Twitter is being abused. I’m not talking about spammers or celebrities, who we know use Twitter as a means to achieve self promotion. I am talking about people like you and me, with similar interests and expertise (education in this case), who are followed by many but only choose to follow a tiny proportion back.
My complaint, whine – whatever you want to call it – is that by not following back most of their followers, these people are, wittingly or unwittingly, taking advantage of their followers’ willingness to share, participate and converse, whilst putting in evidence their lack thereof.
What does it say about them if, in their Twitter bio, they extoll the virtues of sharing, learning and exchanging views on education but are only prepared to do so with a minority of educators, those whom they presumably deem worthy of their following?
What does it say about them when they ask for our help in Twitter but, by definition, are unable to help the very people who went out of their way to offer help? Think about it, you helped them gladly but, if they don’t follow you, they would have never picked up your request for help. You could still be waiting for help which would never come.
On occasion, when I have voiced my displeasure publicly, often on Twitter, it has been pointed out to me that I may be behaving selfishly by expecting to be followed back. However, in my view, it is they who do not follow back who are being selfish, because they take but seldom give.
I often wonder what makes an educator, of all people, think that it is OK to draw a line in the sand and say that’s it, no need to learn any more – there is nothing I can learn from him, him or her, which is effectively what happens when they opt to not follow back fellow educators.
This puzzles me because, the most amazing things I’ve learned in my life were unplanned. They were the things I didn’t set out to learn. The magic of discovery made me realise that, in order to start learning, you must first realise that you don’t know what you’re going to learn or, indeed, what you need to learn. In order to continue learning you must then realise that there is always plenty left to learn.
Ignorance, on the other hand, is the certainty that there is nothing left for you to learn.
I don’t claim to know the reasons for the sort of behaviour I decry in this post and, although I may appear to be claiming the moral high ground, I am only pointing out what might be construed from it.
There must be other reasons why people opt to not follow back those who might be considered their peers, arguably the very people from whom they can learn the most. These reasons have escaped me and I would very much appreciate it if you highlighted them to me in the comments below.
Photo by *Muhammad*
Post Script: This post has elicited a great response, both agreeing with and challenging my understanding of Twitter. I am very grateful for such wonderful contributions. I am slightly concerned, however, that, as the comments thread gets longer and longer, many of the points covered in the discussion below are beginning to be repeated, which is not surprising, given the number of comments a new reader needs to catch up with. Therefore, I would politely request that new comments are contrasted against existing ones to avoid any further repetition.
Possibly related posts (automatically generated):
- #EdTechTips on Twitter
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- Twitter makes you clever
- Why Twitter is NOT taking over my life… (and neither is anything else)
- Social networking in education: why is it taking so long?
This post is tagged Social interaction, twitter
Here. here!
You are projecting a required sense of fairness and reciprocity that is not implicit to the use of Twitter or any other information exchange medium. Do you want to be required to subscribe to the blog of everyone who subscribes to Box of Tricks?
Thanks for your comment Dave. I disagree manifestly with your point about there not being an implicit case of reciprocity when using Twitter to ask for help from your Twitter following, which is the thrust of my argument. The very act of asking for help is evidence of a desired reciprocity.
Maybe the real issue here has to do with expectations based on implicit understanding rather than agreements negotiated based on explicit understanding. Certainly reciprocity is a fine and nice idea and sometimes, such as in a romantic relationship, may be necessary and required for mutual fulfillment and ongoing engagement. But this is not the case in all relationships. As a matter of disclosure, I am not a Twitter user so I concede I may be off on understanding the nuance of what is expected in that community. That brings me full circle to my first sentence.
