Why Passive-Aggressive Twitter Following Is Spam

Mass Following then Unfollowing ruins the point of social networking. Sure we can manipulate it so we can get all the attention, but that isn’t networking. Its call self promotion and it gets pretty annoying.

i read his article. it seems ridiculous to make such a big show from it with lots of philosophy behind it, while it’s just the old mass follow game. how did he manage to follow so many people without losing his account?

anyway, probs to him to get the attention he got now. reputation does not seem to be on his agenda.

I agree and I think it’s “peeing in the pool” and misleading people. Just because you can do something to promote yourself doesn’t mean it’s cool.

I agree 100%. I can’t stand it when people add me on Twitter, then wait for me to reciprocate, and once I do, they drop me.
Add if I don’t add them back, they will drop me and re-add me until I do add them … at which time they will drop me.
I don’t see the point.
NFL draft bust Tony Mandarich added me, so I added him back out of courtesy. A week later he dropped me and added a bunch of others (who he later dropped). What is the point? Either keep me and have a reciprocal relationship or just leave me alone altogether.
Now, every once in a while (say, once a week), I go through the list of people whom I am following. If I don’t see the words “direct message” under their name, I drop them (outside of the people I added because I want to follow them). I can usually find a few people that pulled this bait-and-switch trick of adding me until I add them.

I’m not here to pick on any one guy, but I don’t think this kind of behavior is cool or virtuious in any way. It’s just the old mass follow game.. without being legitimate and respectful about it.

I really don’t care about people unfollowing or following me. The people that I actually care about knowing engage me in person, over the phone or via Twitter. It isn’t some gimmick and you can tell right off the bat. Who cares about those who do it for attention? I just care if the person is valuable or not. Seems like a dick move though.

Stuartfoster,

I just don’t like having my time wasted by striking up a relationship with someone who doesn’t really want to have a relationship with me.. other than to get me to follow them so that they can unfollow me and hope I won’t notice.

In short: follow me if you want to.. don’t if you don’t.. but don’t play games!

Sean,

I think the point is to get one-way attention without having to give anybody back. If you want to go big and mass follow people… do it… but understand that it’s gonna get noisy. Don’t bait tens of thousands of people and suddenly change your tune at your earliest convenience.

I love it. You articulated many of my thoughts better than I could.

One thing however, is that Twitter is a (reasonably) well build system with a strong RESTful API. Scripting doesn’t really harm the service too much. No more than using a Twitter client likely does.

More on this, Twitter limits your API calls to 100/hour for standard accounts. I’ve had mine whitelisted to 20,000/hour, which Twitter approved. Hitting the service with 100 API hits/hour does nothing to harm stuff.

You’ve got some really good arguments here. I originally read his article (it was retweeted everywhere yesterday) and was indeed surprised at how self-congratulatory the tone was – including the tone of some of those who retweeted it – like they’re already exempt from all criticism, it’s a bit elitist. One good rule of thumb is not to add anyone that you don’t really want to be part of your long-term twitter conversation. It’s not wrong to unfollow, but I make the decision carefully (since after all I followed them at one point). It’s not wrong to weed out noise, or just discussion irrelevant to what you’re focusing on. But by the same token I don’t just follow people blindly with no reason.

Yeah, it’s a very unsavory “tactic”, if we can even call it that, but it’s been around for ages. I remember this way back when I first signed up to Twitter a couple of years ago, but this kind of thing was on a much smaller scale — which is to be expected, given the much smaller audience Twitter had back then.

This time last year, I wrote an article called: “Social Networking and blogging for self-masturbatory egomaniacs — a guide”, which lists some of the scummy tactics people can expect to encounter .. and was promptly plagiarized by someone who ought to have known better.

There’s just no end to these things because there’s no one in a position to stop them, so the game just continues…

Nailed it! Lots of masturbaters on Twitter, sadly…

Fantastic article and my thoughts exactly! Well done

While I agree with many of your points, and even some of his, I definitely think he’s missing the value in truly having a network. I feel that you can learn something from the majority of people you come into contact with if only you take the time to listen. I absolutely love my network and cannot imagine doing something like that. I give most people the benefit of the doubt and have found that while my network is getting big, I love all the different points of view and worlds I get insight into. If you’re limiting yourself and your network, you never know who you might just be missing that in reality would’ve been a valuable asset.

