Comments on: Why It Pays to be a Twitter Snob

By: ms danielle

ms danielle — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:06:59 +0000

this is a tough one. i don’t think that users should feel obligated to automatically add followers. like someone else said, if i had 5000-10000 ppl tweeting multiple times a day, there’s no physical way i could actually read all of them, let along read the ones that would truly be important to me. then you’d have to cherry pick who you have to delete or not receive updates from. but not adding *anyone* based on the same principle would mean missed opportunities. i pretty much just check every now and then if it looks like a real person, or if it’s someone i already know of.

By: Erica

Erica — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:59:05 +0000

I would also say that you are likely missing the opportunity to build relationships with people by â€œsnobbing them.â€
Itâ€™s an easy way to stay in touch and way to make connections. Everyday I hear more and more about Twitter and am realizing the networking potential.

By: MLDina

MLDina — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:49:10 +0000

I think the interaction Twitter provides is the most important function- not the amount of tweeters you choose to follow. Some people want to read a few updates from every single one of their followers; some are more selective about their followers but read every single one of their updates. There shouldn’t be set rules, as long as you’re happy with the level of interaction you get from twitter, follow (or don’t) away!

By: SEO

SEO — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:29:18 +0000

Well if you read every post on twitter that your followers post then you are not getting any work done. Twitters great for those who believe hype and veiled dreams but I’ll toss a few of those great dreams out there for everyone to contemplate AOL….Netscape…Myspace….Friendster….there are far too many to list here lol….good luck with the time waste!!!

By: Steve SEO UK

Steve SEO UK — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:25:12 +0000

If everyone followed the snobs way, it would eventually destroy Twitter. It’s a terrific microblogging platform and everyone should make an effort to be REAL and APPROACHABLE.

I think Twitter to have a spider which crawls everyone on Twitter and have a build in algorithm to detect fair percentages of following and followers on each account. If you don’t achieve an acceptable ratio, you either get a warning or get kicked off.

Just my two penny worth.

By: Daniel Walker

Daniel Walker — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:58:25 +0000

I kinda agree with this in the business card sense of things, but when you think some people have 20,000 followers and post an update, 20k people read it. Say you follow 25% of them (5000) and they each tweet once a day, you’re going to get pretty overwhelmed pretty fast!

By: Luca Di nicola

Luca Di nicola — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:49:32 +0000

Great discussion.
I’m fairly new to Twitter so I’ve been doing some reading and the oppinions are all over the place. I think that it’s a personal decision to follow or not. Let’s face it if you want to build a relationship you should like the other person in the relationship.
Now the problem is can you tell by the profile or recent tweets if this will be a worthwhile relationship?
Maybe the answer is to follow for a while and if it does not work out then stop following.

By: Leo Dimilo

Leo Dimilo — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:47:39 +0000

I personally don’t understand the frame of thought where if someone follows you, then you are supposed to automatically follow them back. From my viewpoint, when you start getting into following 1,000’s of people, then you start to really have to dig to find the people that you really are following.

I also think that the likes of Randfish and others are using twitter to actually follow folks that they are truly interested in…a concept that most of the twitter “you follow me, I follow you” folks haven’t quite wrapped their head around.

By: Dan Stack

Dan Stack — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:11:33 +0000

The concept is simple… short spurts of information frequently. The more the better, as long as it’s relative.

You have to contrast the purpose of your twitter account though, personal or business? How often do you need to know someones personal status, I mean really?

Now that’s an idea, a biz only twitter site….

Any out there?

By: Virginia Nussey

Virginia Nussey — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:18:20 +0000

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for pointing out the discussion happening over at the Bruce Clay blog. From the looks of it, you’re not alone in demanding that your Twitter community use the give-and-take approach. But I can’t discount the marketing opportunity illustrated by Guy Kawasaki’s approach – the traffic to our site after he tweeted about the post tells the story. Of course, the argument could be made that Guy’s approach works for him because he’s already got the brand recognition. But in general, I like to think that the possibilities are endless.

By: @MattWilsontv

@MattWilsontv — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:23:16 +0000

Andrew, I think you are missing a huge opportunity to develop relationships with people. If you are not following someone, you can’t develop a relationship with them. You’ll never see their posts, they can’t DM you and they think you are a snob.

It’s really hard to be friendly with people if you don’t accept their business card when you meet them–in fact to me, there is nothing more insulting than being turned down when I give someone my card because I thought they were interesting and wanted to stay in touch.

I do believe that Twitter is a platform that should be used however you want, with no rules… I just like to think of it as developing relationships with people and snubbing them isn’t my style.