Dave, thank you so much. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
I understand your frustration here Jose. I often follow anyone who follows me that has similar areas of interests – professional or otherwise. What often occurs though is that I will unfollow those that Tweet nothing but rubbish. Not to say that I don’t mix my personal tweets in among my professional tweets, but I get tired of going to Twitter and seeing what kind of shoes a person is wearing that day, what that person ate for lunch, etc. If I have to sift through 25 tweets to find one about education, I will often unfollow. The other issue I have is the bots following. I don’t know how many “companies” follow me but it is easily about the same number of actual humans. Now, I don’t have a large number of followers on Twitter, but even so I believe about half are those that follow me are either bots, people who tweet too much personal information, or those that simply follow me because I tweeted once about my favorite baseball team.I try to follow those that I feel that I will professionally or personally be able to contribute to my endeavors, or vice-versa. I hope this clarifies some things for you.
Erin M
Thank you for your comment Erin. I have tried hard to emphasise in the post that I am not referring to bots or any kind of automated following. I am referring to actual people, educators like you and me.
I perhaps should have made clearer in the post that I am referring to those people who display a distinct inequality between followers and following. I am by no means advocating that you should follow every one back, only those in your area of interest, exemplified here by Educaton.
I also think we are discussing two slighty different things here: you advocate your right to unfollow those unsuitable or those “who will not contribute to my endeavours”. I entirely agree with you. I have also unfollowed and blocked people based solely on the content of their Twitter stream.
I, however, am denouncing the patent display of hypocrisy of those who happen to have many followers, follow few in return and expect Twitter to be of service to themselves, but not vice versa.
I agree, Jose.
Sure, occasionally there will be oversights, when the odd follower may slip through the net during busy times. I’d love to know the thinking behind ‘educators’ who have an obvious deficit; especially those who, as you say, ‘extoll the virtues of sharing, learning and exchanging views on education’.
I think Twitter differs to blog subscription, partly because there is a visibility about readers and reciprocity. Like it or not, that visibility matters to folk.
Having said that, I still can’t bring myself to unfollow them…
I guess I just don’t follow your argument of why everyone you follow should want to follow you.
If you are asking for help from your followers than those that don’t follow you will not be aware of that request because they are not reading your tweets.
And I really have a hard time believing that an educator would truly choose not to follow someone just because they don’t believe they can learn anything from that person. Instead it may be the simple fact that they are having trouble keeping up with the tweets of the people they already follow. Or maybe they use twitter for a different reason (keeping up with old friends, recording personal thoughts, etc.) and go to other venues for professional development. Maybe they understand the importance of saying “no” from time to time to keep one’s sanity.
And I truly believe that the same logic follows with blogging or any online venue. Do you honestly follow the blogs of everyone who follows yours?
To me it seems like a huge jump to call someone selfish for not following someone back without truly understanding the whole situation.
Thank you Rebecca. Your comment is most helpful. I am a little confused by your second paragraph though.
On the thrust of your comment, I would say that there are many ways to manage a large following if you are a committed Twitter user. The sort of people I have in mind generally are.
You argument about following blogs has been already expressed in comments above. I don’t think that the comparison holds scrutiny though. Firstly, I don’t know who follows my blog, nobody does (unless I’m missing something here, which is entirely possible), so it is impossible to follow blogs back, as you suggest.
Secondly, Twitter, as I understand it (and herein lies the problem) is a fantastic way to share and spread thinking and ideas through the means of asynchronous computer mediated communication. In my view, and I totally accept it is my view, communication, by definition, works best when it doesn’t happen in isolation.
My second paragraph was in response to your comment in one of the comments (which I will quote right below) along with your return to using Twitter to ask for help.
“I disagree manifestly with your point about there not being an implicit case of reciprocity when using Twitter to ask for help from your Twitter following, which is the thrust of my argument. The very act of asking for help is evidence of a desired reciprocity.”
I just don’t see how people are refusing to help you or not reciprocating if they aren’t reading your tweets to begin with. And so I don’t see how this part is at all relevant to your argument. Maybe I’m missing something here.
Most blogs I subscribe to have a way to publicly follow. And I don’t follow all of the people who follow my blog (even though it isn’t that many people) not because I don’t think they have anything to offer me but because I only have a limited amount of time to spend online and need to prioritize what I focus on. I feel that I can do a lot more good (for myself and those I interact with) if I focus well on a few instead of spreading myself too thin. And this is NOT selfish in any way (at least in my opinion).
