Following me, following you (ah-haa)
March 19th, 2010 by Lloyd Gofton
This post has been brewing for some time, and recent conversations have brought it to the front of my mind. It’s certainly not a new debate, but it is still relevant, and never quite seems to go away as a topic of discussion.
Allow me to set the scene. I am a Twitter user (shock!), I’ve been using Twitter since December 24th 2007, according to How long have you been tweeting and although it took me sometime to truly warm up to Twitter, I now find it a very useful conversation tool both personally and as a part of my role at Liberate Media. But friends, I do not follow back all of those that follow me.
This is not a steadfast rule, I don’t refuse to follow people that follow me, I always take a good look at new followers (maybe not straight away) and evaluate if following in return would add to my community and the focuses that I am interested in.
This approach has of course lost me followers, and earlier this month one such follower made their reasons for this following - unfollowing procedure clear. Without going into too much detail this person had found me via a colleague, thought I would be interesting to follow (in fact they followed all of Liberate Media’s team) but unfollowed me within a few weeks for the sole reason that I did not follow them back. I know this because they said as much in an email, confirming that an agency of our type should be aware of its followers and follow them back as a matter of course, and as we didn’t they have unfollowed and wouldn’t be coming back.
The point that we may have looked at this person and decided not to follow them back didn’t seem to cross their mind, and by communicating this sequence of events as a failing of the agency seemed to suggest that reciprocal following is some sort of unwritten rule or etiquette.
Before I get into my opinions on the issue, let me state that everyone is entitled to their opinion, there are no official rules of Twitter, other than the obvious, and we all have a right to use the platform as we see fit, so this person is of course free to act as they wish.
In my case however, I choose not to follow reciprocally. I choose not to mass follow thousands to get nearly the same number back, I see no value in it as in my opinion it doesn’t help to build a conversation - it’s just a numbers game. Of course we’re all interested in our follower numbers, that’s just human nature, but some equate value in the number of followers, some equate value in the difference between followers and following, some equate value in the quality of conversation and the exchange of knowledge. I fall into the last category, that’s my decision, it works for me.
Some people may feel that my favoured approach is in fact anti-community, and I am not interacting with the whole. I would argue that the size of the community is not the issue, but the relevancy that each person has within that community and the value that each person brings/derives within the community, whether it’s 10 strong or 10,000, is the issue.
I know there will be some that agree and others that disagree, and that’s a good thing in my opinion. Our social media community, which encompasses many platforms and networks, allows us the freedom of choice to do as we wish and develop our communities in the way the suits us best. That’s why I don’t think there should be community rules that say things like we have to follow people back that follow us.
It’s not rude, it’s not anti-community, and it doesn’t go against some social media sermon that was supposedly written in days of yore.
If I’m not following you back it’s not because I have slighted you or your family, it’s not because I don’t believe you are interesting, it’s simply a choice that we all make based on a number of elements. After all, do we welcome every person we meet into our network of friends? Do I have to become friends with those that my friends introduce me to? Isn’t that an individual choice that we each make, and have the right to later change?
So, what are your thoughts on the subject, how do you build your community? Here are a couple of pieces that look a little deeper into the pros and cons of reciprocal following:
Why you should follow everyone who follows you on Twitter by Don Reisinger
The evils of reciprocal following by Doug Braun
If you really want to know who is not following you back, check out Friendorfollow
Tags: Followers, Following, reciprocal following, Social media, twitter
