwill. After people get used enough, people stop trusting new people. Twitter becomes like a gaudy Flash banner, a Nigerian marriage proposal, “hot chick” who friend requests you on MySpace.
  • It creates crashes and down time. Using scripts to game people puts an incredible strain on the technical network infrastructure. Next time you are at a conference and urgently need to send a message… and Twitter goes down, thank your neighborhood mass follow spammer for using many times their fair-share of the bandwidth to promote themselves.

Mass Following or Cleaning Isn’t Spam, But Doing Both IS

Some people feel that anyone who mass follows is spammers - including people like@zaibatsu @robmcnealy & @alohaarleen - but I disagree. I think they are ’social butterfly’ personalities who are driven “go big” and interact with thousands of people. They are social marketers (’people artists’) who understand people’s feelings and relationship karma… probably to well to seriously consider chopping all their fans. Nor do I think that all people who trim down their follow lists are spammers. It just depends on how they got their followers and their intentions.

If someone is a top blogger or international conference speaker who earned a large chunk of their fans through legitimate buzz ( not from aggressive mass following & hustling) - and they want to cut back on the noise - it’s more forgivable, to me. But I’m hard-pressed to think of a social media behavior that strikes me as more unsavory, or more un-rockstar-like than becoming an instant, fake “Twitter celebrity” by using scripts to add zillions of friends — and then using scripts to drop them all the second you think you can get away with it.

Can you think of anything less cool? If you can, please tell me in the comments. Spammers might think it makes them look “big” and more popular, but for me - it just shows that the Emperor Wears No Clothes. I can read between the lines see what a small-time, “triple digit” player they would be if it they hadn’t resorted to gaming people.

  • Do you think it is wrong to game Twitter for followers?
  • Do you think it’s excusable? Why or why not?
  • Have you ever been gamed? If so, how’d it make you feel?

Share your thoughts in the comments!

Category: Unique Insights

  • AngelIVXXX
    Eh, good call Brett. Only the blind can't see what he did or those who are likely to do the same and admire him for showing them the way.

    As for his comments, " Me doth think thee protest too much," comes to mind. He knows he did wrong and that's why he's trying to defend his unethical actions.

    What a waste, he puts a blight on twitter. It's easier to deal with the spambots and porn as at least they're upfront. He lures you in and then spams you with his worthless tweets coming from a worthless perspective if he thinks what he did was right.
  • Ed
    I don't know where to start correcting you Brett. This post is complete rubbish from so many approaches.
  • Hello -

    Interesting and thought provoking article that calls on us all to examine our principles, goals, and values in the twitterverse.

    I'll take a stab at it and look forward to the thoughts of others to hone same.

    CURRENT RULES I FOLLOW:

    Do not use Twitter to "spam", which for me depends on what is delivered and intent for same. So, if you are sending self-centered messages with no consideration of your audience (ie. MLM messages like "click here and learn how to get 16,000 followers every day"), you are spamming and that is not wanted or even productive in the end.

    Target those you follow based on your true interest groups. If you are following everyone and anyone, then either you are unfocused, or doing so simply to build a spam list. But, if you are following as many as possible in a certain niche of interest, or two, and doing so to sample, sift, and hunt down the best, that has nothing to do with spamming. I do not agree that following more than you can read or interact with is spamming.

    Serve your followers. Provide information you think they would actually find beneficial and not something you are directly selling every time. I do not see a problem with an occasional affiliate link if:
    a) it is directly related to the niche of your followers,
    and b) you believe in the product or service, rather then simply trying to sell something to make a buck.

    Unfollow for good reasons. I think unfollowing because someone is not following you is completely understandable. Unfollowing because you are not interested in their recent postings, likewise. And, while I'm hard pressed to think of other good reasons to unfollow, I'm not certain that everyone who mass unfollows a number of people is doing so unethically.

    SCRIPTS & AUTOMATION: If you use an automated script to follow people in your interest area because you want to learn from a group, that's fine -- even if that group exceeds the number you can actually correspond with regularly. Who wrote a rule that you have to limit yourself to just those you can talk to? And likewise using a "cleaning" script to unfollow those who don't follow you is also reasonable -- why tune in to those that care nothing about your postings? How would that be "conversational?"