And I completely agree with you that communication is best when it doesn’t happen in isolation. But how do you know that these people who aren’t following as many people are living in isolation or are purposely not following you because they feel they can’t learn from you? Maybe their focus is just somewhere else (blogs, forums, listservs, discussions with colleagues, conferences, etc.). These very people may be sharing in communicating in many different ways that you don’t see.
And I disagree with the comment about the capabilities of managing large followers on Twitter as a way to make it possible to follow so many people. No matter how you filter them or group them, you still can only read so many tweets in a day. And if it is at the point where you are missing so many than you are too far out of the loop to really get much out of it or truly help others.
Thanks for coming back Rebecca. It appears we agree more than we disagree!
Our main disagreement, I think, is that you think that they are not ignoring your requests for help, as they don’t follow you and never receive them in the first place, therefore they are innocent of unhelpfulness, right?
However, I think, that by being aware that you follow them and not following back but still asking for your help when they need to they are fostering an relationship which is greatly beneficial to them, but not their followers -remember I am referring only to those with a vast difference in the proportion of followers/following.
Although I am sure it is not necessarily the result of a conscious decision, this a classical example of selfish behaviour, whereby a little investment returns great profit at the expense of others.
If money where involved instead of knowledge, with all of it flowing in one direction, we wouldn’t hesitate to call it it a scam.
Now you have really lost me.
You are talking about people who ask for help or advice and people they don’t follow (like you who follow them but they don’t follow you back) respond and so they read only those tweets of yours and thus take advantage of your kindness without ever returning it.
I guess I was under the assumption that you would only see tweets from people you follow and so those individuals you are talking about would never see any tweets you direct their way because they don’t follow you. Am I wrong in my understanding of how Twitter works? (I’m only a very basic user of twitter – and I only use it to keep up with a few personal friends.)
Additionally, if someone posts a question or is looking for advice, I would assume that they are directing that question specifically at those who they follow since those are the ones they have chosen to communicate with. So unless they are sending you a direct message I really think you are off in assuming they are looking to you specifically for advice.
I guess I just don’t see how someone can benefit from another on Twitter without actually following them. And so I don’t follow your argument that they are just taking and taking from you without ever giving back. If anything, you are the one reading their tweets and thus taking from them (although I wouldn’t consider that part selfish since they have chosen not to share with you).
Ok here’s an example of what I mean:
I follow @famousteacher but he does not follow me back.
I see his tweets. He doesn’t see mine.
@famousteacher needs help in finding a web app that does x – his request for help is received by over 3000 people, including me and is answered by say 15 people, including me.
@famousteacher has benefited from all the following he has accumulated.
If that were to happen in reverse and I needed his help, he, in principle, would not have been able to help, since he would not have seen my tweet in the first place.
My argument is that, by being followed by many, he is able to access the help of thousands on tap. However, his help is not as readily available to those whom he doesn’t follow.
I hope this makes my position clearer. Please remember I’m not saying I’m right or that I know all the answers. I don’t. I am just outlining my reasoning. Comments like yours actually help me to fine tune my thinking on the matter, and for that, I am very grateful.
As always, an articulate and reasoned blog post, with which I agree wholeheartedly. As I am only a fledgling Tweeter compared to you (and have only recently unblocked my Tweets) I don’t have the problem of lots of people asking to follow me. The TES forum, once so lively and inspiring, has become the same. It seems to be at the moment either “teaching languages is the hardest job in the world” or “I need xyz for tomorrow – please send me all your good stuff.” The former won’t try to make their own job and others’ easier by sharing and helping (just after some kind of excuse or scapegoat) and the latter are just in it for what they can get out of it.