Definitely in line with the way I see things and use Twitter. I make allowances for Twitter being occasionally goofy and people’s lists getting screwed up, so if I get followed and unfollowed a couple of times, I note it and take no action. However, if I find someone shows up in my new follow alerts three times in a row, they get blocked. It’s irritating, but I try not to let it stick – in every community there will be scammers, con artists, and self-promoters; it’s the nature of things. All you can do is continue to cultivate the real relationships you develop and be grateful for the opportunity to add what they teach to your life.

I liked your Article and thoughts behind it. Yet, here we are giving them (whom use Passive-Aggressive Following as a strategy) more attention than they deserve. I firmly believe that the only ones who should not be followed or unfollowed for that matter are the so called Bots (and maybe the pictureless/nameless twitterers). Unfortunately some or too many measure twitter-success only by ratio of high amount of followers versus a low number of actually following… Thanks for your insight!

Totally agree with you. I have been using twitter for quite a few months yet I follow less than a couple hundred people and have only couple hundred followers as I am not interested in following anyone and everyone just to increase my stats.

Pallab,

Good for you! I don’t think there’s anything wrong with following more people… but keeping your network “authentic” and manageable certainly has a lot of benefits.

Snowkitten,

Mass following and unfollowing people is a very effective way to get one-way followers.. just like putting drugs in someone’s drink is probably a very effective way to lower their inhibitions… but that doesn’t make it “cool” or “right.”

I don’t want to see it get justified (and then applauded and glorified) as some kind of “legit” social media practice… because I see it as a game that is quite detrimental to the community… for the reasons I outlined.

Thanks for your comments, glad to see you picture here in the icons! Didn’t know what you looked like.

David,

I’m not a software engineer, so correct me if I’m wrong… but Twitter goes ‘over capacity’ and crashes from time to time.

The API calls themselves might not be a strain… but the lookup to send those tweets out to the right 50,000 people+ definitely seems to put a strain on the system. Same as when people constantly friend and unfriend people thousands of times a day to milk the system.

I would arge that if people only followed people they were interested in…. and did less systematic “game following”… Twitter’s limited competing resources would be more stable and less prone to overload.

Pamir,

There’s lots of different ways you can get ahead: intimidating your competitors, sleeping with the director, stuffing the ballot box, paying mind games on Twitter…. but it doesn’t make them “right.”

KristyWrites,

Glad you enjoyed! Thanks for keep it real.

Hi Brett,

“I’m not writing this to pick on any one person”

No, that doesn’t actually seem to be the case. You link to the post on my blog. You spent a lot of time commenting on my blog last night only to declare that, after many comments, you’d decided that you knew my ‘true colors”.

You’ve made your decision and blocked me on Twitter.

I’m wondering, would any of this have happened if you had been one of the people I immediately followed back? I’m guessing that you’d be happily defending me against all attackers and posting here about how I’d done the right thing.

But you didn’t actually “befriend” me weeks ago, Brett. You didn’t DM or Email or even talk to me on Twitter. All you did was follow me.

The “follow” on Twitter does NOT represent a real relationship unless some action is taken to go beyond the initial “click to follow”.

When I began following back the people who have reached out and befriended me, your name didn’t pop up in my mind, in my replies, in my emails, or in my DM’s because we hadn’t interacted. We weren’t friends.

Brett, it would have been disingenuous of me to follow you after the statements I made in the post you link to.

I say that I want the list of people I follow to be a constant endorsement of a group of people I find tremendously valuable for any number of reasons. My “follow” list is my constant follow friday. It is where you can go to find people I enjoy listening to. You can find people who challenge me and inspire me in that list.

You’re not on that list yet, Brett. And I’m not on yours.

And that’s okay. It’s okay not to follow people. It’s okay to have differing ideas.

I don’t think it’s okay to write posts about how specific people are spammers. But that’s your choice. This is your blog, your home. Thanks for letting me say my part.

OK, it’s my own damn fault – I was in a hurry and didn’t follow the link to the blog you were using to illustrate passive/aggressive following as spam. If I had, I would have left a different comment the first time. I think yours and Seth Simonds post are complementary, and I don’t get why you would think what he’s doing adds up to him being a passive/aggressive spammer. I use a lot of the same criteria for judging whether or not to follow or unfollow and I don’t have nearly the numbers he has to deal with. I know in the past he’s had problems with his account, and we all know Twitter can drop followers without rhyme or reason, so that even if one is dropped, there’s no indicator that tells one it was done on purpose by the user or accidentally by Twitter. Did you ask him why you got unfollowed? I’m sure he would have told you and it might have been the start of a better relationship. Guess we’ll never know, now.