    It all boils down to common sense, ethics, and good values. If you are on Twitter to learn, serve and correspond with many you uncover on your Twitter journey rather than just grow a list for SPAM, then your intentions are in the right place. I don't have a problem with growing a list for marketing reach as part of your objectives, as long as you do not SPAM. The notion that lists should be limited unless you are some kind of celebrity has no premises to uphold the arguement. Why? Why can't many find you and see your posts and value them and engage -- even automatically (hey... they set the auto follow button... that was their choice), and so you gather a large following with no prior "celebrity" status?

    The idea that if you follow more than you can read in a sitting, or can correspond with, might be SPAM is ludicrous at best, and pathetic attempt to constrain people to a limited definition of what's truly valuable in Twitter at worst.

    It's not the number of people you follow or that follow you that counts -- it's your intent, purpose, and the value you bring to them that is the bottom line.

    - Scott
  • I think you miss one of the great aspects of Twitter: the fact that the basic social connection is one of "follower" rather than "friend".

    It's not about friendship, and reversing the decision to follow somebody doesn't say anything about your relationship with them other than the worth you place on their updates. I don't care if somebody stops following me - my updates aren't interesting to everyone. If you begin to treat this relationship more like Facebook's "friend" relationship, I can see how you would be offended, so don't.

    Don't follow people whose updates you don't care about reading. You'll never be "gamed" that way.

    Read more: http://sanchom.blogspot.com/2009/04/friend-vs-f...
  • Janice in GA
    I mostly follow friends & distant acquaintances on Twitter, along with a few carefully selected other feeds. I deliberately keep the number of people I follow LOW so that I can know them as real people, and not get overwhelmed by msgs.

    I don't get adding followers for the sake of adding followers. Spam is spam. I see a lot of people posting links to a page that links to REAL stories. I'm sure that's just a way to drive up page views for advertising, and I avoid those.

    I hate spam and automated stuff like this.
  • Jesus, you guys ever hear of this place called the outside world? There's sunshine and flowers and all this crazy stuff, and best of all you don't have to worry your head with silly things, like, ridiculously silly things, like "gaming Twitter". I mean, come on, who cares.

    It's clear, this guy is an asshole trying to build an audience. Period. Is he a spammer? Yes. Is he misusing and abusing a service in a sorry attempt for personal gain? Yes. What else is there to discuss really?

    I used Twollo and Twitter Karma to effectively manage growth and once I hit 1,000 followers on my @staires account I quit. Part of this was because I didn't want to be an annoying asshole, part was because the majority of the people who follow you back are spam bots, and part was because followers do not really equal any positive value. Out of 1,100 followers I'd say that maybe 10 click on my links on a day to day basis. I thought about doing what this guy did, back in January, but for what reason would I do it?

    The point is, Twitter is just a thing people use to distract themselves from reality. This is why advertising won't work (like Facebook, like MySpace) and this is why people doing things like this will eventually stop. The people who really use Twitter don't use it to receive broadcasts from social media blowhards. It's just a frickin' toy.

    You all need to get over yourselves. If there was a God somewhere out there in the world he'd be looking down at you saying, "I've given you so much, this whole beautiful world to enjoy, full of other beautiful people, and instead you decide to sit at home and discuss the merits of farming Twitter? Why hast thou forsaken the Earth?"

    You'd all be better off watching soap operas and reading soap opera digest so you always know what is going to happen. That is basically the mental equivalent of what is going on here.
  • rWilliam
    Amen brother. Reading this has been 10 minutes of my life i'll never get back.
  • Wow. I'm actually going to step out into the Phoenix sun this afternoon to cool off. There's far too many flames on the intarwebz today. ZOMGZ.

    Brad's got the right idea. Get over yourselves. Who cares. If you want to follow eleventy-billion people, play the numbers for some auto-follows, then cut people loose because you just have WAY too much redundancy in your network, so be it.