I have operated throughout my career on a basis of sharing and helping others. Unfortunately those who are prepared to share and help back seem to be fewer and further between. There seem to be more and more people who will use anything they can get off someone else to climb up the ladder and give nothing back, merely trampling on the good-natured ones on the way up while they reach up and get the glory. (And I know this from personal experience)
It’s similar with my own website. It’s a free, resource-sharing website. Yet I still get messages asking (or sometimes demanding) certain resources and aksing why other things aren’t on the site. I always reply politely, pointing out that I can only upload what is given to me. Last month MFL Sunderland passed 1 million hits in its 5 year lifetime. But have I received 1 million resources to put on the site ? Of course not. The vast majority have taken, a precious few have given back.
Hopefully the guilty ones will read your blog and feel suitably chastened and resolve to do better. But they won’t, because they’re not the sort who spend their leisure time seeking out, reading, commenting on and sharing. They’ll only look if someone sends them the link and if there’s obviously something they can get out of it for their own personal gain.
I agree with much of what you’ve said here, Twitter is fantastic because it’s a network – obviously that implies 2-way communication. However I do follow people without necessarily expecting to be followed back, if I think I’m likely to get some sort of value from their tweets.
I can understand why someone with a large number of followers doesn’t necessarily follow back every time. I know it’s possible to set up groups or filters to make things more manageable, but they are just different ways of not following people aren’t they?
My pet hate is the people who follow me briefly, then vanish from my followers list as soon as I return the follow. What is the point?
I sort of agree but don’t!? Having come from a background of usenet and mailing lists I am used to the heirarchy of peers. You get concentric groups of people who communicate and share with the highly knowledgable and highly respected (such as yourself) who are very prolific with their collaboration, followed by the next rung down who regularly join in but the ‘general members’ and make up a significant section of the group. Finally you are laft with the lurkers … Those who like to listen and don’t really take part except for a few occassions. This could be for a variety of reasons, ranging from nervousness about their knowledge and expertise, a slight feeling of inferiority, a sense of exclusion because the growing clique of ‘experts’ … And all I can do is try to make
what I do as open as possible to allow people to join in … But I am not that worried if they don’t. I lurked at some point. I still do in others. It is not malicious in any way but there are times when lurking works best.
The other problem I now have is that I follow too many people and I am at my information limit. I miss too many conversations and tweets which would be beneficial and may even have to unfollow some people I like and rely on things like ETRU and teachmeets to keep me up to speed. Of course, you won’t be one if those I unfollow.
Tony don’t! There are ways to manage followers and create different groups for different people using tools like TweetDeck or Seesmic, that way you don’t miss a tweet. Try managing before culling!
I already use tweetdeck but operate via 3 different machines within a 24 hour period usually and don’t have enough time to read all the tweets as it is. An approximate count is 2000+ tweets a day to look at … I have already removed any that are just notifications of blog posts, update notices from companies which I can receive via email instead … I might even drop Stephen Fry! (but not Phil Jupitus, Phil Schofield or Gail Porter).
I am down to people I want to communicate with and even then it is too many. Signal to noise is very good within those I follow, with the odd ‘fun’ conversation to be had between a few of us … usually about chocolate, McDonald’s breakfasts or gloating / commiserate on the win / loss of the appropriate football team.
I have even had conversations with a few others about possible methods of managing streams via multiple accounts … but I like to have all my followers in a single melting pot, it gives a chance for people to widen their pool of contacts outside of their normal fields. But that pool is just looking that little bit too big and a bit too deep. I just don’t have the tools to manage the streams of information the way I would like to. Oh … and I need a few more hours in the day to get through it all too, but I think that someone would complain about spending time in front of the keyboard.
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/01/26/funny-pictures-no-go-make-irl-frnds/
I’m relatively new to twitter and already, like several of those leaving comments, I have lost the thread of many a good conversation in the overwhelming barrage of social tweets I receive and have unfollowed a few people who told me a bit too much about their breakfast. But that made me quite worried that any time I said something non-educational, my followers would be annoyed by me filling up their screen with nonsense.
The thing is, provided there’s a good ratio, those social tweets give me a sense of community with people I’ve never met, which means I’m more likely to interact with them. It’s a difficult balance to strike though.
