The Follow Culture – Part 2.

(More of the epic saga* on why people follow, continued from part 1.)

So who’s doing it then?

Mostly everybody. Even though the question should be more like why.

When it comes to following on other sites like Facebook or MySpace, places where you might friend someone from high school or college that you already have six degrees of separation with, it’s different.

Yes, even in times like these, you’re line of friendship credit is pre-approved.

(There’s a great document from Danah Boyd called Taken Out Of Context on teen groups on how and why they share and follow online. Via.)

Yet others though throw out blanket statements that sound good at Web 2.0 seminars, but don’t apply. Neither does teen behavior in this case because Twitter is meant to be 18+. 18 or not, generations don’t behave online the way you expect anyway so absolutes become meaningless.

The girl Riot raised another point about the differences between the places you live online: The immediacy of Twitter seems to force a more urgent need on your part to respond.

This is unlike Facebook or MySpace where you might go days or weeks without so much as a poke from someone. I think we’ve been doing this for a long time with email too: Life takes over, we get busy, next thing you know, three weeks went by and I just now responded to your email. Guilty as charged.

Still, that’s about specific platforms rather than specific demos. Is it a generational thing? Are only Gen X/Y/i/Text guilty of joining an online community and instantly friending 12,000?

No. Boomers are among some of the worst culprits.












Early adopters then? No again. Those people are always going to be on the latest sites first no matter what, and they sure aren’t bugging you to be their friend. They may follow you, but that’s generally out of courtesy and only after you follow them first. Besides, early adopters usually have a built-in core audience that follows them anywhere.

So it’s gotta be the A-listers then, right?

Uh, not seeing it. To get all scientific animal kingdom chart on you, they’re an early-adopter subset, often times one in the same. Like their parent genus, they might follow out of courtesy or to build numbers. (Scoble has 54,000 but follows 58,000, in part because he feels it makes him smarter having access to all that crowdsource.)

Having met half of who people consider to be the social media A-list, (or those I’ve gone back and forth with online privately), they’ve been totally cool. Still, the other half of that list has never responded to a single message and doesn’t seem to want to know you unless you’re in their same rarified air.

Draw your own conclusions, but what it showed me is that you can’t just say it’s this group or that group doing it.

Another sub-sub-subset? People who think they’re celebrities in the making or internet famous who build a lopsided ratio of 11 follows to 6,043 followers on purpose.

Newsflash to the hopeful wanting a return follow: That 11 ain’t moving any higher. Not that I’m avoiding pointing fingers at the guilty out of politeness—I just don’t have enough fingers. You’ll note the patent-pending Special Vibe™ that says:

“I only follow a select few. My friends, my, “real friends” and I will continue our private discussions about you—in front of you—without acknowledging you. Why? Well, Twitter is all about me—and them. Oh sure, I could just protect my updates or take this thing offline, but then I couldn’t ignore you in public.”

(A conversation by the way that would never take place because of the 140-character limit, but, I can dream.)

Usually, this group is like the members on Vallywag’s Twitteratti list. A nice collection of what the lucky select few are usually up to, which in some cases, involves listening to themselves type. Cue the lucky select few.












Brands without a clue for $200.

They’ll always be there, no matter where you go. ‘Nuff said.

No, the major group responsible for Follow Me! Fun™ are boomer+ PR marketing wannabe types. You’d think that being older, boomers would know better, especially coming from a pre-internet culture where meeting and networking were handled more deftly:

We have a meeting. I give you a leave-behind brochure. You do the follow-up call a few days later to thank me. If there’s a need for what you have, don’t call me, I’ll... what? That’s right. I’ll call you.

Then again, maybe not because that group never got the email. Definitely not PR types. They can’t even bother to look up your name on the blog when sending a press release in. Somewhere along the way they got their hands on the Universal Twitter Playbook and turned to the first page:

“Before your first update, follow 300 people.”

I suppose the guy at parties who shoves his business card in everyone’s face has always been around, it’s just now, he has a ton of new online parties to pass them out at. And pass them out, and out.

Let me show YOU how to get 600 new followers—guaranteed.

Relationships aren’t about annoying someone to the point they follow you back just to shut you up, it’s a slower, more organic process. At least it is for me. I was just as happy when five people read the blog as I am now that several thousand do. Followers on Twitter? Facebook? Cool. But I never lived for it. I follow someone, read their blog or subscribe to their feed based on one thing.

The write stuff.

Aka, how I decide who to follow. Is what someone posts funny, compelling, cool and/or a useful link. That’s it.

You have 12,000 followers, (or you’re following as many). So what. If what you have to say is useless, those numbers mean nothing. Someone follows me, I look at their following/followers/update numbers. If they’re out of whack, do not pass go, do not collect 200 followers.

Numbers like: following–2,016, followers–53, updates–2? Might as well make your updates 0 then. See ya.

If the numbers look okay, then I check out the writing. You pretty much know within 10 posts/updates what someone’s personality is like. (Not a steady stream of retweets either.) If it’s cool, then followed and welcome to the club.

None of this is set in stone, as I tend to follow someone back who may only have a few follows if they've got a decent amount of updates or they’re funny. Or pretending to be someone not funny.

I find one or two cool things inside that first group of updates, chances are, I’m gonna see more stuff I like from them. The dealbreaker though that gets an instant block? Seeing any combination of the following words:

affiliate + make + money + online right away + puppies + Grateful Dead fan.

(There’s also the mercy return follow, something I’m guilty of. (Even after I check someone out and decide I don’t want to follow, I look at the lonely avatar with 4 friends and take pity.)

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Next up: I can’t Qwit you.

*This makes up for the week where whatever I posted or commented on was no more than 25 words.