The Follow Culture - Part 1.

Aka, who’s in your 5,000?

You know the person. They’re following 12,872, they have 23 followers and maybe updated 4 times. Now?

They’re following you.

While it seems to happen mostly on Twitter, this mindset affects more than than just one site. It’s all over places like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube too. It’s a little more understandable there however, because originally those sites were based in large part on having a network of friends and followers to share stuff with.

“Here’s my crappy whatever it is, and oh, by the way, would you tell all your friends?”

It wasn’t always like this though.

Not long ago, in internet years at least, community forums ruled all. Before MySpace and the rest blew up, that’s all you had, and before that, the threaded madness that was/is a bbs. You were judged in large part on the number of replies or posts you made. Without turning this into a Ruby vs. PHP tech discussion about specific platforms, let’s just say you were limited by the architecture of the times when it came to letting you control your experience.

Customize your page? Maybe. Number of followers? Groups? What was that?

Message boards instead focused on rooms, (much like they do now if you still hang around one). You didn't “own” a list of followers—you WERE the list, inherently part of a mass of people “following” a particular room.

Now, you’re in charge. Content is served to you based on preferences, likes, dislikes and recommendations of friends. The ability to follow someone? That counts as much as anything. In many cases, it’s the only thing:

I follow more people than you so therefore I’m more important than you.

More than just people too, it’s also the countless groups someone wants you to join, or band pages they want you to subscribe to. While you might say that this is only a problem for someone on Twitter and why should you care because the solution is simple: Just don’t follow them, right?



Well, yes and no.

Like I said, this mindset is everywhere. You won’t be able to ignore it forever. Besides, do you only hang at one place? You see this behavior on other sites because people tend to act pretty the same wherever they go, bringing their habits with them.

To be clear, I don’t mean the casual user who has a decent followers:following ratio. I mean, the obsessed. I’m not here to judge them though. (Wait, yes I am.) Let me play shrink and take a stab at some of reasons why. So many motivations at work here, so little time.

The notion that your self-worth is directly related to how many people you’re following. Cue Gunnery Sgt. Hartman:

“Didn’t mommy and daddy show you enough attention when you were a child?”

Apparently not. There are people who follow 15,000 and will get 14,999 in return—yet freak over the one.

Others though, may only get 10 in return. Either way, the chase, the hunt, the follow, is more important than any content to them. (Unless that content is about tips to improve the number of followers of course.) Desperation feeding off desperation I suppose.

Still others use it purely as a business tactic. No deep psychological issues at work, just get in, get out, nobody gets hurt. It’s very much like direct mail in that regard: Follow a ton of people, and even if they only get 2-3% return, (say, a return follow for maybe every 10, 100, 1,000 people followed), they’ve succeeded. Why? Because they don’t care about the ones who don’t follow, just the ones who do.

Greed IS good. When it comes to an inflated Twitter stream it sure is. Too many people got out the universal social media playbook and are running it step-by-step:

“New to Twitter? No problem. Just go to Twitterholic and follow 2,000 before lunch—reciprocation ensues. Use one of many automatic programs like Tweetlater to help build your Twitter productivity too. It’s the fastest way to build attention for you or your company!”

Actually, a faster way involves a loaded rifle and a mall.

I was talking to several people about this follow craze when Alan Wolk came out with his Twitter as Ponzi scheme post. It addressed people who try and make money from having a ton of followers. (One particular exchange in that thread stands out and proves his point more than he could have imagined.)











That’s a common problem with Twitter now. The idea that “Yes, you CAN earn six-figure incomes a week from your living room—let me show you how!!!!! Bob Knorpp explores this follow mindset from a different the point of view: Just follow someone you’re interested in. Makes sense.

The girl Riot then thought that an obscene amount of followers to follow ratio was acceptable if and only if you were talking about a celebrity. (Celebrity in this case being a real Hollywood star or someone otherwise famous. The tech microcelebrity A-list? Entirely different animal.)

Main point being that you know going in you're entering a relationship without expecting to be followed back. You’re “friends” in name only, but not really anything beyond that.

So follow Shaq if you want, just don’t expect the big man to follow back. (As of this post, he’s only following 381 people while 49,470 follow him. Cue Scoble: “Dude, catch up.) I noticed something else about this:

The disparity between follows and followers looks like a video game score.

It's one thing to have 300 followers, but I’m guessing a fair amount of people start seeing thousands up there and get hooked, wanting thousands more in an attempt at beating the “high score” of another. More points is more better, right?

If that’s what gets you off.

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(Next up in part 2: Who’s doing it then?)
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