Cleaning Out the Cobwebs
Over the weekend I cleaned out my Twitter list. It's all Facebook's fault. All of a sudden I gained like twenty-five new friends. I don't know who they are. They just showed up. I never received any notification, but that doesn't surprise me. My email notifications have never been reliable.
But seeing that giant leap in friends startled me and I decided to check out Twitter and my blog to see who was still there and who just showed up for the cookies.
I get very annoyed with people who follow you on Twitter just to get a follow-back. It takes me forever to check out new followers. Twitter has always been last on my list of haunts. As much as I like visiting, I rarely have time for chit chat.
So over the weekend, I used one of those apps that checks to see who follows me and more importantly, who UNfollowed me. (the cads!)
I don't expect everyone to follow me just because I follow them, but if we're supposed to be chums, I expect them not to kiss-up and then dump me.
I cleaned house on Twitter and unfollowed everyone who unceremoniously dumped me. Then I unfollowed everyone who hadn't tweeted in more than four months. Finally, I unfollowed anyone whose tweets seemed offensive or dull.
Hint: Look at your last five tweets. Would you follow you?
Some people are worth following even if they didn't follow me. I absolutely adore @ReneeMJ. I laugh so hard at her slice of REAL life moments that I'm in peril of wetting myself. And it must be a Canada thing because @kristadb1 has left me in stitches too--especially late at night when she churns one-liners like spitballs.
Oddly enough, I see more tweets on Facebook than I do on Twitter so I'm grateful when they funnel their tweets through FB.
I do not follow blindly. Yes, I check you out. I will not follow people if I see by their tweets or posts that we have nothing in common. This isn't high school. In order to earn a 'follow' your tweets have to entertain, inspire, educate, or save me money. These are the things that are important to me.
According to the app, there are a little over a hundred people I'm not following. So now comes the tedious part of checking each person's history to see if we're simpatico. Even though I don't spend much time on Twitter, I do visit occasionally so I don't want to be swamped by spammy people. I'm selective with whose tweets I want to see in my stream.
When I started networking I was always afraid of not reciprocating. I finally realized that my time is important and it was time I started respecting it. If you don't find me interesting, don't follow me. I'm not going to be mad at you. Your time is important too.
Do you feel obligated to accept every 'friend' invitation and 'follow'?
Comments
Every month or so I clean house too and unfollow people who've unfollowed me or haven't tweeted in months.
I clean out my Twitter list periodically as well because I've found that now and then Twitter just randomly follows people for me, or it drops people I really like.
I do not follow out of obligation though. I did initially, and I'm still working on cleaning that mess up. I usually base my "follows" on a few things:
- Are they interesting
- Do they make me laugh
- Are they in the industry
- Do they offer something I need
If the answer isn't yes to at least two of those, I don't usually follow back. Sounds snotty, but if I didn't do this my feed would be more of a nightmare than it is already.
When I clean up, I look at recent tweets. If it's the same link all the time, or they tweet nonsense 500 times a day, I unfollow. You can't get to the good tweets when those morons are clogging the feed with bullshit. On the other hand, if they don't tweet at least once a month, then I unfollow.(Exception: friends I love who I know hate Twitter but stay on there hoping one day they'll figure it out)
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Jennifer: Every month? Wow. It never occurred to me to check out who was following (or not) until I saw that jump in 'friends'.
But now that I see that carousel of people who get on and off to see if I'll follow back, I'll do it more often.
I had no idea there was a whole legion of people who just follow for reciprocation. I'm not into that numbers thing. Maybe that'll hurt me in the long run, but I'd rather hang with people I enjoy rather than someone looking for another notch on their Twitter list.
I'm one of those people who believes that we truly are judged by the company we keep.
If we hang with offensive, dull, and spammy people, we get locked into their world, instead of the other way around.
As for facebook, I look at the amount of mutual friends before accepting. If it's a big number like 100 or something, I accept. Otherwise, I check out their profiles. Sometimes, I accept people with low mutual friend counts or no mutual friends on the off chance that maybe that's a reader, although none have actually come forward to say they read my work. I am careful about accepting friends with low mutual friend counts. I've accepted a few over the last year and many then started spamming me with porno site links. Someone actually started posting nudie pics of themselves and tagged me and a few other erotic romance authors in those pictures. I didn't like that one bit so I've been careful not to accept people whose friends list includes only erotic romance authors as most real non-spamming people have friends outside of that one book genre.
And I have about 40 friend requests on Facebook pending. I do check them out because now spammers are pretending to be real people. They don't know they're wasting their time trying to sell me shoes, but that's beside the point. :)
It's not that I don't think it's pretty neat - I simply do not have the time. I rarely utilize my facebook account (which I should be more active about). Honestly, I want to write. All the social medias are nice, but I find they can be a time steal from what I really want to accomplish.
I find that I can't maintain my interactions if I follow more than 300 people (and I try to have people in different time zones, too). So I don't follow everyone back. However, I try to reply to everything, except when you're uber creepy and asking where I live and what my bra size is.
I do follow back unless I for some reason miss a person due to not checking soon enough, but I try my best. What I've found is often people follow me then once I follow them they unfollow me. Very rude, IMHO. But I don't know how to check that so perked up when I saw there was an app for that!
I've been thinking about culling my personal FB list unless we interact on a semi-regular basis. I've never heard from many folks and it just seems odd when I do share lots there. And I do have a books page!
Ref: Facebook
I've had a few creeps too. Why can't these people get a life?
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Cate: Well, you just made me feel better. LOL. I thought I was the only person who let these things sit on the back burner.
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Nadja: If I were to do it over, I probably wouldn't have Twitter either. But I like the passive networking of allowing my Facebook and blog feeds stream through Twitter.
Now there's a question burning in my mind. LOL. Wouldn't it be nice to put all the creepy people in one box? That way they can mentally fondle each other and leave the rest of us alone.
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Melissa: Rats! I knew should've kept the link. All I did was Google for an 'unfollow app". This is the first one that came up. http://who.unfollowed.me/ I think it's the one I used. It was very easy.
PS. Welcome back!!
In regard to following, it depends. If it's Google plus or Goodreads, I pretty much follow. If it's FB, I usually like their page unless offensive. It does feel weird accepting friend requests from folks I don't know, but I typically will. Twitter, however, I usually wait for a connection of some sort.
Good luck with the social network spring cleaning.
What app did you use, Maria? Oops, I see you've answered this already. Thanks!
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Shelley: It was a pretty easy app to use. I was surprised how unobtrusive it was.
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Darke: Although I use Twitter for passive networking, when I do get on there, I'd much rather follow interesting people rather than inflate my numbers artificially. I'm not out to impress anyone. --obviously. LOL.
Thanks for the link.
I don't follow back always, but I'll follow anyone who has books or reading in their mini bio.
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Charlee: You, boring? Peshaw!
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Angela: I used to feel it would be impolite not to follow, but when I started reading tweets that were rambling monologues or trashing this person or that and I thought, no, I can't be a party to someone that mean.
Between the trash talkers and the pervs, they made my decisions a lot easier.
I will not follow spammers or "ask me how I sold 100 million copies!" people. I will unfollow anyone who tweets CONSTANTLY, no matter what they're tweeting about. If my feed is all one person, I unfollow them immediately.
I'll have to set aside some time when the wee beasties go back to school and get her done :)
I'm with you, Maria, on liking the blog feeding through Twitter and when people link their accounts to FB.
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Raelyn: I recommend it. It made me feel a hundred people lighter. :)