Robyn McIntyre,

Thanks for your opinion. I respect it.

I didn’t ask the guy why I got unfollowed, I read his post and saw that he ad abruptly unfollowed everyone.

I would suppect had problems with his account because it appears he was breaking Twitter’s terms of use by aggressively following / unfollowing people in large quantity – more than the site’s infrastructure can handle – and they placed limits on its activity.

I still think aggressively following several hundred people a day and dropping them 40,000k at a time is a detrimental-to-the-community social networking strategy… Building your own network big by aggressively following people and kicking them aside the moment you get what you wanted.

And although some of his friends seem to support it – it is not something that I would praise or encourage lots of other people to try… it’s just not what I’d consider to be a healthy, sustainable way to build an online communitty (The Twitter ecosystem, not one guy’s own personal network)

Thank you show showing me another viewpoint and allowing me to consider if I’ve been over-reacting or judging it too harshly.

Seth,

I wrote this post for two reasons:

1.) Not so much for dropping everyone, but for glorifying it and trying to make it seem virtuous.

2.) You opened a public discussion on what you did, and I responded with my thoughts and wished you good luck… and you responded with overt hostility + a half dozen different personal insults and insinuations.

I know that as a “aggressive follow, then unfollow” type…. you might not think anything if someone follows you.. because follow several hundred people any day without uneven thinking about it.. and unfollow 40,000 without even blinking an eye… that’s how you roll.

But in my social media world…it’s different. I don’t follow 20,000 MLM guys and then complain about it later – I follow people that seem interesting. So by me checking you out, dropping by your blog, and then reaching out to follow you on Twitter… and then reading your Tweets in my timeline.. uhh.. that shows I am interested in connecting with you.

just because I didn’t “e-mail or DM” means I didn’t digitally ‘get to know you’ reach out and make space for your message in my own busy mind and crowded screens.

You can play your social media game however you want… step on people’s head to get ahead… and think that it doesn’t affect other people or how they remember you.

But I’m convinced that if everyone (or lots more people) used Twitter like you did, the place would be a total catastrophic mess… full of white noise and not worth using anymore…!

And I am not going to applaud or encourage it.

And this was my reply to your later comments:

“If you didn’t mean to instigate a negative response in your first comment, then clarify that and I’ll apologize for my response and any insult delivered.”

I still mean it.

This isn’t meant to be a game. I simply made a decision and posted on my blog, as you link to, about what I did and why I did it. I’m unhappy that it comes across to you as sinister and spammish, but I don’t expect to change your mind.

I hope someday, perhaps even in just a few short months, you’ll be able to see what I’ve done and say “Hmm, okay Seth, you’re not really a bad guy after all.”

It’s too soon to expect that from you now. I get that I need to put some time in before you’ll see that I’m 100% into what I’m doing for the right reasons. Thanks for letting me share my thoughts.

As you said originally, and I misconstrued as sarcasm (which I apologize for)

I wish you the best of luck.

Seth

I guess one of my big issues is what’s the criteria for unfollowing people? Everyone has their reasons for how and why they manage twitter the way they do but if it’s only based on top of mind or engagement then you’re limiting your experience.

Top of mind can be beneficial because it helps you keep on top of those you interact with the most, but it can be bad as well because maybe you’re just not as engaged with a person currently, but you will be again over time but by removing their stream, you’re removing the chance of initiating interaction with them again.

And as for basing it engagement, this ties into my previous point. Some people may not have had a specific reason for engaging you yet and vice versa, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t value in seeing some of their tweets.

The point about people who use tweetdeck (and the like) to filter out those they don’t want to see seems like a rather skewed concept to me, but maybe it’s the difference in how these tools can be used. I have my columns set up to help me distinguish areas of interest, but also to give a little more longevity to a person’s tweets than if I relied on just the All Tweets column that clears out quite frequently.

And yep, that’s my goofy mug. =) Debated on whether to be consistent with my avatar or not, and decided I should have my pic in a least a few places.

Brett,

Ive been on twitter for less than 2 months. Before I set up I read Joel Comm’s book and a number of blogs to attempt to understand the protocols and etiquette of this somewhat amazing site. So, why is it called Social Networking ? I believe the designation has something to do with a community of people trying to find other people who can help them in different areas of their life.

