Quote:
Originally Posted by kindlekitten
I just signed up for twitter this afternoon. I already have 12 people following me  . when I check their profiles, some of them have absolutely nothing posted, but follow several hundred other people. weird. kinda scary even
anyway... "social networking" is supposed to be good for marketing. *sigh* |
Twitter has spammers, just like everywhere else. You can BLOCK them, and if they @mention you (selling something) you can even "Report for spam". Chances are, if you've had no communication, they are just spammers.
People take different approaches. Because being "followed" by someone means no real impact on you, some people just let their followers go hell-for-leather, without trying to block anyone (unless they're being jerks directly to them). Unless they actually mention you you'll otherwise not really know a follower is there unless you specifically go through them all.
Myself, I like to keep my Followers list clean. If I can see no reason that they're following me (this is usually obvious with spammers, "networkers", etc - just check they're own tweets and you'll often see spammy garbage), I tend to BLOCK...a lot (blocking just stops them from following you, nothing else). If a bakery in Tucson starts following me because I happen to mention brioche in one of my tweets (i.e. they've got a search bot that auto-follows), they're immediately blocked. But if they're real people, even if I don't know them (sometimes you get them from people retweeting your tweets, or that 'friend of a friend" or "acquaintance of an acquaintance" thing), I also tend to follow them back. I follow way more than I am followed, but all folks who follow me are followed back.
I am followed by very few people (partly because I'm not gregarious in my direct tweeting).
You can also go private, so that people can only follow you if you approve their request to follow you (which also controls access to your tweets). I know good reasons some people do that, but for general use it might kind of defeat the general purpose of Twitter (but, of course, "general purpose"...~shrugs~)
I really like Twitter. It's where I mostly go for whatever one wants to call "socialising". It's a font of an enormous amount of interesting stuff for me, a way I keep abreast of major happenings (through pointers and discussion), a way to watch television with millions in your lounge room at the same time, and contains a simple brevity that to me belies its strength and immediacy and informative and intellectual and humorous nature (who and how you follow is
important), as well as a supportive, empathetic nature (again, in who you follow) in a way Facebook, for instance, doesn't (
for me...only for me...pure subjective, personal preference talking here).
But that's just me.
Oh, and twitter also has bots on it other than spambots. Some fun ones. There are bots where, if you mention a specific word or phrase, they will automatically @message you. If you don't know why, or understand the reference (eg. the "over 9000" bot, or the Na'vi bot) these can be odd, but some can be somewhat amusing, and harmless of course.
Also, you sometimes discover that some "celebrities" are actually human (and even friendly).
Note that my positive impression is utterly
not biassed by the fact that a follower I "met" and became friends with on Twitter sent me cupcakes and balloons and party hats for my birthday. No, not influenced by that at all.
Cheers,
Marc