September 13, 2011 68 Comments

Following Does Not Equal Attention

I asked people via Twitter: “Does following=attention? If someone follows you,do you think they’re paying attention to you?”

Some responses:

mostly they answered no

Some more:

yep, still they're saying no.

And yet, lots and lots of people got upset when they learned that I’m no longer following them on Twitter.

Following Is What You Make Of It

If no one is following you on Twitter, then that means that people have to visit your Twitter page directly to see your tweets. It doesn’t mean you’re not interesting. That’s your worry. That’s an emotional fear. (Now, it might be right, but it’s not guaranteed to be true.)

If someone is following you on Twitter, it doesn’t mean they’ll see your tweets. It means they’ve given you the permission to send them a direct message, and that they might see your tweets.

If someone is following you on Twitter, that’s not an endorsement. It’s a mechanical acceptance of data that may or may not also mean that the person who decided to follow you wants to pay more attention.

If someone is not following you on Twitter, it doesn’t mean they don’t like you. Not following means that the person has made other choices with what they want to focus on with that social network. You can be friends with someone and not follow them.

Friends and Social Networks

Thanks to social networks, we tend to use the word “friend” a lot. We say “friend” when we mean “people we know some things about, that we like a bit (at least), and that we may or may not have met.” But as we are all coming to learn, “friend” really means something different. There are many people we feel we’ve come to know via social media, but that we don’t know very well, when we stop and think about it.

This is a tricky blend of thoughts to navigate. We can learn about people and feel emotions and connections with people from a distance. It’s what social media lets us do. But where it gets complicated is to confuse “connection” with “friend” and confuse the digital landscape with the physical. I’ve been friends with Jon Swanson for years now (since 2005 or so?), but Twitter has rarely let us stay connected as friends for more than a handful of days before it unfollows us again. That doesn’t change our relationship. It means that a certain tool doesn’t seem to like us connecting.

Following is Not Loyalty

Someone tweeted to me that I should reciprocate follows with people because they’ve been loyal to me over the years. First, I’m grateful for anyone who chooses to follow my information stream. Thank you. Second, I’m not sure how loyalty is equal to whether or not you follow someone on a social network. To me, loyalty comes from supporting and interacting positively with someone/something over time. Loyalty is participating when you can. Loyalty is supporting common causes and seeking to advance those causes.

But whether someone pushes follow or not shouldn’t equal one’s sense of loyalty.

Following Is Not Attention

Attention is useful. It means that someone sees or hears what you say or do. It’s a great thing to have. Following is a potential onramp to attention, obviously, but it’s not equal to attention. After following back 131,000 people over the last several years in an attempt to be polite and reciprocate the kindness shown by others for following my posts, I destroyed my Twitter. I couldn’t use it well. I couldn’t see enough information in any kind of useful format, and I essentially ruined the experience for myself.

The way I intend to pay attention (and obviously, I can’t pay attention to tens of thousands of people a day) is by responding as often as I can, by hearing what the few people I’ve started following back are sharing (because they retweet and share your posts too, you know), and by responding whenever I can via my various contact channels. That’s what attention means to me, and I’ll do my best to share as much of it as I can muster.

Shake Off Some Of Your Fears And Frustrations

The best way to use Twitter is to find interesting people and follow them, and to share interesting and useful ideas and information with whoever chooses to follow you. Beyond that, do it your own way. Do what you like. Life will go on. People will recover from the additional emotions they’ve overlaid onto the technology. And in time, people will settle into whatever methods they feel works best for them.

It’s your world. Own it.

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http://www.ricardobueno.com Ricardo Bueno

Re: “The best way to use Twitter is to find interesting people and follow them, and to share interesting and useful ideas and information with whoever chooses to follow you. Beyond that, do it your own way.”

This just about sums it up perfectly. People can disagree with you about how you’re doing this wrong, or that wrong but none of that matters. What matters is that you know this is what’s working for you.
http://DempseyMarketing.com/journal/ Robert Dempsey

Does this mean that we’re finally past the question of “what are the rules of social media”?

http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

No. Too many people make money off telling people the rules.

http://DempseyMarketing.com/journal/ Robert Dempsey

And we were so close!
http://DempseyMarketing.com/journal/ Robert Dempsey

And we were so close!

http://rickmanelius.com Rick Manelius

Some simple math…

If you’re following 150,000 people
If they each tweet 1 time a week
If it takes 4 seconds to reach each tweet
= 600,000

Incidentally there are only 604,800 seconds in a week! So good luck paying attention to that.

http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

I love math like that, Rick. That’s how I explained my reason for auto-following.

I get over 600 followers a day. At 1 minute per follower to determine if they’re worthy, that’s 10 hours. A day. To just handle followers.

That’s why I used to follow.

http://rickmanelius.com Rick Manelius

Hmmm… what about this. Is there a way to auto-reply to each follower with a link to your newsletter as a more intimate/impactful way of learning/interacting/etc?

It’s awesome that you’re getting that much momentum per day. The questions is, does 600 twitter followers a day get you as much as 10 of them jumping over to your site and/or newsletter?

Just thinking out loud…
http://rickmanelius.com Rick Manelius

Hmmm… what about this. Is there a way to auto-reply to each follower with a link to your newsletter as a more intimate/impactful way of learning/interacting/etc?

It’s awesome that you’re getting that much momentum per day. The questions is, does 600 twitter followers a day get you as much as 10 of them jumping over to your site and/or newsletter?

