I follow people who I want to influence me.
If I find people they are following who I want influence over me, I also follow them.
I learn and have fun and learn.
Am flattered by those who are following and willing to listen.
I listen, respond and try to give back.
This is exactly why I’m on Twitter too. What a wonderful tool.
Yes it is isn’t it? I’m not a fan of using it over the web, but as soon as it was accessible via Jabber/Gtalk and twhirl … I was onboard!
That all said and done, I should note that I don’t follow everyone. I believe some people who I follow act as “filters” to some degree — so they decide what is important to tweet about.
I agree totally.
And likewise, I don’t follow everyone back. I can’t be one of those people that follow 1,000 or even 500 people. I’d like to take the time to get to know everyone, build stronger, more meaningful relationships rather than just catching a random thought every now and then.
I found that I needed to follow quite a few folks at first in order to determine both where my twitter interests lay and whose tweets really enhanced the experience for me. Now, of course, I’m slowly paring the list. Since it took several months to get to my high of over 700, I’m fine with the idea that it will take several months to reduce that to 300 or so.
I was hooked by following malburns - I discovered that his “what I’m reading” tweets were great pointers to topics that interested me. That process of discovering how to use the Twitter “tool” was as fine a self-learning aid as I’ve ever experienced.
Toster I think many people start off with a similar approach to yours which is actually a really good way to explore what’s out there. Especially since you weren’t sure where your twitter interests lay. From my experience, I find that a lot of people begin to talk about the same thing (especially when it comes to the tech community) so I remove the duplication and let certain people act as a filter.
I’m probably the opposite in approach where I am very careful about who I am following. I tend to look at a person’s blog and tweets very thoroughly before deciding to follow them. I also don’t like following too many people so that I can communicate with them at a more consistent basis or frequently enjoy listening to what they have to say.