I have a little over 3.000 followers. Im getting about 100 new followers per day. I am going on my favorites sites and looking for people who interest me and following them. I am not keeping score as to who follows me or not. I

I dont know all of my followers. I do know that if someone doesnt want to follow me then I probably will unfollow them, but I do that by going through each person on a follow/unfollow program.

I have an issue with the tactics you are focusing your attention on. It is not much different than setting up blockades on streets and saying you have to prove who you are to enter. That is not social. That is manipulative. Who needs to follow anyone who acts like that. Have these multi-site, mega-follower, pushy marketers selling their own brand of manipulation given the community anything of value? I say no.

I have new followers DM me with a handshake . In their hand is a spam message to go buy this or that. I block them or reply back to them that they should change their ways. If the real social networkers dont stand up like you have and ask the community if these behaviors are correct or not, twitter as in your words the community, will become mundane, annoying, too noisy and not fit to live in.

I applaud your stance. Im also seeing that it is starting to soften. Stand your ground Brett. If we all look at the manipulators for what they really are, maybe they will just quiet down or go away altogether.

Oh please. How do @sethsimonds’ actions ruin social networking? If you remove the social part, remove the internet part, and imagine Seth joined the local Rotary Club a year ago, made friends, and then one day, decided he didn’t want to go to another Rotary lunch, if you were one of his friends there, would your reaction, would Brett’s reaction, be the same? Doubtful.

Let’s stop putting Twitter on such a high horse. And let’s stop making issues out of people who decide to do challenge the status quo. We’re all people here, we’re all individuals. Let’s agree that everyone has the power to make his or her own decisions and leave it at that.

You can dislike Seth for his unfollowing. You can even hate him for it. But to say he’s wrong, to say he is ruining the concept of social networking? No, I don’t see it.

Ari Herzog,

I don’t dislike anyone. I just think aggressive following and then subsequent mass unfollowing of people is:

1.) Against the Twitter Terms of Service – in letter and in principle
2.) Against the Golden Rule and whole point social media game as I understand it – it’s
unthinkable.

If aggressive-following and mass script purging isn’t Twitter spam or misuse for the sake of self-promotion, then what is? (Not a rhetorical question… honestly wondering.. is there a strategy that you would consider even more spammy or underhanded…? )

For me, it took the cake of out of everything I’d seen.

And I’m not going to watch people encourage and applaud it as a ‘legit’ social media networking strategy… that people should emulate. Because it’s totally sketchball, in my book.

Just even having this discussion dampens my enthusiasm for Twitter and following new people… I just don’t want to play mind games and get used as a pawn / tool in someone’s aggressive self-promo strategy who has no interest in me whatsoever.

Richard,

Thanks for you comments.

I think it’s really important for a community to have this discussion to… and talk about what is cool and what is misuse. These networks can be an online paradise and lots of fun.. and they can be total shit… depending on how people in the community behave.

I’m not softening my stance… – I’m just trying to listen to people and actually consider their viewpoints for a few moments when they take time to write a comment… rather than just argue my point again and tell them why they’re “wrong”

I don’t think there’s any hard and fast rule or reason why you shouldn’t unfollow anyone for any reason… but mass unfollowing EVERYONE after aggressively courting them and pimping up your numbers is questionable, to me, at best. It’s just a question of scale and intention. Do you unfollow 45 people because you think they’re boring, or do you blindly drop 50,000 (and god knows how many more who didn’t follow back right away while climbing the mass follow ladder)?

There’s nothing wrong with filtering information using Tweetdeck or any other kind of tool. Tweetdeck still shows you people’s Tweets by default and allows people to DM you.
To argue against it is just a way to feel better about ditching everyone, in my opinion.

Thanks for your insights, social media can go in a lot of different directions… some very cool, some not cool at all… and I think discussing the emerging mores of the community is important.

MoneyEnergy,

Thanks for you comments. I am with you – I’m not trying to unfairly scrutinize anyone for what they do – but more for trying to promote it as positive and commendable social networking strategy.

I totally DO NO support treating people that way – I have very different view on social media relationships – and I am not afraid to say so.

Wayne,

It’s a lame game, I agree. Didn’t know it had been around since square one. The only people in a position to stop it are people like Twitter…. and it sucks that people doing things like this encourage them to tighten up the free atmosphere and current of trust in the community.

