The End of the Auto-Follow?

Better late than never!

Yesterday, Scott Monty posted on his blog that he would no longer be auto-following people when they followed him on Twitter, because of the crushing load of DM spam it was generating. Which of course brought up that whole debate for me again about what the etiquette should be in these situations.

I started off pretty adamantly against the practice of auto-following, as this post shows. In practice, though, I ended up following many more people than I could actually relate to. But after thinking about it again this week, I believe my opinion has essentially remained unchanged, as I talk about in the above AudioBoo. Here's what I wrote on Scott's blog:

Because I don't get more than one or two spam DMs a week, I usually poke fun of people on Twitter by saying, "My followers are smarter than yours." Partly because of the delicious irony that it's both a compliment and a slam, but also to highlight that the accepted social currency system is flawed.

I follow lots of people who don't follow me back. And lots of people follow me who I don't follow back. And it's all because that's the way it works in real life -- sometime we just don't interest each other equally.

Here's the issue: When we make the reason for following the act of them following us, we're not really listening anyway -- so really, what's the point? I'd much rather be interested (at least passingly) in what they're saying first. I think you're correct that everyone should have the right to be followed and we're bound to follow more than we can listen to religiously. But at least I have a reason for following.

I recently started following http://twitter.com/nunchtchas who does what you are now going to be doing. And I think it's a much better plan. She asks in her profile for people to @ her if they want a followback. Much cleaner and much more "social" if you ask me. Because really, how can we "friend" someone if we've never even met them. ;)

To boil it down,the true social currency can't be sustained socialistically. Social networks are clearly capitalistic. And some people will simply hold more interest. It's time we accept that.

Tags: autofollow, beancast, followers, following, marketing+podcast, scott+monty, social+media, twitter

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Comment by Jonathan Thomas on November 17, 2009 at 11:41pm: Hey Bob,

I read Scott's blog as well and wanted to post a comment. I started glancing through the 70-some-odd comments and happen to stop on yours. I realized that your name looked familiar, and ultimately realized I sat in on a talk of yours at the MarketingProfs Summit in Boston a couple years ago.

Anyways, I totally agree with your take on the twitter auto-follow debate. When I started I was very judicious with my selections of those I follow and really focused on those who I could get value from. I simply couldn't comprehend how I could keep up with hundreds of those I'm following. TweetDeck and Twitter's new "list" function made it easier to keep up with those I'm really interested and still keep my follower/following list near identical, but I never feel obligated to follow someone back simply because they follow me. I ALWAYS check their most recent posts to make sure they post valuable, relevant content. If I see anything about growing followers or taking quizzes or playing games then it's an automatic no.

Also, I never expect someone I follow to follow me back. It's a nice gesture, but I'm following them because I think their tweets are helpful or interesting. It's VERY possible that they aren't into the things I tweet about. No problem.

Great post and great comment. I'm totally with you and I'm surprised that Scott even had the "auto-follow" policy in the first place.

Comment by Bob Knorpp on November 18, 2009 at 12:47am: Wow! Thanks so much for the comments.

To the point about Scott and his original auto-follow policy, I'm not really surprised about it. Many of the big names in social media like Chris Brogan and Peter Shankman have similar policies. It was often preached as the proper etiquette a couple years ago. And really, it is a very egalitarian approach that supposedly treats everyone as being equally important. In theory this sounds great. But in practice it always seemed a bit patronizing as well. Because only the most naive of us ever believed we were being listened to. I could post interesting stuff in my feed from here to Sunday and unless a person with 30,000+ followers has me segregated into a watch column in TweetDeck, the odds of me beings seen and recognized are practically nil. Even when I @ them there is slim to no chance of being recognized, considering the volume they deal with.

Anyway, I'm belaboring the point now. But I appreciate your thoughts.

Comment by Samuel Monnie on November 19, 2009 at 10:59pm: To follow or to not follow that is the question ? Both, this is still a big deal. Those new to Twitter will need to go through the learning curve. This subject will be eternally relevant and provocative. I remain judiscous, and still below the 100 follower count :-), I'm quite happy with that ! and i'm sticking to that....for now.

Comment by Bob Knorpp on November 19, 2009 at 11:04pm: I've always maintained that the most anybody can have a decent relationship with is 50 people. 100 is an outside max. So your approach is very acceptable, Samuel. But at the same time, I love dropping in on conversations and exploring new relationships, so I maintain a list of a lot of follows.

I will admit, though, that when you get above the 10K mark and only follow 50 people, Twitter becomes nothing more than a platform for narcissism. Just sayin'. ;)

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The End of the Auto-Follow?

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