Effective Immediately- No More Auto-Follow

Well said. Thx... Twitter needs to do something about auto-DM's and fun DM's like this. It will end up ruining Twitter.

Applauding

This craziness that we need to follow those who follow is just that, crazy. Last I checked I am not being followed back by 400 or so people and I am not following back more than that.

Is my experience any less for it? I doubt it.

Chris, if anyone stops following you because of this or does not in the future, shame on them and their loss.

@MNHeadhunter

ah, chris dont fret...as wonderful as you and your contribution to twitopolis are, you are still but a mere mortal...the last time i checked there were 24 hours in the day for all of us...we will always appreciate what you gift to us, whether you follow us or not...rest easy...

@digitalkulcha

I've never tried the auto-follow software, but after seeing all the junk that's starting to surface on Twitter and reading this post, I think I'll stick with manual following people. It is time consuming, but having to sort through all kinds of direct message spam is more of a headache.

Thanks, Chris!
(BTW I'm "@studio747" on Twitter)

Twitter needs to crack down on Websites that abuse the API. I was furious when one site I used even sent out a tweet without my permission! I do not check my dms regularly because so many are spam.

Generic auto-messages should be banned from Twitter!

Trying to think of really good spammy DMs to send you.

I completely agree...I am able to keep up with my followers at the moment so I am able to personally chose who I follow. I immediately delete spammers.

Can't blame u dude. I'll continue to follow you anyways. HOWEVER, you did know that you can opt-out of receiving "gifts" & DM's from Fun140, right?

Not sure if I can post a link but simply do a Google search for "fun140 optout" and follow the easy instructions.

-Mike

I think it would work better if it was an opt in system and not an opt out system. For instance, the first time someone sends you a tweet from these games and gifts style twitter sites, you choose your opt in by visiting the site. I think most people are ticked off because permission was not first given.

Oh yeah, no doubt man. Totally agree ;-)

Don't worry, as long as I can follow you, I'm happy. I cannot follow everyone and I'm not being snobby. I just simply can't manage that many people/relationships. I like to check every new follower out. I read their tweetstreams. If it's polluted, I don't follow. Sometimes, the spammers slip through and I get the same kind of BS DMs. Then, I block. But, hey, I don't have the number of followers you do...that would take some serious time.

I've noticed the tweet bots now republish a hefty number of tweets from other random accounts, only interspersing a small number of spam links (see http://jetsam.geekhold.com/tweetbots-getting-sm... for an example). Their camouflage has improved noticeably in the last month or so.

Maybe someone will design a better auto-follow tool that uses some sort of decision algorithm.

It would be nice if the games like fun140 were considerate by only involving those choosing to participate. Upsetting other users is not a good marketing angle. And DM is probably not the best use for a game. I don't want to have to optout of every game that pops up. Instead, I'll use filters or unfollow heavy spammers. Much easier.

I stopped following everyone back b/c of auto DMs right before SXSW this year and added "Happy to Follow Engaging People. @ me :) " to my BIO...

Then, I send a general tweet out similar to this: "Hi! I do not use autofollow, but I love hearing from you! @ me to get on my follow back radar :) "

I know there are sooo many people who use programs to initiate a new profile follow on Twitter then UNfollow those same profiles when they have not been followed back in a pre-set amount of time (because of the Twitter gap rules following vs. who follow back). They followed me because they want the follow back, not necessarily to read my tweets. I see that evidence whenever I have a spare 5 mins. and I take a peek at my first few pages of latest followers and each time I note that the faces & names have all changed in a very un-proportionate # vs. the # of new followers. I’m okay with that...I want the followers who really want to "be here" :) and, I love that I know everything about each and every person I follow because we talk on Twitter AND I'm observing their tweets.

I’m here to discover, learn, engage, LOVE, connect, grow, laugh, make someone laugh and be a part a community that is interactive, strong and supportive. I am honored when someone chooses to (really) follow me. What a gift.

Sure…I know I could have retained a higher # of followers with autofollow all this time, but from the moment I stopped autofollowing, my DM inbox has been auto dm/spam free and that right there is no contest…I sometimes wonder about the “relationship that could have been” because we never got to engage…but my Twitter Experience is so rewarding right now.

Now..if only Twitter would #fixreplies -- SO THE REAL EFFORTLESS MAGICAL DISCOVERY will make a reappearance. :)

It's how I originally found you... :)

Twitter Love & Respect Always,

Zane
@zaneology

Unless I'm not following you I have no idea how your plan works. No one is seeing your general @ reply except for those who are already following you, and maybe a few when it flies by in the general stream, so how is that accomplishing anything?

