For me and many educators, Twitter has often been like an online faculty lounge where I get control over who stays in the room and who has to leave. That may sound cruel but that's the way social networks work. You choose who to follow for many reasons. Everyone has their own criteria, and I thought I'd share a few of my own here.
Top 10 Reasons Why I'm Probably NOT Following You on Twitter:
- You're a default avatar with no profile. Add a photo and a bio. Tell me something meaningful about yourself.
- You are following 300 people and have 2 followers. This tells me you are a Spammer.
- You've tweeted me a link and nothing else. See #2.
- I get more than a few Follow Requests every day. I don't have time to click through on every one of them. Engage me or @ me or say "Hi," and I'll notice you. I know I need to do a better job of following more people. I'm working on this.
- You follow for awhile, build up your numbers, build relationships, then unfollow in large numbers thus playing games with your Klout or "follower numbers" for appearance-sake. No thanks.
- You are argumentative for the sake of being argumentative.
- For the sake of building a conversation, you appear to go out of your way to be hurtful to people; resorting to immature behavior such as lying, rallying the troops with "Straw Man Arguments," pulling the "wounded duck" routine, name calling and/or see #6.
- You meanly mock others. (Not to be confused with gentle teasing.)
- I know you outside of Twitter, you never tweet, but you read my tweets. I know this because you refer to them when I see you. (Same goes for Facebook.) Can you spell, C-R-E-E-P-Y?
- You've asked me for help, I've helped. I've asked you for help, you've ignored me. Seriously?
Top 10 Reasons Why I Probably AM Following You on Twitter:
- You make me laugh.
- You make me think.
- You've changed my mind.
- You've sent me places online, pointed me to articles and blogposts and provided resources I might not have found as quickly on my own.
- You've cheered me on when I'm excited about something.
- You've helped me promote something that's important to me (a blogpost, a contest, a cause, a friend).
- You've told me when you think I'm wrong.
- You've argued with me, respectfully.
- You've taught me something.
- You make me feel like I'm a part of something global.
What are your top reasons for following or not?