I cheer the raising of this issue.
However, twitter is what twitter does. You have to nurture and look after it. Feed it with what ppl want to talk about (in my case the classroom and its tools) and ppl give back. I follow lots of ppl (more than follow me) and my feed is overkill. I accept that some teachers will not have much interest in my tweets (foolish I know). I also assume ppl are busy and don’t follow back for a reason. I also assume that some others are a bit arrogant or in search of bigger following without distorting their follow:follower ratio.
Having said all that, I will subscribe to someone’s tweets because I want to know what they are doing. In fact I have a tweetdeck column of all the people I know in person (including you Jose) and those I think I don’t want to miss. I treasure my kind and friendly twitter friends who reliably reply when I tweet. I have never unfollowed anyone but maybe that time has come based on the evidence of their tweets*.
As for the many tweets I miss… I accept that I’m not going to get everything. I like the hit or miss potential. This is only because any vital news I should be hearing will get to me via other feeds. It is also interesting to me that everybody I know who uses twitter think that I will have seen their tweets because I’m always on it. They look sad when I haven’t. What are they thinking about me?
* I will say that, to me, twitter is not emotionally simple. As I used it my thoughts about it and it’s users changed. They continue to do so over a year later. How? Buy me a pint.
I make it a point to reverse follow anyone who follows me. I may then choose to un-follow them, depending on signal to noise ratio. A bit of social stuff is great, helps to know about the people you’re “interacting” with.
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I use Twitter almost daily. I find it useful for picking up new information from people with interests that are similar to mine. I protect my tweets, however. I have no aim to build up a huge list of followers. If people are interested in what I have to say they only have to ask for my permission to follow me. I therefore have few problems with Twitter spam.
I have around 160 follows and I only follow around 60 people back. I am highly selective. I don’t have time to skim through 100s of tweets, most of which are of no concern to me, and I have never been anxious about missing something. I have plenty of more important things to do.
I post mainly serious information, but I am often flippant too, and I enjoy reading other people’s flippant comments.
Graham
A couple of afterthoughts after reading Clare’s comments:
1. I have been in the business of teaching people about ICT in language learning and teaching since 1976. The boom started in the early 1980s, and there was a sudden new demand for information. In my experience over all these years it is completely normal for people to take more than they give. This is especially true of the Web since blogs and wikis got going. I maintain the ICT4LT site, which is a huge source of information. It receives around 1000 visits a day, but I receive perhaps a dozen comments per month via the site’s feedback form or blog. Maybe two or three say thank you to me for providing the information. The remainder ask for further information, most of which the authors could find themselves if they could be bothered to use the ICT4LT site’s own search engine. A couple each month ask if it is possible to enrol for the ICT4LT course – when I state explicitly on the homepage that there is no such course:
http://www.ict4lt.org
2. Blogs, forums and wikis come and go. The TES MFL Forum is no longer what it used to be, as Clare points out. Read Gavin Dudeney’s blog on the life and death of communities:
http://slife.dudeney.com/?p=178
The best community I know for finding help and advice is my local pub. I can find a bricklayer there to build a wall for me, a carpenter to hang a door, a lawyer for legal advice, and someone to engage with in a debate about politics, golf or rugby. And I will never forget the numerous real friends from this community who visited me in hospital three years ago after I had undergone major surgery. I was in hospital for 24 days, and no one day passed without someone visiting me. I had no Internet access at all during this time, and I honestly cannot say that I missed much.
Graham
Thank you all for your comments. I am glad that the concept of community has been raised as regards Twitter. It is here that I think the crux of the matter lies.
I appreciate that it is only my opinion but, to me, Twitter is first and foremost a community of like-minded individuals. Twitter networks are now increasingly referred to as Personal Learning Networks.
If you unfollow people when they tweet inanities then we probably have a completely different outlook on the purpose and usefulness of this communication tool. It is precisely the occasional bit of inane banter that turns what would otherwise be a stream of facts barren of emotion into a community of people striving for a common objective: to learn from one another.