Quizzes are for the kids, if you don't like quizzes, don't follow the kids.

The problem Chris is that you auto-follow 88K people you don't know. Many of them are teenagers that like quizzes. They dm the few people that follow them. What do you expect when you mindlessly follow 88k people? I don't see how you can call it spam when you chose to follow someone and that someone sends all their friends a message. It's no different for quizzes on facebook, or any other platform.

The fun140 guys are good guys trying to bring casual games to twitter and actually have just under 100k followers themselves. So yes, it is time for you to stop auto-following people. You hung in there longer than most, but it's not the casual gaming guys who caused your woes -- twitter and ALL social networks become unusable when you follow 10's of thousands of users.

I would support them if they didn't empower DMs. That's the ONLY thing that pisses me off, Travis.

They're pushing me into a game I don't want to play. If everyone's doing their little fun thing, whatever, that's cool. But if I'm over in another area not interested, it's impolite to empower their users to direct message me and push the game on me.

Games are cool. Games where you push the others in your community into the game? Not as cool. Think of the real world analog of this, like at a park.

So if you were standing around minding your own business at a golf course and some strangers asked if you wanted to join their threesome to make it a foursome you'd shout at them for dragging you into their game?

Oh... wait... you were already at the golf course weren't you?. ;)

Never did see the benefits of using auto-follow tools. Kinda defeats the whole object of getting to know people and comes across as a numbers gatherer instead.

That's one way to think of it. The other is this:

# of people who follow me every day - 500+
If I took 1 minute to check each of them out = 8.34 hours.
% chance of seeming like a jerk when I don't follow you back: 75

So, yeah.

After more than a year on Twitter, I still don't get the mentality that anyone's a jerk for not following back. Even if I love you as a person in real life, that doesn't mean I'm interested in what you're choosing to talk about on Twitter. So how does that make me a jerk for not following you back? How does this not fall under the Quid Pro No you talked about a few weeks ago? No reason that shouldn't apply to your Twitter account as well.

I agree with Susan, that's other people's fault, not yours, and I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. People will think other people are jerks regardless - let them. You know the value you offer - if you're happy with that, then that's all that matters. Anyone that gets pissy, you probably didn't want to connect anyway.

Have you tried Topify for your email alerts? Gives you a pretty nifty rundown of profile, last few tweets, engagement levels, etc - makes life a heckuva lot easier.

Here's a pre-approved invite if you want to check it out:

http://bit.ly/topifydannybrown

(Not affiliate link - it's a free service. They're simply keeping it limited invites at the minute).

You calling me a jerk? =)

Chris, I don't get 500 a day, more like 50, but I use TweetLater's semi auto vetting utility and it takes me about 10 seconds per person. The system automatically selects to ignore people who haven't tweeted in a while, people with no tweets, those with an unusually high following/follower ratio, those with no avatar and a few other parameters you can set. Then for the rest it shows you their latest tweet, their follower/following count, the date they joined, their bio and avatar all on one page.

I hope (and expect) that as Twitter matures, people will stop expecting to get followed back by everyone they follow.

I suppose if you use Twitter to chat with your chums, reciprocal following makes sense. But if you use it for information gathering (eg. following thought leaders and info aggregators in your industry), why on earth would you expect it?

Everyone knows that you can't REALLY follow hundreds of people -- at least not if they're tweeting actively.

If someone who's following more than about 75 people follows me (which over 80% of my followers are -- no kidding -- I checked), I figure they're just hoping I'll follow them back so they can market to me. I know darned well they won't be reading MY tweets, so why should I have to wade through their tweets and open myself up to DM spam?

You shouldn't have to apologize, Chris. This is a problem with Twitter. We knew it was too good to last. The power of Twitter was that someone like me could chat up someone like you. We don't move in the same circles. We don't often talk about the same things, but every once in a while Twitter let us meet. It was the power of social networking unlike I've ever seen implemented anywhere else. But this power lets others abuse it.

I believe that Twitter should either disable DMs from 3rd parties, or create a white list of allowed apps so that troublemakers can't make trouble. Why should powerusers or regular folk such as myself have to prune spam out of their DM inbox?

What's needed is a smart auto-follow tool (and auto-block too, to cleanse your follower list). Something configurable - unfollow/block people who use certain terms (MLMers, twitter system types) in their tweets or bio, autofollow people that you have already @ messaged at least twice, auto-follow new followers based on certain criteria: must have a profile pic, must have a relatively balanced following, must have tweeted certain keywords that you set. Any new followers that don't meet those criteria could be managed in a simple interface to allow you to preview multiple users at once follow back with a single click and no page reloads.

