Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Top 10 Reasons Why I'm Not Following You on Twitter and 10 Why I Am

Image Flickr User: carrotcreative

For me and many educators, Twitter has often been like an online faculty lounge where I get control over who stays in the room and who has to leave. That may sound cruel but that's the way social networks work. You choose who to follow for many reasons. Everyone has their own criteria, and I thought I'd share a few of my own here.

Top 10 Reasons Why I'm Probably NOT Following You on Twitter:
  1. You're an egg or default avatar with no profile. Add a photo and a bio. Tell me something meaningful about yourself. 
  2. You are following 300 people and have 2 followers. This tells me you are a Spammer.
  3. You've Tweeted me a link and nothing else. See #2.
  4. I get more than a few Follow Requests every day. I don't have time to click through on every one of them. Engage me or @ me or say "Hi," and I'll notice you. I know I need to do a better job of following more people. I'm working on this.
  5. You follow for awhile, build up your numbers, build relationships, then unfollow in large numbers thus playing games with your Klout or "follower numbers" for appearance-sake. No thanks.
  6. You are argumentative for the sake of being argumentative.
  7. For the sake of building a conversation, you appear to go out of your way to be hurtful to people; resorting to immature behavior such as lying, rallying the troops with "Straw Man Arguments," pulling the "wounded duck" routine, name calling and/or see #6.
  8. You meanly mock others. (Not to be confused with gentle teasing.)
  9. I know you outside of Twitter, you never Tweet, but you read my Tweets. I know this because you refer to them when I see you. (Same goes for Facebook.) Can you spell, C-R-E-E-P-Y?
  10. You've asked me for help, I've helped. I've asked you for help, you've ignored me. Seriously?
Top 10 Reasons Why I Probably AM Following You on Twitter:
  1. You make me laugh.
  2. You make me think.
  3. You've changed my mind.
  4. You've sent me places online, pointed me to articles and blogposts and provided resources I might not have found as quickly on my own.
  5. You've cheered me on when I'm excited about something.
  6. You've helped me promote something that's important to me (a blogpost, a contest, a cause, a friend).
  7. You've told me when you think I'm wrong.
  8. You've argued with me, respectfully.
  9. You've taught me something.
  10. You make me feel like I'm a part of something global.
What are your top reasons for following or not?

Image credit:


Aviva (@grade1) said...

This is a great list, Lee! You actually pointed out many of the reasons that I follow people and many of the reasons that I don't. I also tend to follow people that I notice teach the same (or a similar) grade to me, as well as those that are in the Faculty of Education and learning to be teachers. I want to support them as they start teaching, and I want them to see the value in building a PLN using Twitter. My hope is that a follow and some shared tweets might help. You never know.:)


metzy said...

Thanks for making me laugh and think at the same time. Will definitely share with my colleagues who are yet as a starting point for Twitter. @metzy

Juliet Robertson said...

Well said - funnily enough similar thoughts were going through my mind especially over folk who follow me and then unfollow me... it seems to happen more and more often too. Ah well.

All the best for 2012.

PS What also really annoys me is my blog being filtered out from some sites. I know I have posted a YouTube video of Jason Mraz singing "You're Outdoors" on Sesame Street but to block my website seems an extreme reaction! LOL!

Helen said...

Good list. 'on topic' to 'off topic' tweet ratio is always a big one for me. I do unfollow when there's too much domestic chatter and not enough of the reason I followed them; endless American politics retweets are a prime reason for unfollowing!

There are a few 'conversationalists' I follow because they're just fun. I had to start a couple of extra twitter accounts, because of my broad interests.

Katrina Williams said...

Wow Miss Kolbert, both list are great. If I were a beginning user of twitter I would definitely want to be referred to your blog for the pros and cons of followers. My EDM310 teacher insists that our class should join Twitter and this will help with a lot of questions of some of my classmates. Thank You!