    Kinda bummed that Mr. Tweet, who I come to for suggestions on people I might be interested in following - for news, entertainment, or one day friendship - has this sort of school yard pissing match going on. Reflects poorly on what has been an otherwise useful service.
  • mingyeow
    Hey, sorry for conveying the wrong impression here! We try to be positive,
    but we also like to tackle such issues occasionally as well.... hope for
    your understanding!

    M
  • mingyeow
    Hey, sorry for conveying the wrong impression here! We try to be positive,
    but we also like to tackle such issues occasionally as well.... hope for
    your understanding!

    M
  • This is true.. A lot of persons do it and it's very irritating. I openly told a guy that he's a jerk.
  • Aggressively following 10's of thousands of people on Twitter IS spam. No question! There is no "social butterfly" exception either ... it's always SPAM. You follow a ton of people because you want them to hear YOUR message ... not because you give a shit about them.

    It's not a fun, or genuine, way to use the medium ... but it is an effective strategy for creating clicks and attention. The appeal is obvious. As long as the rules allow it ... I can't blame people for doing it.

    But I totally agree that bulk unfollowing after aggressive following is THE WORST violation of social etiquette. You shouldn't show your face again in public. And what Seth did was even worse {and YES I AM calling him out :: HEY! SETH! CALL OUT!} ... because he has the air of legitimacy and smarts about him. Some tweeps were probably honored when he followed :: and then he unfollows with a "mea culpa" that asks YOU to reapply for HIS attention. wtf? You were using Twitter WRONG dog ... not me. You already taxed my time by pretending to be interested in me when you were not. If this is a genuine Saul to Damascus type moment ... then honor compels you to give up the old Twitter account completely and start fresh. YOU remember the people you liked ... and re-ask them for their attention. Otherwise what you just did is TOTAL GARBAGE.
  • sethsimonds
    I'm here.

    Read and considered, sir.
  • peech
    I think it's simply very Myspace-esque and the same thing that ruined it and many other "social" networking sites. The goal was to have the most fans... the most people watching them on their "stage" while looking aloof and unapproachable because of their small number of "friends."

    It is part of SNS, and will never change.
  • I don't get mass following from any perspective. Having tons of followers makes sense if you are a celebrity or a broadcast channel like the @NTTimes. But for individuals, not? I used to have great relationships with people when they had fewer followers. But once you get into the 10s of thousands it's a challenge to keep up relationships with them -- even if you are exceptionally gifted social media artiste.

    I'd rather grow my community organically. The followers I have are more likely to retweet me, support my efforts, laugh at my jokes and answer my questions. And isn't that the best part of twitter?
  • I completely agree with you and it's actually been something I've been battling with myself as far as getting tons of followers for means of broadcasting versus staying small. I find the personal relationships too powerful to loose just to broadcast on Twitter. Yet, the level of interaction for me has been decreasing. Any thoughts?
  • sethsimonds
    Brett, you say this isn't an attack and yet this shows up on Twitter

    http://twitter.com/#search?q=brettborders%20set...

    You can delete tweets from your stream but they don't get deleted on Twitter.

    Commence explanation.
  • It wasn't the mass following-unfollowing-refollowing that made me roll my eyes. It was claiming that cutting down a follow list to 10-15K people constituted some kind of sane scale, newly reclaimed authenticity, or community-building — and then complaining that having a list of people you prefer reading sifted out of that number is somehow cheating. I recognize it's a flexible tool and people use it differently, but give me a break.

    Following 15,000 people is not building community. It's marketing. There's nothing wrong with marketing in and of itself, mind. But when it pretends to be something it cannot be, it's annoying as hell.
  • sethsimonds
    I think you're right in a lot of ways. Definitely on the 15k. Now that I've had a chance to start going through and following people back, I have trouble imagining what it'd be like to have left 15,000 comments on blogs, sent DM's, emails, and chatted with even more.

    But, in my defense, I was writing that post while accustomed to reading a stream from 3 times that many people.

    Will I ever follow 15k again? 10k? No. Probably not. Was that an aside at the end of the post that I could have done better leaving off? Perhaps.

    I really appreciate your input. The difference between following everybody back while using a 3rd party sifter and unfollowing a bunch of people, in my eyes, was one of transparency. I guess I could have done a better job of explaining that.
  • I will avoid getting embroiled in the conversation directly but skip over everybodys head and ask Brett directly if he dosent mind.

