Why I Might Not Follow You on Twitter

After I joined Twitter, I got several requests to "follow" people. I didn't have a clue who some of these people were but I was excited by the thought of another Twitter member wanting to follow me.

Initially, I said yes to everybody who asked. But after a while I discovered that some of these people were similar to stalkers. I imagined they set up programs that allowed them to send tweets in volume with the express purpose of inundating people with their messages.

I watched my Twitter page fill with tweet after tweet after tweet, recorded minute after minute after minute from the same person who was touting information I knew I'd never have the time (or inclination) to read.

I am not a Twitter devotee and I am also not an advocate for or against Twitter. I'm not even really sure why I should use Twitter other than to promote my blogs and articles and to find some gems among the people I do follow. But I do know that I don't want to spend my entire day reading tweets, especially when I am bombarded with them by the same spammer; I mean person.

Fortunately, Twitter allows me to check the status of people I might consider following. It lists the number of people they follow, along with the number of people who are following them, and it shows how many tweets they've made. It also gives me an idea of their interests, if they list them.

People who list nothing about themselves are people I don't follow. Also, I no longer follow people I consider to be tweet bombers, people whose tweets number in the thousands and appear in annoying regularity throughout the day.

Since I joined twitter, I've learned that programs do exist that allow members to tweet while they attend to other business. Tweeters can set up programs to tweet messages every minute, every five minutes, or however often the tweeter wishes the messages to appear. Those Twitter members are, in my opinion, nuisances.

A Twitter member who follows thousands of people, and who has only a few followers, but tweets thousands of messages will be somebody I definitely will NOT follow. The last thing I want to do is follow somebody who appears to do nothing but tweet all day long and who is so focused on tweeting, he has crossed the line into spamming.

If you use one of those annoying Twitter programs, and you expect me to read your tweets all day long, even if you are as cute as a kitty looking for a tweet, I will not follow you. If, on the other hand, you post something about yourself, share similar interests, tweet subjects I find interesting or amusing, and you don't spam me with tweets, I will follow you.

(find me at http://twitter.com/theresawiza)