I think that all participants in such a community need to feel (I used the word feel advisedly, as we are all people subject to emotions) appreciated and that there is a certain reciprocity when it comes to sharing.
People who don’t follow back as a matter of course are, in my view, breaking an implicit social contract of reciprocity. They are, of course, free to follow as many or as few people as they like, it is a (mostly) free world – I am only pointing out how others may perceive their unwillingness to engage as a sign of selfish behaviour (I am using the term selfish in the literal sense of being chiefly concerned with one’s own benefit, rather than as a pejorative attribute).
Let me once more point out that we are not talking about celebrities, actors or other self-promoting agents, but rather I am referring to people like you and me, those whose main reason to use Twitter is to communicate with a network of like minded individuals.
Thank you for saying it. And it needed to be said. I admit sometimes I don’t follow someone back, but it is because they are not connected with education. I learn a ton from the folks I follow and I also share and hopefully folks learn from me. Isn’t that is where the power of Twitter is at anyway.
Just because I find you interesting I do not expect you to be interested in the boring stuff that I tweet about. If you followed the 100s people that follow you then you probably are not even reading any of their tweets. How could you honestly keep track of that many peoples’ tweets, and what if you had over 1000 followers? Do you really think that you could follow the random tweets of over a 1000 people that tweet about what bar they went to over the weekend? If I saw that somebody was following over a 1000 people then I would be suspicious of something because their is no way they are reading all of that. Nope, I follow a few interesting people, a few people that I am interested in, and expect that anyone who follows me actually wants to hear what silly thing my kids did over the weekend or what random thought just popped into my head.
Thank you John for your comment. I very much respect your point of view. My answer is that we must have very different views of what Twitter is and how Twitter works. And that is absolutely fine, there are no prescribed ways how tools like Twitter are used. I suppose there are as many takes on Twitter as there are users!
I would like to clarify a couple of things: I do follow more than 1000 people and I am followed by over 1000 people. You are right, however, saying that it would be nigh on impossible to keep up with everyone’s tweets all the time. I don’t have a problem with that though. This is where your take on Twitter probably differs from mine.
I am not constantly on Twitter. Twitter for me is like a stream into which I dip on occasion (far too often according to my wife!) I miss therefore many tweets from many people. Does that make twitter less useful to me? I don’t think so, because when I am on Twitter I have the expertise and knowledge of hundreds of people on tap.
I don’t think that setting up groups for different people using apps like TweetDeck is filtering out, I view it as focusing areas of interest into streams so that the topics I am particularly interested in at any one time. Groups and people change as my focus changes.
Does this mean that I am ignoring the people who, at that moment in time, are not allocated to a group? Certainly not. As I see it as having two options: I may miss their tweets vs. I will miss their tweets. To me, the choice is clear.
Yes, there is the option of only following certain people, the clever ones, or the famous ones, or the trendy ones. I opt not to follow only those – as long as any new follower is connected to education, the likelihood is that I will follow back. As I said in comments above, I view (stress I) Twitter as a community of reciprocity, how could it be so if I didn’t follow back those who follow me?
Using a similar comparison to the one above, the options to me are clear: I may learn something new vs. I won’t learn anything new. Again, to me, the choice is clear.
Lastly, if you don’t mind me asking, why did you choose to use an assumed name?
‘How to Effectively Follow 15000+ People on Twitter Using These Tweetdeck Tricks’
http://jessenewhart.com/twitter/how-to-effectively-follow-15000-people-on-twitter-using-these-tweetdeck-tricks/
I agree with you Dughall. I successfully use TweetDeck (although you could use Seesmic or Hootsuite or any other Twitter client) to manage the stream of thoughts, tips and inane banter. I actually quite like a bit of inane banter now and then!
If you are filtering people out then why bother following them?
I’m ‘meta-filtering’. I might still follow people but use Tweetdeck tools to only read the things they people say that might particularly interest me (particularly when I’m busy) – rather than stop following them altogether.