    If you had been Seth and realised that you had been using twitter in a way that you thought was right but have realised is wrong how would you have gone about rectifying the problem.

    And if you where a spammer, aiming to create "celebrity" status how would you have approached the problem (if there was one in the first place for a spammer).

    Seth has been upfront about this completely, explaining his reasoning behind it and his plans for the future. He could have left the account to stagnate for future "spams" when the need became apparent, but rather he has been completely transparent and is glad that many of the followers he had are jumping ship, I dont think they will miss him or he them. why? Maybe because he does put value in the face and name against the account? Many spammers dont and wont.

    And dont think im jumpiing to Seths defense here as a biased person. I know Seth through Twitter. I noticed he was very quiet recently and when he appeared again I tried to DM him and couldn't, then I saw the post he wrote being ReTweeted and I asked him with @ what was up. He followed me straight back and I was glad he did, I enjoyed reading the bollocks he writes (joking Seth joking) to be concerned that this was some sort of passive aggressive attempt at celebrity.

    There are more subtle ways of achieving that aim than a mass unfollow and a lengthy blog post explaining why surely.

    I think you have been a little blunt in this post by using Seths method as an example, though your points are most definitely valid, just misdirected maybe?
  • Justin,

    1.) I try not to take on more than I can realistically handle and fulfill - because I hate the feeling of letting people down or letting something go to waste. That's true with real life friends, RSS feeds, music and movie connections, client work. If I had aggressively built my followers up to 46,000 people by using a add-reciprocate-drop-repeat system - I would feel obligated to keep them and filter interesting stuff in Tweetdeck and other tools to make it more useful for me. Or I would delete my account and start right back up again.

    I understand that not everyone is like me, but for me the thought of making 46k online friends - under my real name - and giving them the boot all at once is unthinkable. To me, anything would feel better or let me sleep easier - because this is my job / career / reputation .. it's not a game or an experiment where I can afford to get a lot of people mad at me.

    2.) If I were a spammer trying to attain a legit "follow" ratio... I would be super nice, build thousands of followers by the "mass follow/delete those who don;'t reciprocate" game... and then I would probably wipe them out slowly... rather than in one sweep... and not give any explanation for it. Or I might do what Seth did, and boot everyone as soon as I got my numbers high enough in tandem with an amazingly good job of explaining and justifying it. I'm not saying HE or he calculated and planned this move in advance or he didn't have some kind of change of heart... I'm sure he did... but this isn't about him. This is about the Twitter Community and the impact that aggressive self-promotion has on the "quality of life" here.

    I'm just saying that doing THESE TACTICS in order to build one-way followers is SPAM... it's hard to argue that wanting to build up a large list of one-way followers, without the inconvenience and hassle of paying attention and responding to so many people back, wasn't part of his (conscious or unconscious) motivation for doing it...

    I do not encourage this tactic as a legitimate way of building one-way followers quickly and easily - because it creates gigawatts of noise, unwanted notifications, and bad feelings in the community.
  • I agree with Justin here.

    For the record, I'm subscribed to both Seth and Brett's blogs, and I did so around the same time (a few weeks ago). I don't know which one has more followers, friends, subscribers, or any other metric you want to use. They're both about the same in my book. I've enjoyed reading posts from both of them, and I've noticed that they both actively engage readers in their comments.

    I stumbled upon this kerfuffle while catching up on Seth's posts, and reading about his decision to unfollow a ton of people and start over. I've since been popping back and forth, reading both sets of comments, and frankly, I'm exhausted. I think this whole argument is rather childish.

    Brett, your comments were pretty harsh, and Seth, your responses keep perpetuating the conversation. Seriously, guys - it's a Twitter account. You do what you want with yours, and I'll do what I want with mine. I don't care how many people you follow, or how many follow you. If I like what you have to say, I'll follow you. If you like what I have to say, you'll follow me. If anything stronger than that develops, and if we actually start having a true dialogue, all the better. (BTW, those don't take place much on Twitter anyway - you have to take it offline to email and/or blogs to avoid the 140-character trap.)

