• Really useful tips. Thanks for info
  • I used SocialToo for the auto follow feature. I have since changed my mind, deleted my account with them. Yet I am still auto following and sending a canned welcome response to my new followers - most of whom I am manually un-following. Jesse Stay swears it's not his service's doing. Twitter technical support is non-existent and I'm left scratching my head. Just a heads up.
  • Ramkarthik
    Suzanne,

    I don't use any of those services but I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out.

    Thanks for the comment.
  • Auto follow is stuck on my twitter account
    I believe I set it up with SocialOomph when it was tweet later. It shows me set at not autofollowing.
    What can I do to stop the auto follow?

    I would love to know!
    Thank you so much!
    Suzanne
  • Suzanne,

    I have the same issue. Although through SocialToo. Do you mind letting me know how you solved this (if/when)? Thanks.

    -Paul

    paul at titaniumeffect dot com
  • admin
    Regina,

    Completely agree with you. There are just too many bots these days that you simply cannot have autofollow on. It takes only a few seconds to review a twitter account before adding them.

    Thanks for the comment.
  • I don't use autofollow for several reasons. First of all, there has been an increase in pornographic posts along the lines of "Check out my X-rated pix." Second, I don't think it is useful to follow tons of people because there is no way to keep up with all of them. So I follow people who are in the health and wellness field like myself, as well as those who are in marketing or who tweet about marketing and business topics. If someone is in a field that is not related to those topics, I generally don't follow them. It's nothing personal, it's just the most efficient way for me to use Twitter.
  • Ramkarthik
    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.
  • 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.
  • The best way to get good followers is manually follow people that are interested in same area you are....
  • jo
    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.
  • Thanks for the Quitter tip.. can't believe the number of sneaky bots on Twitter! :-O
  • I think auto follow is great if it can some how be controlled.
  • 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
    I am going to start doing some auto follow tests.
    This is web 2.5 ;-) people have the choice to follow or not and can also maintain their privacy.
    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
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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
  • "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.
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  • 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-every...
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