I can’t say whether it’s “right” or “wrong” – but it’s falls into the SPAM section of my playbook.

rowiro,

I hate to promote or draw attention to people that are doing things I don’t agree with, but I think it’s an important discussion…. too important not to have.

For a lot of people out there, Twitter is the new cool thing, and everyone wants to be a part of it. It’s a platform that is developing rules as it goes. As the system matures, people are starting to realize that mass following everyone doesn’t really make sense. It seemed like a nice thing to do, but the flood of tweets bouncing around makes it just as impersonal as not following at all.

I think that the people that are starting to mass unfollow others have just changed their minds on how they use twitter. I don’t think that it really means that much.

I would like to think that when some does decide to follow me, they are doing it because they think that I have something to add to their day. That’s how I chose the people that I follow.

Agreed. Abusing the system is abusing, but Twitter has put in place the caps that they think are reasonable. If they don’t want me to hit the API 20,000/hour, then they will take away my priviliages to it

RenaR,

I think that people aggressively, systematically following and unfollowing people and conveniently “changing their mind” when their numbers are huge is a strategy for quickly gaining masses of one-way followers that I do not wish to encourage or legitimize. I’m not trying to judge any person but I am trying to take a stand that “In the future… This is not a valid, socially acceptable online behavior!”

I think it means a lot – and if more people are tempted to start trying to promote themselves this way – and the community doesn’t call out and shun such game playing – the quality of the signal on the network will go downhill fast. It encourages people to waste others time and clog the network with insincere signals.

You are indeed a Rockstar
at helping me to sort out
the craziness of Twitter

I appreciate your wisdom
at times I share your view
Most of all you help me to think things through!

I can’t believe anyone would defend this kind of behavior. I’m not sure if it’s capable of compromising Twitter’s infrastructure, but it’s bait and switch, pure and simple, and an abuse of people’s natural inclination to be courteous in returning follows.

I use Twitter Karma once a week or so to weed out and block people who do this. They are nothing more than time-wasters and dead weight for a community. Any claim to legitimacy they make is laughable.

http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/

Mark,

I agree that these kind of games take advantage of people’s natural social reciprocity impulse and it should be discouraged.

ZuDFunck,

I’m just a computer geek that blogs in my pajamas, not quite a rockstar…. but I am glad to be able to share any inspiration.

[...] This is a guest posting Brett Borders (@BrettBorders).  Brett is an independent Web Traffic Developer based in Boulder, CO, specializing in SEO and social media consulting. He’s also the brains behind Social Media Rockstar, a weekly social media blog . Read original post and the discussion here. [...]

I think you just made a whole bunch of something out of nothing. I completely understand why Seth Simonds did what he did and I appreciated the link that explained why he did it. Sometimes people just need to regroup and rethink the way they have done things. There is not always a ploy or a scheme involved. I grow weary of these “rules” people are always touting – you should do this & shouldn’t do that. If you don’t like what Mr. Simonds has to say, don’t follow him. I think it is more poisonous to social media to attribute actions to someone where they may be completely innocent of those actions.
As an aside, I used to mutually follow @alohaarleen. She never engaged me in conversation & she never responded when I tried to engage her. So I unfollowed. I’m sure she is a wonderful person but I’m not her cup of tea so I bowed out. I know that doesn’t keep her up at night. Sometimes an unfollow is not a personal attack. I know it NEVER is on my part. But even though I’ve been on Twitter for quite some time & have gone through many metamorphosis myself, I’ve never pretended to be an “expert.” I leave that to the rest of you.

When I first joined Twitter several months ago, I got recommendations from “Mr. Tweet” about the “influencers” in my sphere. They all had several thousand followers, and 80% of them “usually followed back”. Their follower/following ratios were almost equal.

Over the past few months, the amount of followers that all of the influences I follow skyrocketed. But…something changed. Yesterday I was looking at a Mr. Tweet list for one of my clients and I noticed: *only about 10% of the so-called “influencers” had equal ratios.* The rest of them had ratios where the number of people they followed was around 500, and the number of people who followed them was in the 10s of thousands.

This is not a one-time thing folks. The truth of the matter is that the perception is out there that if you have a large amount of people following you but a small amount that you follow, that somehow you are in the “Twitter Elite”. You, too, can say you are part of the Twitterati.

And guess – just take a guess – at the reward that you get from having a high follower/low following ratio? You guessed it: *more people follow you*.

