I started my Twitter journey in earnest on April 1, 2009. Yes, the date is not insignificant, though it seems a lot less foolish now than it did back then.
Over the past fifteen months, covering 7,000+ tweets and following almost 700, I’m at around 1,400 followers.
There is a camp with includes many of the early adopters and Twitter stars, if you will, due to their large follower numbers that attach variations of a moral or ethical obligation to follow-back everyone that follow them. They set up an auto-follow mechanism to facilitate this. I haven’t found any of the arguments for this action convincing. In fact, all agree that to effectively use this medium, they NEVER see any of the updates from most of their followers since they’re relegated to a digital scrap heap using third party applications like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. That, arguably, could be considered unethical.
I have my views on this subject, which, based on the preceding paragraph, are pretty obvious, but some situations are better left open to debate than make an attempt to offer definitive conclusions. This may be one of those situations 
I’ve kept track of every follower since I started my Twitter journey. Pretty simple, actually – edit your Twitter settings to be notified via email when someone starts following and set up a rule in your email client to “mark as read” and store in a folder. I’ve received over 4,500 such emails, and of those, only 1,400 remain as followers today.
Forgive the pun, but the chart above is a pretty graphic depiction of the fickleness of Twitter users and their practices around following and un-following. And this group includes members of the Twitter royal family.
Why then, am I happy that I lost these legion of followers, depriving me from elevated “status” based solely on the number of Twitter followers? (despite, tons of writing to the contrary, this number remains the primary measure).
Because of the increased opportunity to meaningfully engage and form relationships due to a sincere desire to follow each other based on mutual interests or relations.
Because when I send out a request for help or opinion on a particular issue, I know it will get out to most of my followers, not lost in the digital scrap heap I referred to earlier. Because of that, I’m confident that I’ll get meaningful responses.
And, because it’s an indication to those who are considering following me, that if I do follow them back, it’s from a genuine desire to engage, learn, even form and build relationships.
Ethical debate aside, this mostly comes down to preference, personality and practices. This way suits me. How about you?
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Tim -
I wholeheartedly agree with your approach. I have been on Twitter substantially longer than you and have roughly the same number of followers. From Day 1, I have made it a policy to look at every follower to see whether they have a background I am interested in, a web presence that supports their message and tweets that add, rather than sell. I know there are different camps on how to treat followers, but to this day, I find my research-and-follow philosophy yields the most value in return for the time I spend on Twitter – I know that a glance at the stream is going to educate and inform me.
Martha, thanks for your feedback. As someone who engages across the spectrum, your affirmation is truly meaningful.
I love your tag, “research and follow philosophy” – it captures the sentiment beautifully. Most arguments to the contrary, quite frankly, are in defense of piling up follower numbers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that
Tim
Saw your post via FB. I am a little under a year behind your life-on-Twitter. Sure, many of us can wait to get the first 100, then the second, the first 1,000 – for what? My feeds refresh so fast, I can hardly keep up with any of them…not that I appear to be missing all that much.
I have select groups that post on information I am interested in. I have those (among whom I count you) that I “communicate” with on a social basis and sometimes regarding a post of two. Those are the only people that I really care to follow or be followed by.
I will also follow news organizations or medical institutions that I know I don’t have a prayer will follow back. That’s OK, they serve as my morning newspaper. I doubt they care what I have to say anyway.
I’m taking to heart what folks like you and Adrian Dayton (and others) have said about this numbers game. OK…I’m a disciple. I’m going through my Followers and Following this weekend. The end is near for oh so many trying to sell me a condo in Hawaii or cheap insurance in N.C. or the 10 best ways to make a million online. Hmmm…maybe I’ll keep the last group.
Thanks for the posting, Tim.
Brian, I feel exactly like you do about following certain individuals or organizations, many of whom would probably not find what I have to say as useful as I do them. I’m okay with that
Your engagement of Twitter and other social networking platforms, including your blog really do represent what I appreciate about these new and emerging mediums.
Like the deeply touching Father’s Day tribute (http://medicalmalpracticeblog.nashandassociates.com/2010/06/20/in-memory-of-my-father-happy-fathers-day-dad/) in the middle of your professional blog which serves as an example of how we, as entrepreneurs should not fear showing a little bit about ourselves. And how would I have ever discovered you if my news stream was filled with tens of thousands of mostly irrelevant followers?
I love your stats graph on how many Twitter followers you have lost over the last year.I would agree that so many tweets must never get viewed at all. But I wonder how many Twitter accounts are just auto bots and how many are real people controlled.I like to use Twitter lists to filter out boring bot accounts.
Thanks for kind words and feedback, Gary. I totally agree with you — Twitter has tons of “auto-bot” accounts along with duplicate and dormant users. But they refuse to release inactive usernames or weed obvious spam accounts. They do it for one simple reason – numbers. Their value to investors/possible IPO, etc, is the total number of users. It’s transparent and disappointing, even duplicitous.
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