Since forever, John Chow has been praising and preaching the idea of following everyone on Twitter who follows you, in order to avoid “negative social proof”, whatever that is. He went so far as to make a whole website dedicated to getting you more followers, as long as you follow them back (much like the MySpace whore trains).
Now suddenly, he’s backflipped and seen the error of this theory that we’ve known all along; that it’s pointless, unmanageable, and serves no purpose but to put a large number on your profile.
I started Twitter with no followers whatsoever, and spent my time just tweeting what I wanted, and following people I found interesting. From there, everything grew on it’s own. There was no need to spam people with requests to follow back, or direct messages thanking them, or anything like that (though to be honest for a while I did thank people…). I’m sure a lot of others are the same, right?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Too many follower create SPAM..
Luckily I’m not popular like him..
I started by saying what I wanted and following people interesting to me. In the beginning I followed everyone back but after a while, I cut down and just followed people I cared about :)