So, I ask you this. If your goal was to truly be in the “Twitter Elite”, and you didn’t already have a big brand name outside of Twitter, how would else would you do that? Especially if *that’s how your peers did it?*

Just asking. Personally, I just like the idea of reciprocating follows. I like following a lot of people and being followed by a lot of people, for a whole host of reasons. I want to understand where this is going. I want to make mistakes with my own brand so I don’t make them with a clients brand. I want to be challenged by people who tell me when I’m wrong. I want to learn as much as possible about human behavior and kindness and generosity and sharing. I want to see what people find interesting, what they share with others, and learn why. I want to learn how to be more helpful. I want to learn what others think is right and wrong. I want to learn more about my own values, and follow them with conviction. For today, it’s all I can do.

Thanks, Brett, for the conversation.

Hi Brett,

I read your article via a Twitter_Tips RT, and it was very interesting. Just some brief background about me – I’m on Twitter (though I won’t give my name) and I may well be in a minority in that my goal is NOT to amass lots of followers! Just the opposite in fact.

I’m not Twittering in order to network or make loads of connections (maybe that will come later). I’m considering starting up some kind of internet business, and I’m there to basically gather info & pick people’s brains. So far, I have picked up so much useful info over the past few months that I have to say discovering Twitter is one of the best things I’ve ever done!

I want to emphasise that nothing I’m going to say here relates to people we know in real life following us on Twitter or vice versa – that’s a different ballgame. For myself, however, I wouldn’t join a place like Twitter to make “online friends”. One of the main reasons is that (as you’re doubtless discovering) I’m w-a-y too long-winded to have the type of discussions I like to have on there There are other much more suitable online places for that.

On first joining Twitter I began following some major information sources for all kinds of subjects that interested me. Others picked me up as a follower of these major names and began following me. At that stage I had barely posted a dozen words on Twitter! So I knew that the reason they were following me was because they hoped there would be something in it for them. That didn’t surprise or bother me, as I had always regarded Twitter as a “business” type of site rather than a “friendship” site.

I was followed by a quite a number of people, some of whom must have believed I was into things I’m not actually really into – I had my own strange reasons for following such varied info resources! One of the “mega-sociable spammer” names you mentioned numbered amongst those. Some instinct made me decide not to follow back, but I have to add logic to that too – with thousands of followers, how can someone realistically notice me or pay me any attention?! I also had to laugh when, as soon as I began following some scientific sources, I was immediately followed by religious types!

I now follow around 100 people & have about the same number of followers (though the two lists are not the same by any means). I’m quite happy with that – any more and I would be unable to keep up. I tweet once in a while to let folk know I’m still breathing If people become too spammy or self-promoting I will just drop them without hesitation.

So I may be on Twitter for totally different reasons from you in any case, but I hope you won’t be offended if I point out that you sound quite young and idealistic to me, and perhaps you are taking it all more personally than you would if you had a more experienced (and probably more jaded & cynical!) eye.

Yes, it could be that some on Twitter imagine they can make themselves look like one of those celebs who have 99,000,000 followers but are only following three people, or whatever :-/ Pathetic, if you ask me. But I think the whole issue goes deeper than that with you.

As far as I’m concerned, no-one I encounter online is a real “friend” in the same way that tried-and-tested real-life friends are. And this might well be the difficult bit: from what I’ve discovered, generally even real-life friends are only there for one reason anyway. They’re not around because you’re such a wise, witty, warm & wonderful person – they’re your friend because being friends with you is useful to them in some way.

Of course I don’t mean that anyone who is friendly with you can’t possibly actually like you as a person – of course not! They’d have to be a pretty good actor to keep up a performance like that for any length of time. And I’m not suggesting they’d only befriend you in the hope that one day you’ll win the lottery jackpot and generously share your winnings.

However, I think you’ll find that (not always, but in the main) people seek you out & befriend you because of “what’s in it for them”. That’s why, if someone’s circumstances change, or they become unavailable to their friends in the way they used to be, the friendship will often begin to fade out – for instance, someone becoming disabled or mentally ill, or having children, or losing their job, or changing their relationship status. It sounds harsh, I know – but most people can probably count their real friends on the fingers of one hand – the ones who’ll stick around no matter what.

This is only my own opinion, of course, based on my own experience. My advice would be, if someone follows you on Twitter, it’s more than likely because they think there will be something in it for them, and it would be a mistake to regard followers as anything more than that. I’d suggest not taking their behaviour in a remotely personal way – whether positive OR negative. If someone does prove to be a real tried-and-tested friend eventually, that’s a real bonus – though I certainly wouldn’t expect it.

