Yesterday, I was reading the tweets of a friend who had found FriendOrFollow.com. She was hurt by discovering that some of the people she considered in her "circle" weren't following her on Twitter, even though she was following them. Her response to this was to unfollow them and in a few cases, unsubscribe from their blogs as well.
This got me thinking. Should Twitter be focused on mutual masturbation? Should you follow every person who follows you? Should you be insulted by someone who doesn't follow you back?
I say no. I think that you should have a different perspective when using Twitter, and here's why:
- It may be accidental. I can think of three times in the last week where I discovered that I wasn't actually following someone who I assumed I was. It may have been because Twitter glitched when I originally tried to follow them. It may have been because I go through occasionally and unfollow people who haven't tweeted in more than 60 days, using Untweeps. Maybe I just meant to follow them back but forgot, due to real life getting in the way.
- Twitter is not a mutual admiration society. The goal of Twitter is to create a stream of conversation that is interesting to you. You should choose who has something interesting to say based on their content, not based on who they are. And different people use Twitter for different reasons. Some may use it for networking or marketing. Some may use it to keep track of a limited group of friends. Others might only want to follow celebrities.
- Twitter is one form of communication out of many. Chances are that if you follow someone on Twitter, you may also have communicated with them by email or read their blog or may be their friend on Facebook. If you have multiple avenues to communicate with someone, learn about their lives, and share elements of your own life with them, why do you need Twitter to do so? That's like being upset if you send someone a letter and instead of writing you back, they call you and then come hang out at your house.
- Maybe you're boring or annoying. If someone isn't following you on Twitter, rather than blame them, maybe you should view this as inspiration to be more interesting. Maybe if your tweets consist of blog posts, blip.fm songs, TV recaps, and complaints about your cat, people don't follow you because you're just cluttering up their stream. Can you really blame them? Try being clever. Try tweeting something interesting. And if you don't want to, that's cool. Just don't have the audacity to complain if someone doesn't follow you!
- Unfollowing isn't excommunication and it's not a punishment. Unfollowing takes a second. It can be reversed just as quickly. And chances are if you are so perturbed by someone not following you that you unfollow them in retaliation, they won't even notice. Or care. So how did you just benefit? It's likely you originally followed that person because you liked what they had to say, and now you're not getting that information anymore.
Instead of viewing Twitter as a way to boost your ego with followers, try seeing it as a way to get your message across, whatever that message may be. If your goal is to be interesting and attract followers based on content, good for you. If you just want to share the mundanities of your life, that's good, too. Just don't take it personally if people don't find you interesting or if people choose not to read what you have to say.
Updated: This is not a venue to attack my friend – she was legitimately hurt. I am just addressing why I think if you take a different perspective, you can avoid these types of hurt feelings in the future.
Or, if you want more followers another way, just buy my Twitter shirt from Zazzle!