Although in smaller scale I had spam problems too so wrote a Twitter Policy. Result: spam almost down to zero + improved conversation quality (public and private).

Hope it can help:
http://www.andreavascellari.com/?p=2454

Andrea

Hey Guys I never did use auto follow but one thing I found useful (no affiliation and it was free when I started using it) is twollow.com it at least gives a follow to people who @ you or RT you even if you haven't had a chance to check out their profiles yet.

How? Just use one keyword to search for and auto follow on, your username!

You're still gonna get some bots in there but I think the ratio of spammers that will get followed opposed to auto following everyone will be greatly reduced...

Oh my, it's just like Facebook. How is this 'empowering'? Grr.

I've never used auto-follow back. twitter should be about making real connections with your various "tribes" not about seeing who can have the most followers or follow the most people. I never use auto DM either! If someone follows me, I check out their profile, and read their tweets. If I don't know them or they don't tweet anything I care about reading, then I don't follow back.

Yeah when systems/automation take the Social out of the Media it's bad for everyone. I haven't of fun140.com but now my first impression is that they indirectly promote spamming tactics.

Auto-Follow was effective when just people were on twitter. And before the twitter celebrity boom, some internet marketers, mlmers, etc Auto-DM was acceptable if your follower rate was growing rapidly.

We are all experiencing a Twitter growing pain, a social media stretch mark if you will.

So like a muscle, in order for twitter to grow, as I am sure @Biz, @ev and the rest of the twitter team intend, it must break a few times.

The best we can do is not only discuss this via blogs and twitter but more importantly take action and let the twitter team know via http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter.

In your opinion Chris, what would be the ideal solution that Twitter needs to implement/change to prevent from happening and/or Is it a Twitter issue?

Smart move. I've always likened twitter to a large social with lots of conversations - you can drift at will to any number of them.

But having someone else do that for you, automatically ... well, that just doesn't work (or at least, it kills my metaphor).

Because of this autofollow-spammy DMs sequence i don't read my DMs at all, but there can be really cool stuff:(

Agreed - but not for the same reason. Following spam and porn sites and every other interest group that doesn't reflect my interests results in people who actually know me wondering if they actually know me. Whether we like it or not, who we follow says something about who we are.

I did the same thing a few weeks ago as I was noticing too many spammers as well. So I'm more selective about who I follow now, though it takes more time.

I do scan my DMs now and then, but probably 1-2 times a week rather than daily like I do with my stream.

Hi Chris,

For what it's worth, I think www.socialtoo.com has tools to let you auto follow folks and at the same time EXCLUDE following back folks who auto DM. There may be small fees for some of these services, but if it does the trick it may be worth it. I have been checking it out and have paid for some of their services. Right now I am experimenting and blocking auto DM'ers that have been marked as spammers by others, and it has been noticably better. I haven't fully blocked all auto-dms yet, but may if it gets out of hand again.

Good luck either way! (I was going to DM this to you... but... ) ;-)

-Sass

Chris, BRAVO! I concur totally. Auto-follows are a pain in the neck and add NO value to Twitter

In support of no autofollow.Yup, lots of work involved. At the end of the week sometimes I just have to hit delete.the sky has not fallen.

Hello Chris,

I have posted my request to follow on Twitter, (and LinkedIn)

Many thanks

Cheers

Michele Smorgon (@maxOz)

I want to throw this in the mix. I use a tool called TweetAdder. As far as I can tell, this tool does not do autofollows unless you tell it to do so. I do not like automated ddirect messages and I don't like any app or software that uses my name to spam people on Twitter or anywhere else.

I am an affiliate for tweetadder. You can go to my blog and get to them and I will make a couple of bucks. I am not doing this for that reason. You can simply go to http://tweetadder.com and check them out. I like them because the tool provided helps me look for the right Twitter followers, those that might be interested in what I have to write. And it can be automated.

Well worth a visit.

I have started saying, "If you are a human @ me and say hello." It is the only way to keep up!

I can't even keep up with Follow Friday people, much less spammers! I'm about 300 followers behind on my vetting, hoping by the time I get around to them, most will be banned and removed. I actually quit following you because I was getting YOUR spammers! LOL Still have the feed on the blog, though.