    From what I've seen, Seth has done a good job communicating what he's doing and why. I choose to believe him. I think Brett's heart is in the right place, and I still respect what he's saying and why.

    I'll keep following you both. But can we cut down on the sniping a bit, please?

    Thanks.
  • Nate,

    I agree, I think it's mostly all been said. Thanks for subscribing to my blog and rest assured this will be the last "complaint" type post you'll read in a long time.

    I just really LIKE Twitter and I can see things swinging in a variety of ways, some that are very cool and positive... where trust blossoms and amazing connections are made.... others where it just becomes some kind of seedy online stripmall of people trying to hustle up followers, drop commercial links and do anything for a nickel or a click... I've been in social media for 20 years and I've seen it happen time and time again...

    And I want to see the strong community here that is emerging continue be a positive experience with a minimum of games and headaches. If Seth wasn't trying to game the system to get 37,000 one-way followers without having to follow anyone back - then I apologize if I was too harsh in some of my statements...

    But I will still block him and anyone else who follows and drops me in a systematic matter - as a matter of my personal Twitter policy. I will call any future episodes of mass-following-then-mass-purging with scripts : SPAM SPAM, SPAM...

    for the reasons I outlined in my post. From here on out, there's no more "maybes" about it for me.
  • sethsimonds
    Brett's comments weren't entirely unwarranted. I got him going by responding badly on my blog so much of this is my fault.

    That said. I hear what you're saying and I appreciate your input.

    That's it for me here. I have some great content that has been waiting for me to finish/post it and I'm sure Brett's got something up his sleeve as well.

    Thanks, Nate!
  • M
    WTFever to people who want to look at this from a personal perspective and hash out the history of this post. I honestly don't care why this post came to be or if someone is just using it to call out someone else--it doesn't name any names and makes some great points about spammers on Twitter and I agree with it wholeheartedly.
  • sethsimonds
    Brilliantly stated!

    It does name names but you know what? As soon as I set aside the fact that I'm called a spammer, I really found a lot of value in the post. It's an important reminder to be cautious in our dealings online and keep an eye out for those who would try to make money off our good favor.

    I don't mind taking a hit for it because it started a much-needed conversation and I think a lot of people will be rethinking their use of Twitter as a result.

    Complete win and well worth any damage incurred.
  • guest
    I don't like the idea of using scripts to either follow or unfollow people. I follow people because there is something about their page I like, I see they said something interesting. Doing that in mass just seems insincere like they don't really care what people are saying.
  • sethsimonds
    I didn't use a script to follow people. I simply decided that I'd taken the wrong approach to twitter and wanted to start fresh. There are scripts available to unfollow inactive accounts, non-mutuals, lots of things. Most of them exist to make "short work" of the type of "relationship" many of us have learned to accept on Twitter.

    A script can't decide who you should follow or unfollow just like Twitter Grader can't really tell you if you're doing a good job connecting with people on Twitter.

    I'd approached Twitter initially thinking that "hey, the more people I get to talk to, the better." And boy did I talk to people! I'm a fairly random person so fun ice breaker questions and replies were standard fare on @sethsimonds. It was a lot of fun, I met a lot of new people, people followed me/I followed back, and I found others to follow as well.

    Then, this past Friday, as I state in the post, I started going through the list of people I was following and getting in touch. I contacted more than 100 people through comments, tweets, and direct messages. The result? 3 of them got back to me.

    That got me thinking about my approach to Twitter and whether I was really connecting with people or just installing more phone lines. I realized it was the latter.

    A month or two ago, when Loic Le Meur was talking about unfollowing everybody, I asked my followers if they thought I should do the same. The consensus? As long as I made myself available by posting my email address, nobody had a problem with me dramatically reducing the number of people I followed.

    This past Sunday, I unfollowed everybody. Not to see who would keep following me and follow back others to build the account: That's a spam tactic. I did it because I want to actually see what people are saying. I can search for terms and talk to anybody on Twitter. I don't need to follow them for that. And the same applies for all of us. Follow who you like and in whatever quantity works best for you.

    It's slow work, going through pages of followers and finding the contributors, the thinkers, and the thoughtful talkers. I say it's worth it.

