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Update: Jesse Stay, who is the founder of socialtoo – the site that offers the twitter auto follow service, posted a reply in the comments of this post and also in friendfeed share (posted by Louis Gray of Louis Gray.Com). SocialToo also offers auto unfollow option, which I forgot to mention in this post. Please see this friendfeed share for more information.
Twitter is becoming famous everyday with so many people joining. You can find me in twitter here – Ramkarthik. All the new users need twitter followers to make sure their words are noticed by some people. Every twitter user likes to have many followers. Sometimes people don’t spend time to learn about twitter and spam the place. In this post you’ll find why you shouldn’t use twitter auto follow.
People, who join twitter, add the ones they know. Later they start to add new people. There is nothing wrong with this. But when people get over excited about twitter, they start following too many people in a single day or spam the community with tons of links.
Coming to talk about twitter auto follow, it is a service that let’s you follow twitter users automatically, once they follow you. Any person, who follows you, will be followed back automatically. You do not have the option of selecting whom to follow.
Image Soure: Twitter Influence by mil8
Here are 3 reasons why should not
1. All Links And No Real Update
There are twitter users who post every link of their blog post and do nothing much other than that. They add people in bulk; say 2000 twitter users at once. When you use twitter auto follow, you will be automatically following them. Why would you want to read tweets with links to blog posts all the time? If the profile created is on the name of a blog, you can expect them to tweet only blog post links. But some twitter users have their own names and do only blog promotion in twitter. I’m not saying that these people are bad. It is just that they haven’t understood twitter properly and will take time for them to learn about it.
2. Irrelevant Tweets
When you follow everyone who follows you, you are not using twitter efficiently. Let me give you an example. You have a blog probably (If you are new to blogging, I recommend you to read this free ebook). Even if you don’t have, assume that you own one. You write good blog posts and people are reading it. They subscribe to your blog. Will you subscribe to all of your subscribers’ blog? Of course not. If it was that way, Darren Rowse would have to subscribe to 7000 blogs, even if one tenth of his subscribers have a blog. So to make your twitter page relevant, follow only people who talk about things that interest you.
3. Follow And Unfollow
Twitter users who want to have many followers, add many twitter users. Once you follow them back, after a couple of days, they unfollow you. What’s the disadvantage here? Well, you followed a user because he/she followed you and now they have unfollowed you. When you are using auto follow, you automatically follow these people who unfollow users once they have added them. To avoid this, you should stop using auto follow, wait till the twitter user tweets you or tweets something interesting and then add him/her. Sometimes, you cannot avoid people by doing this too. You should start using Qwitter which will help you to know, who the users that are unfollowing you are.
Do you use auto follow? Why do you use auto follow? If you have valid points, I’ll include it in the next post. We could write a post on the advantages of using twitter auto follow. Please share your views in the comments.
P.S: Don’t forget to add me in twitter. My user name is Ramkarthik.
P.P.S: The link to the free report is an affiliate link.
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About Me
It’s all about forging relationships, which is why auto-follow is a good thing. Twitter’s not about the content – it’s about the relationships. Here’s my response on LouisGray.com to why auto-follow is a good thing: http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/11/not-everyone-reads-your-tweets-and.html
Automation Defeats the Purpose of Social Media | SheenOnline // Dec 19, 2008 at 4:03 pm
[...] and marketers is just one single variable that ensures this to be true. There are many other reasons you shouldn’t use auto-follow. There are a large number of people on Twitter who you would view as “noise” if you [...]
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“It is just that they haven’t understood twitter properly and will take time for them to learn about it.”
Good post, but disagree with the above statement. Their are may ways to use twitter based on your needs. Using to promote your blog is one of them.
I am new to twitter and I was attracted to auto follow for obvious reasons, but I have to agree with you -I would rather have quality over quantity. http://twitter.com/Gemanian
Fair enough perspective. I ultimately agree with the commenters – do with Twitter what you will, and let it fit your needs. Do whatever works for you (auto-follow or no auto-follow). With all the new Twitter interfaces out there, the value of Twitter changes more broadly.
twitter.com/bill_sebald
Why Autofollow on Twitter? | davefleet.com // Mar 16, 2009 at 1:01 pm
[...] Do You Use Twitter Auto Follow? 3 Reasons Why You Should Not [...]
You can write nice information about twitter, but some times is very use full, twitter is micro bloging it limits the post to 140 characters, i love twitter because as a copywriter, it’s also to force to be pithy, test headlines and subject lines, and build your brand.
I am also of the opinion that this is a “use it as you like it ” kind of thing. I dont use auto follow but i know many people who do and they are happy with the result.
For many using twitter is the most ethical way of building interactions with their blog. I try and encourage Twitter and WordPress Integration
people have the choice to follow or not and can also maintain their privacy.
I am going to start doing some auto follow tests.
This is web 2.5
Many years ago i remember discussions about maintaining restrictions of the www to non-commercial use. Imagine where we would all be today if that had been done, Still ordering cd’s via mail i suspect.
Live and let follow I say
Personally i think it is better just to ask.
speaking of which follow me
I think auto follow is great if it can some how be controlled.
Thanks for the Quitter tip.. can’t believe the number of sneaky bots on Twitter! :-O
mdy says
Auto-follow isn’t enabled by default. Twitter users have to request it via the Twitter help form. If you believe Twitter has turned auto-follow on for your account, you can use the same form to request that they disable it.
But since your account is auto-following and you haven’t asked Twitter to enable auto-follow, I can only guess that it’s a third-party service that’s doing this.
For example, if you use SocialToo.com, it will automatically follow back anyone who follows you on Twitter as long as they’re not on your Socialtoo blacklist.
Similarly, the TweetLater.com service can auto-follow anyone who follows you if your settings ask it to do so.
If you can’t remember all the third-party services you’ve tried, but would like to be sure that no third-party app can auto-follow on your behalf, I suggest changing your Twitter password.
The best way to get good followers is manually follow people that are interested in same area you are….
Well I can see you point, but people can spam you no matter how you ran across them. I think that it takes only a second to unfollow a person so if you can add a group based on what they are tweeting on, it is much easier to unfollow down the road.
Secondly I have never had an account banned from using the popular follow services. Just the other day, I made a new twitter account and added “3″ people to follow and the account was removed. Well who knows why, but I for one will be sticking with auto follow until twitter nix’s it.
Nick,
I agree. People will face spam no matter what. But the thing is, there are so many twitter bots these days which are set to follow people based on a keyword. When you follow these bots, your twitter timeline will be full of spam messages.
I’d be happy to follow people one by one instead of unfollowing all the bots one by one since there are many bots in twitter these days.
On follow services, I have used them in a couple of instances and they do seem to work pretty nice. But we have to be careful when we are using it for the main account. It will not take a second out account to be banned. As far as I know, my account was not banned for using it once before.
Thanks for making a good and informational comment. Hope to see you often here.