It really is a pain, isn't it? I'm having exactly the same problem and have been manually following since I first joined Twitter but am having to block so many spammers now that there isn't time to follow back genuine people some days and I keep getting behind with sorting through new followers. Shame.

Today I was unfollowed by someone to whom I had sent a polite refusal to get involved with the 'fun' offered in her DM. From the tone of the DM she sent just before unfollowing me, she clearly hadn't even been aware that her account had sent me a 'fun' DM in the first place, so it is bad for both sides of the equation.

I really like your blog! Nice and simple!

I really like your blog! Nice and simple!

Thanks, Chris! I made the same decision a few months ago. It's a shame. But it is easier to click on every name in my @ replies (mentions) list to make sure I'm following back than it is to sort through all of the spam/spammers. Good luck. -PC

I just don't understand how Twitter is to blame for one's decision to follow anyone who follow you willy nilly? It's a user's responsibility to maintain their circle of "friends" however you choose to define that - if you let folks into your circle with whom you don't actually have a relationship or similar interests, it's not Twitter's fault (of MySpace's, or Facebooks, etc.)

Just because *you* don't care for something doesn't make it spam - clearly lots of folks do enjoy these games.

Also, why are you afraid of peoples reactions and thinking you're a "snob"? It's your job to teach people how to use social media effectively, and as you've found out, auto-follow is not effective. Consider it a teaching opportunity.

It ultimately depends on your audience. For companies, Auto-Follow (reciprocal) is a very beneficial feature to have to permit private conversations between the consumer and the brand to take place.

Auto-following scripts is a big no-no. There is no better way to say "I only care about numbers, not relationships" than Tweeting, "Get 2000 followers in 3 days."

It's my general rule that anyone I publicly reply/mention, I will follow them only in case they want to DM me or somehow actually connect outside of 140 characters. ;-)

But yes, I very much agree with your sentiments, Chris.

~Joe

Totally agree Chris. I am going to follow your lead on this one.

It does get a bit tedious. I especially can't stand the prostitutes that keep sending me cam invitations...I could not possibly be less interested.

Just use Buzzom and search for your @ replies. Or ask people to use #cbfme as a hash tag and auto-track that.

I got rid of auto follow also. I dont follow people with no pics or pics of body parts that are generally covered in public or tweets about how to make cash with your tweets.

Life is too short to miss the cool stuff on twitter.

Dr. Letitia Wright
The Wright Place TV Show
http://wrightplacetv.com
www.twitter.com/drwright1

Wow. Just wow. I'm glad I'm at a point where I don't have to feel obligated to follow everyone back that follows me yet. You carry a heavy burden, my friend. We should start a campaign to take down @fun140 and other 'bots like it. Don't know if that would be possible....

Don't despair - we know you love us all :-) To a twitter newbie (me), DM seems a bit broken due to the spam (to auto follow or not to auto follow…), but it's still an interesting, fun experience.

Chris, I have taken the same approach. It sucks! Twitter is getting more and more difficult to navigate. persoanlly, I feel the same way with the Sponsored tweets as well. As much as I filter twitter.... I'm not interested in more noise.
-Keith

Oh yeah. Sponsored Tweets are spam, too.

I've never autofollowed. I knew it wouldn't be a good idea when I started getting auto-DM spam, from Fun140 it turns out. I unfollowed those accounts, of course. And I routinely get unfollowed by accounts that follow me expecting me to autofollow them (as well as losing spambot accounts).

The day @Scobleizer unfollowed all his followers, I manually culled the accounts I follow. I could do it because I had only 375 follows; it got me down to 350. I'll continue to manually search for and add accounts to follow, but I'll never make the mistake of autofollowing.

Down with Fun140 & spambots!

The Twitter etiquette established that you should follow back who is following you. I don´t agree at all. We should follow people with whom we can establish significant relationships and/or with whom we can learn and grow. Otherwise, this would be a mere competition to get more followers by following no matter who.
The etiquette should be: Follow interesting people who share interesting content. Easy and simple.

I know! I get SO many messages in my DM box and with no bulk delete it's so annoying. I found this tool that lets me bulk delete though and it made such a difference. The only down side is you have to use it in FireFox.

Anyway, it may come in handy if you get too many messages in your DM box and don't have the time to manually delete them. It's called DM Whacker and you can get it here: http://dcortesi.com/tools/dm-deleter/

Hope that helps.

Thanks for posting this Chris. I actually found it because I got a DM from someone this morning about "fun140.com" and I decided to look it up before I followed the link. Thank goodness I did, and thanks for writing about it!