I’ve read Twitter tips that say the best way to make & keep lots of followers is to find the top movers & shakers and make yourself as useful to them as you can. That idea again of being “useful” to someone – even if you’re just helping to boost each other’s list of followers. I sincerely doubt that the number of anyone’s followers equates to “popularity” in the real sense of likeability. Good luck!

Great article Brett. I appreciate your courage in calling a spade a spade. I wholeheartedly agree as I personally believe in mutuality on Twitter and feel those who follow the approach you outlined will definitely damage the greater community. I find I enjoy the discussions on your posts just as much as the posts themselves. This one was particularly exceptional due to the controversy. But it’s also cool because you learn more about people when you get to see more than 140 characters from them (I’m sure that I’d learn that if I were to go to all their blogs, but unfortunately time doesn’t allow for that). You actually get to see their hearts. I was really impressed with the responses of a few of the people on here. To see what really matters to them and the values we share. I’ll definitely be watching their twitter streams closer from now on. Thanks again Brett for another excellent post!

This was a great read…All the pundits have steps, rules, and ideas on how to grow your following. They say follow everyone who follows you, I disagree with that. Follow those who you get substance from…whatever that may be. If you build a following without “seeking” and using tools and gadgets it adds legitimacy to your tweets. The real value of your brand is determined by “true” followers.

Awesome write up. I’m sick of spam followers. To me it is ruining Twitter because it means I have to take the time to investigate folks who follow me to see if they are as entertaining to me as I apparently was to them. Spam followers and folks that lure you in with good content and then switch to just tweeting their ads and crap are both equally annoying, and I wish Twitter had a better method of reporting them.

Natasha,

I agree with you. Keep it real.

Mass following and then mass unfollowing them hoping most will not notice is spamming but that’s just my opinion , obviously seth doesn’t think so. As a rule I follow anyone who follows me , but that doesn’t mean I read there every tweet.I use Tweetdeck and divided followers into groups. So I can keep track of the ones I’m really interested in.

Great article Brett. This reminds me of a SEJ post I did recently Why It’s a Terrible Idea to Unfollow Everyone on Twitter

Not exactly the same but similar in concept. It’s very uncool to mass unfollow.

well i would have unfollowed him too unless i had some interest in what he’s selling, which is unlikely.

the rules of social media engagement are pretty straightforward. don’t abuse it or face the backlash

I find it interesting that Seth’s account was opened in October of 2008 and he has 38K followers in 8 months and then decided after 8 months he wanted himself a tight knit community of tweeters.

Why not scrap the account and start over?

Although I do agree it is important to be selective it is interesting how the “selectiveness” occurs AFTER you have collected all the people who you later decide are worthless.

He says goodbye to the people who send him the $9 requests …ummm why would you follow them in the first place? You mean to tell me he was so wrapped up in collecting more than 5K followers a month he didn’t notice this within the first few hundred?

He says goodbye to people he claims use “placeholders” and now he has a whole collection of placeholders as followers too funny. Nothing like double talk eh?

The most amusing of his ditty’s was the one on 3rd party tools. That was just too too ironic when he turns around and cooks up his scripts to dump everyone.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and his opinions are hollow.

Just another good write-up for his blog and using the understanding that most would not bother to un-follow.

He can wrap it up anyway he chooses and anyone can argue whether he truly is a “spammer” either way it was a very slick way to get himself a great rating so kudo’s to him even if it was sleazy. Kudo’s always work in the short term yet effects of karma in long term don’t always work out to one’s advantage.

Would respect his opinions more if he deleted his account and started from scratch.

Just MHO

thanks for the write-up Brett

[...] Why Passive-Aggressive Twitter Following Is Spam socialmediarockstar.com/why-passive-aggressive-twitter-following-is-spam – view page – cached A few weeks ago I mutually befriended a fellow blogger on Twitter, thinking that we had a lot in common… but yesterday I woke up and discovered that I’d been — From the page [...]

You shouldn’t mass follow just to get followers.

Gary Henderson
Myrtle Beach Marketing

The solution to this problem could be to check online digital identity of the person we are following. We can trust people having their blogs or websites running for a long time.People having anonymous identities on twitter looks suspicious and have no concern with reputation.

[...] Social Media Rockstar – (Brett Borders) – Why Passive-Aggressive Twitter Following is SPAM [...]

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