    I hope I'm right.
  • >Not to see who would keep following me and follow back others to build the > account: That's a spam tactic.

    Your Twitter history shows that you built your account and got your 46,000 followers, beyond any question, with what you describe above as a "spam tactic"

    That's all I am going to say on this disagreement. Goodbye and good luck on your social media adventures. It looks like your path is working for you and connecting you with followers who resonate with it.
  • sethsimonds
    The point of sharing my story was to inspire others to take a different path. And you are!

    Success!

    Thanks for getting the word out there, Brett. As an SEO expert, this must have been really important for you to share in order to take the duplicate content penalty. Props and thanks!
  • From reading the original post, I'm not entirely sure Seth could be considered a spammer. Nevertheless, you make an excellent point. It just may not be valid in regards to Seth.
  • I think the issue is that people care too much about who is following them. Twitter fuels this with its prominent display of stats and its email notifications. It all leads to follower envy.

    But really, there is nothing wrong with being selective. Many people have Twitter front and center on their desktop and phone. Why shouldn't they be picky about whom they grant the right to interrupt them at any time? Especially because many Twitterers use it as a write-first-read-later medium, without any concern for the quality of their stream.

    Stop seeing the act of unfollowing as something offensive, and your problem goes away. First step: turn off all new follower notifications. You will be a happier person.
  • dez
    "Especially because many Twitterers use it as a write-first-read-later medium, without any concern for the quality of their stream."

    Just like an actor practices his lines before speaking into the camera... does this approach give people the 'real' you or is it the 'you' that you want everyone to see?

    I try to make sure my tweets make sense, but otherwise, I don't care, It's my thoughts, it's my microblog, and the people that follow them are free to unfollow. But the important part is that they are getting ME, not some specially scripted version of me.
  • I don't buy it when people say they are "just tweeting their thoughts, giving you full unfiltered access to ME!". Everybody communicates differently in a public forum than they do in private.

    The internet is about communication between people, and the only reason you would put something out there in public is because you expect someone else will (eventually) see it.

    Besides, isn't it as normal to have a filter on your tweeting as it is to have a filter between your brain and mouth? People don't always say whatever pops into their head... why should the internet be different? That too is part of normal social etiquette.
  • dez
    "Besides, isn't it as normal to have a filter on your tweeting as it is to have a filter between your brain and mouth? "

    Good point... I usually forget that normal social etiquette rules aren't followed as much online as they should be.

    What I was trying to get across was that instead of making each of your tweets absolutely relevant, branch off. People can spot the naturals to the fakers (I'm going to limit this to associate to actual people on Twitter: excluding corporate twitter accounts)

    I've done plenty of reflecting on what I tweet and when I do it. I try not to over-post too much because (from you): "Many people have Twitter front and center on their desktop and phone." Same reason why I choose not to have any applications auto-tweet for me.

    So to your point: I tweet what I want, but not unfiltered, nobody wants to know when I'm in the john. But the "quality of their twitstream" sounds fake to me, which is not what I'm going for. If it strikes me to tweet about something, I'll do it, I may try to make sure the wording is right to get my point across in 140 chars, but I send it out without thinking "Will the people following me enjoy reading this?"
  • Do I think it's insincere and uncool to game Twitter? Yes. But this notion that people have that it's also uncool to drop people-- where you mention "it leaves a very sour taste for those who legitimately cares about the other people in their online network." -- That gets on my nerves. Personally, I don't see how people can follow more than about 200 people meaningfully-- I can't, at least. So I often rotate through who I follow. Or I follow new people on a trial basis, who often end up getting unfollowed later.

    And I have gotten so many messages along the lines of, "What did I do? Why did you unfollow me?" It's not necessarily personal, and if I haven't even met you in person then I REALLY have little reason to follow you online if we haven't created a relationship.

    Anyway. People take it too personally, and need to chill.
  • CatRocketship,

    I think it's fine to unfollow people. I unfollowed a few people today. One guy had political views I disagreed with, one girl was noisy.

    It's just a question of scale.