I tend to agree with johndoe. I could never keep up with more than 100 people. Besides Twitter, I subscribe to several other online communities, although I find I am becoming more and more selective, as a lot of the information these communities publish is not all that interesting.
As I said before, I am not bothered about missing anything. If the information is important enough it will find me.
Yes, I suppose I am selfish in some ways. I have published masses of information about ICT and language learning and teaching over the last 30 years, and I still come up in the top 10 in a Google search, in spite of the fact that I have a fairly common name. I feel I’ve done my bit.
Graham
Hello Graham. Thanks for your continued participation.
I very much agree with your second paragraph!
I have explained in a comment above in response to John Doe how I manage my groups and how I feel that it is not a question of missing tweets, but missing people.
I may have missed a tweet yesterday, but I didn’t today goes my thinking.
Thanks for such an interesting post expressing your thoughts José. I have been following the comments quite closely too and it would be easy to comment in response to that. But I would like to focus on what you wrote initially.
Just a couple of thoughts.
You are right there are people using Twitter, involved in education, who don’t have anywhere near the equal measure of people in their network. But not every user is the same. People will have different expectations for Twitter and what they get from it. (That is clearly illustrated by some of the comments above)
I make a point of reciprocating the “follow” gesture if those users fit the simple criteria I set for my own network choices. That criteria has changed over the last year as my interests change. I fully expect everyone to have there own criteria for deciding to click that “Follow” button or not. Or indeed they may have NO criteria at all. I am OK with that because it is not for me to tell others how to use it.
You question “What does it say about them when they ask for our help in Twitter but, by definition, are unable to help the very people who went out of their way to offer help?”
I would have to agree in part with this. But only in part. I think that it is fine for people to make their own choices about the make up, scope and size of their network. It doesn’t affect me so I am not fussed. But I have to agree that it doesn’t sit well with me those who liberally take from their network, asking for support, help, shout-outs with such a network make up as you say. They can take advantage of those numbers, but we may not benefit from a similar gesture of support or help.
I have no problem with people choosing not to follow (or indeed not even making that choice) that’s up to them. But regularly using your network numbers without ever allowing those who help the opportunity to do the same – can grind a bit.
I am an academic. A lot of the times I block and unfollow people I am not interested in. I have a strict policy with regards to twitter follow/unfollow/block, I have made a post on by blog at http://edublend.blogspot.com/2009/04/to-follow-or-not-to-follow-that-is.html
a good amount of things have been highlighted here, so I keep my post short and crips, read my post for more.
Manish
Having just read your post I agree with you José. I know (because I follow you) that you have tweeted about this before, and I remember joining in the debate then.
I noticed some of the well known names (in education on Twitter) are guilty of this, and you wonder if they are on Twitter to develop or just for their ego.
http://www.friendorfollow.com is useful for getting rid of those who you follow and don’t follow back. Twitter for me is about a 2-way experience, otherwise it might as well be an RSS feed.
Your positions seems to be predicated on a number of assumptions:
1) that people are not already making choices of who to follow based on looking at their followers profiles and previous tweets and determing them to be to be too frequently ’spurious’ to their own interests
2) that all users are able/willing to use the same tools as say tweetdeck to actually do their filtering
in practice, I find I can follow the tweets of approximately 120-150 frequent tweeters a day, and that’s a struggle to follow in any depth. I could ‘follow’ many more and then actually filter that list separately using tweetdeck etc, but the only purpose of that would be to pander to the false vanity of the extra people Twitter would record me as following as I wouldn’t actually be listening to anything those extra people tweet, thus it would be a pointless exercise for all concerned.
I also choose to use Twitter on my phone, which constrains the choice of tools for any meta filtering, so instead I use the feature built into Twitter itself and only follow people I actually intend to listen too.
So, Instead, I regularly cull the list of people I follow based on recent releance/interest to me so that I can add new people as they catch my attention. That way I still get to broaden my network and exposure to new concepts and ideas while managing the information overload.