    I just think it gets suspicious when you aggressively solicit 45,000 followers through systematically adding them and unfrineding anyone who doesn't immediately reciprocate... and shortly after, abruptly wiping out all the people who did reciprocate in one swoop with scripts.

    It's "Doing into others (on a mass scale) what you would have not tolerated if they had done unto you."

    That's the bottom line for me. the buck stops there.
  • sethsimonds
    And everybody is welcome to unfollow me back. The people who care about their follower numbers will, over the next few weeks, recognize that I unfollowed them and continue their pattern of reciprocity by unfollowing me.

    YES! GOOD!

    I reassessed my position on Twitter and I want others to do the same. If that means they unfollow me, good.

    So I guess I agree with your golden rule and I hope it sticks. I hope people mass unfollow all the hollow relationships they've formed for the sake of a few numbers. I hope they get rid of the fluff and focus on contacting people they actually like.

    That's change. Remarkable change.

    Why not keep following the guy you disagree with and engage him to figure out where your differences are and what you can do to find progress in spite of those differences? I highly recommend it.
  • Yes it sucks and is, in my opinion, wrong. However I don't think you will ever stop people gaming systems. If there is a system then someone will try to exploit it for personal gain, it's human nature.

    The real problem, or perhaps better to say, the real way to "fix" this is for people to stop blindly following anyone that follows them. Be selective and only follow people that genuinely have something decent to say.

    The end result of this is an improved signal to noise ratio and maybe even the benefit of being followed by more than you, yourself, follow.
  • evan
    Plenty of people do the first part without dropping the followers. You think @comcastcares is reading everyone's tweets?

    By the way this article is incredibly passive-aggressive, more so than following a bunch of people on twitter and then unfollowing them, which is actually NOT passive aggressive at all
  • Anna
    Brett - let's call a spade a spade -- you are directly calling Seth out and attacking him. Don’t try to make it look like anything other than that.

    In no way was Seth "passively aggressively" interacting with twitter users. If you actually did “befriend” him, instead of just “following” him you would have found that he greatly values his network and has been *authentically* active in building it. If you check out any of his blogs you’ll find that he responds to EVERY SINGLE comment – and has from the beginning. If that isn’t building community, I don’t know what is. If you took time to actually communicate with him you would find that he genuinely cares about the people he engages with and is rare gem of a man who isn’t in this for anything other than learning and helping others.

    And for the record, I can think of one thing that is “less cool” then spammers -- making assumptions and blasting a person without knowing the whole story...
  • Anna,

    it appears that you don't know the story of how this discussion was started.

    I didn't start out by attacking Seth.. I started out by sharing my opinion briefly (and without name calling or attacks) a public blog discussion he started and sincerely wishing him good luck - and he responded with a half-dozen personal insults and suggested I was a "prick."

    http://sethsimonds.com/why-i-unfollowed-everybo...

    I respond to almost all comments on my blog too, but to my knowledge I've never attacked or personally insulted anyone for sharing an legitimate opinion that isn't flattering to me or my agenda. Please call me out if I ever do.

    His aggressive response to blog comments really got me thinking about the whole thing, and why it all smells like rotten fish to me. And when Mr. Tweet contacted me and asked if they could reprint it and I said yes - not for self-promotion but because I think this is an important discussion the Twitter community needs to have.

    LETS GET TO THE MEAT OF THIS CONVERSATION:

    What is okay in Twitter promoting? What is crossing the line? Is absolutely anything that increases your follower numbers legit, or are there some things that are best not done because they unfairly increase the white noise and undermine people's trust in the community?

    This kind of tactic totally crosses the "red line" of social trust for me. I think it's something that should be discouraged, not justified and encouraged.

    And I'm not afriad to say it.
  • Anna
    Brett, let’s be real here. The first comment you left on Seth’s blog was intentionally snarky. There is a way to share your opinion respectfully and you chose not to take that path. THAT is the reason his response to you was less than nice.

    What bothers me the most about your attack is that you don’t have all the facts correct. Seth isn’t a spammer. He makes a sincere effort to engage with those he comes in contact with – to listen to and learn from them. He is, in fact, one of the more sincere people I’ve “met” in the blogosphere.