I _could_ read the tweets of more people, but so many people I follow actually tweet interesting links which can be relatively long articles or research papers that the number of tweets barely scratches the surface of how much new information I already receive from the number of people I already follow.
Besides, you can always ‘call out’ to those people you follow who don’t follow you at any time with an @ message. I find your approach to Twitter akin to expecting everyone in a party to try to listen to every conversation all the time. It just doesn’t happen. There will always be cliques form who chatter together, but that doesn’t preclude others drifting into those conversations – sometimes joining the clique and sometimes just in passing. You can’t expect everyone you happen to want to listen to to stop and hang on your every word in return.
Hello Nick,
Many thanks for your comment. Everyone makes assumptions about Twitter. We all use it in a different way and, in a sense, that’s the beauty of it! I have dealt in the comments above with some of the points you have raised about managing so many tweets, but perhaps this comment thread is getting too unwieldy.
Of course I agree you can follow whomever you like, of course you can! What I am highlighting is how, when some of this high profile users with a ridiculously low ratio of following/followers ask for help, they are effectively taking advantage of their large following whilst implicitly being unwilling to help back, were their help needed.
Yes, I could use the @ reply to address them directly, but that would go against the nature of Twitter. Twitter allows one message to be communicated to many. If I wanted to reach out to one user, I’ll send them an email! I suppose that when you need to push in a nail, every tool begins to resemble a hammer…
Regarding your party analogy, I like it, but probably for all the wrong reasons, because, from my point of view, at least I bothered coming to the party: I followed back.
Interesting and thought-provoking post
I’m in education, and I have spent the last few months establishing and growing a PLN. I can think of a couple of big-name education tweeters who match your original description above, and my answer is simply, Vote with your feet. If you think they are selfish, and selfishness in this medium bothers you, then unfollow them. Chances are, you won’t be the only one.
To me there is no point worrying about how other people use Twitter: you cannot change Twitter, or other people. Everyone uses it differently, and I doubt that we will ever agree on a shared etiquette beyond “thou shalt not spam, or sell”. That’s okay. Enjoy your corner of the ‘verse, and tweet as you would be tweeted unto, and you will collect a PLN of people whose views match yours.
My list of followers somewhat exceeds the time and attention I have, so I am picky about whom I follow back. I’m okay with that, because nowhere is it written that I must reciprocate. Thank god.
But I almost never ask for help. My idea of tweeting is to give, not take. Crowdsourcing because you’re too lazy or too important to google is the swift road to being unfollowed, in my book.
And those guys I mentioned at the beginning? Unfollowed. They were too noisy, too demanding, too driven by ego. See, there is a justice of sorts, but I think it’s an emergent justice, not one that can be deliberately contrived
Chris, I like your description of Twitter-Karma (Twarma?). It’s important to remember that everybody will utilize this tool differently and that you can only (try to) control how you use it.
I follow people that I think are interesting. If they follow me back, excellent. If they don’t, no worries. I’m not keeping score, even if Twitter is. Ultimately, it costs me nothing to follow a person and it may even benefit me. If they don’t answer my plea for Twitter-help, then I’m no worse off than where I started: not knowing.
No one is forced to follow anyone on Twitter, nor should it be the case that people follow each other.
If you want to be followed and the @famousteacher does not follow you, then don’t follow them.
The problem arises that everyone wants Twitter to be their ideal tool and the reality is that it is everyone’s ideal tool, just that not everyone has the same ideals.
I believe that Twitter is not about information and links but is all about the coffee. However many don’t want the coffee chat and therefore my model is not what they want.
To be honest that is the beauty of Twitter.
The reality is that we can’t tell people how to use Twitter as they have their way of using it and you have yours. They are not the same way and nor can they be. Unless we each follow exactly the same people, use the same tools, and follow the same etiquette it is impossible for each of us to have and use Twitter in the same way.
We need to work out how Twitter works for us and use it accordingly. follow people for a range of reasons, I never expect any of them to follow me back.
James
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