    I assure you he wasn’t spamming or being a creep or “gaming” as you put it. I think he originally tried to use Twitter in a particular way and then found that wasn’t working for him. We’re all allowed to change our minds. His blog post wasn’t a “slick PR piece” but rather an explanation of his decision – and since when is justification necessary when we “unfollow” on Twitter?? It happens all the time that people unfollow others on Twitter – it’s reminiscent of real life – friendships wax and wane for all sorts of reasons. If he hadn’t written that post, would you have even cared that he chose not to follow you anymore? Would you have even noticed? And if so, would you have asked him why?

    If anything, Seth was owning up to the fact that he wanted to approach things differently and knew that may hurt some feelings. I applaud his efforts to strengthen his network and to make it more valuable to not only him, but those connected to him. Imagine if we all thought that way…
  • How can you say my comment was "intentionally snarky"? You don't know me and how I communicate online well enough to judge that.

    I don't know how to respond more respectfully or sincerely to someone confessing how they just mass dropped 45,000 followers that they aggressively solicited with scripts and pruning - without being a spineless cheerleader or sellout.

    If this kind of game playing works for you on Twitter, that's cool.. but I have very, very different ways to approaching online relationships and making friends with people.
  • sethsimonds
    Brett: In direct recognition of the fact that, as you say, "you don't know me and how I communicate online well enough to judge that" I posted the following response to your slew of comments on my blog:

    "Your initial comment was hostile. It’s right up there above if you want to read it. Read very closely and understand how it would be taken by 90% of the population.

    At least I responded to your comments. And you keep coming back. And I keep responding.

    Brett, it nearly looks like we’re having a conversation.

    If you want to hit me with an email and say anything you want off the record, I’d welcome that. If you’d like to continue this here, so be it.

    However, if you didn’t mean to instigate a negative response in your first comment, then clarify that and I’ll apologize for my response and any insult delivered."

    What'll it be?
  • sethsimonds
    Hi Brett.

    Now that I've read your post again, I decided to try reading it without paying attention to the parts that refer directly to me.

    ::paradigm shift::

    I agree with 90% of your post now instead of 10%. We're very much on the same page about spammers. We disagree in that you think I'm a spammer and I'm pretty certain I'm not...but that's cool.

    I'm glad you've taken the time to get this message out. If your description of my behavior is enough to give people pause and rethink their approach to Twitter, then the end result is to my liking.

    Make an example of me, Brett. Just do it in such a way that people make an effort to connect with people in a real way and find value in their daily interactions online and off.

    I'll gladly take a few grillmarks for that.

    Thanks!
  • Seth,

    I intentionally did not mention you by name in this post and wasn't trying to focus on you - but on the aggressive tactic, which I couldn't find a better example of:

    If this isn't a hardcore, textbook example of Twitter spam... abusing the system and manipulating people's trust in order to gain one-way followers... then asking people to "re-apply" for friendship isn't a mind game... I'm not sure what is.

    I've been in social media for almost 20 years and I don't think I've seen anything more savory or less "legit" - I wish I could think of an example and say "at least it's not as bad as..." but I'm hard pressed to think of anything.

    If it works for your ethical system and makes you feel like a "big guy" ... you can try and justify it and tell others why it's a good idea and it makes the Twitter community a better place...

    but I call it social media SPAM and moral bankruptcy.

    And you can try and justify, celebrate and encourage it... but nothing about it works for me and I prefer to keep a distance from people who follow people and drop them to build their numbers.
  • sethsimonds
    I'm just going to quote you, because you said it so well:

    "You don't know me and how I communicate online well enough to judge that."
  • Great post. My feelings exactly. I wrote similar in comments on Seth's blog about his mass unfollowing, and has posted on FriendFeed about the subject as well.

    I think that what he did was rude, wrong, and in a manner of speaking, lying, and disingenuous.

    I'm glad you've called him out on this.
  • Guruvan,

    I'm not trying to call anyone out, but do I want to call this tactic out and do my small part to make sure it doesn't become a 'socially acceptable' networking strategy. That's when it's time for me to delete my Twitter account because everything I liked about it (connections, signal, honesty, real people, lack of gaming) is gone.
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