Just thinking out loud…

http://rickmanelius.com Rick Manelius

Comcast offers me 100+ channels of shows to watch. But I don’t think CMT or MTV can claim they have a potential audience of the entire 29 million comcast customers.

Following/subscriptions/etc = potential attention. You know that attention means something when people line up and camp overnight for 4-5 days before the sale of a new iPhone.
http://www.margieclayman.com Marjorie Clayman

Well, hopefully Disqus doesn’t eat me this time :)

I think your question to your Twitter following was leading the witness. I think a lot of people who are upset are not upset because of the attention issue (although I’m sure some of them are…some people are like that).

Here’s how I see it.

When I was a little baby tweeter just learning to sign in, Twitter gave me a list of people and accounts to follow. In the “business” category, you were at the top of the list. I ain’t stupid. I followed you. And Harvard Business Review. And…Rainn Wilson. Well, he was in another category.

You like comic books, so let me put it this way. Guys like you, Brian, Darren…you’re the superheroes of Twitteropolis. You have great power. Not everyone can tweet something and break the site, right? But as any comic book fan knows, with great power must come great responsibility. Also, we know that sometimes the superhero gets called on at 3 AM. Sometimes, when something goes wrong, the superhero is blamed even though he had nothing to do with it. Those parts of being a superhero suck, no question. But you also get really cool super powers, and sometimes, when things go right, you get credit even if you had nothing to do with it.

I think that you and Brian and other folks who have big followings need to understand that you carry a lot of weight in Twitteropolis and neighboring Blogopolis. When you tweet something out, people retweet and click it because they assume it’s good. When you follow someone, I think people naturally assume, “hey, that person must be alright.”

What is going on now looks like this – the superheroes are all leaving Twitteropolis and Blogopolis. They are traveling with each other to the Super Best Friends lair, and nobody except for a select few know where that lair is. That means that someone new to the online world will know they have no chance of getting on your radar or Brian Clark’s radar. They will be able to follow your tweets, but they won’t have that boost of, “Wow, okay, this person is following me. I must be doing something right.” You and Brian and other folks ARE a stamp of approval. I know you dont like that. I know some of your critics don’t like that. But that’s the way it is.

As a side note, I have been one of your customers. I have been one of Brian’s customers. I’ve spent a good portion of a paycheck with Brian’s company this year between buying Thesis and participating in 3rd Tribe. From a business aspect, making sure people like me are 100% happy with you is a pretty good idea. A lack of response, or a failure to follow, makes me feel like my support is taken for granted. That, to use a technical term, can feel poopy on this side of the table. That’s where being a person AND a brand at the same time can become a sticky wicket.

Sorry so long. But your post clarified the issue for me.

http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

I’m on Twitter now more than I have been in almost a year. Tweetstats tells me that. So I haven’t left Twitteropolis.

So, what I read above is that it’s somehow my duty to follow people so that OTHER people will see who I follow and give those people a follow? Not sure that’s what people want, and I’m not sure that’s fair to me and how I choose to use Twitter. I should follow some list of people I endorse? What would be the fun in that for ME?

Just being sure I understand.

And brevity’s not your suit. I get it. : )

http://www.margieclayman.com Marjorie Clayman

I know. I think I was an author during the time of Charles Dickens in my last life. I got paid by the word and clearly got shorted, so now I’m making up for it.

I’m not saying you need to follow people just cuz. I’m just saying if people are giving you a hard time about unfollowing 100,000 people, that might be why :)

Also, the online world is crazy.

http://www.copyblogger.com Brian Clark

I just want to point out that I’ve never followed more than 300 people on Twitter, ever. It’s not that I don’t care, I just can’t do it and actually create those products we offer.

I never really wanted a lot of personal attention, but I do work really hard to offer tons of great free content and solid products and support. That’s what I’m here for, and it takes all my time. ;-)

http://www.margieclayman.com Marjorie Clayman

Makes sense, Brian. I am very new to this world still, so I’m just trying to gather my perceptions and those of everyone else and try to see where I come out. I can’t really imagine what it’s like to be where you and Chris are, but it’s easy for me to *remember* where people are who are brand spankin new to this world. I fall somewhere in the valley between those 2 mountains, I reckon.

Thanks for your clarification!

http://www.copyblogger.com Brian Clark

I just want to point out that I’ve never followed more than 300 people on Twitter, ever. It’s not that I don’t care, I just can’t do it and actually create those products we offer.

I never really wanted a lot of personal attention, but I do work really hard to offer tons of great free content and solid products and support. That’s what I’m here for, and it takes all my time. ;-)

http://twitter.com/MattSearles Matt Searles

Chris, I’m not sure, but I think your’e miss reading it..

At least as far as I was ever concerned.. you followed everyone in the early days.. so your’e follow was no endorsement at all. And who the hell knew who or what you were ever paying attention to.. and.. God knows you couldn’t have a twitter relationship with you like you could normal folks… Which for me made your tweet stream a little less interesting..

But Jesus.. this is a very old twitter story.. a conversation we could have had years ago.

It’s true.. you have great power.. and with that comes some kinda responsibility.. Do you realize that in the world of social media there is more inequality then the entertainment industry?

I guess part of it to is to a lot of people you’re not a human being, you’re a celebrity. Psychologically speaking.. “stars” are projections of our own inward potential.. we put our selves in them.. in the stars.. psychologically.. There is a kind of emotional investment made..

I’m not saying following = attention… but un-following does = a certain social cue.. and that cue can, for a variety of reasons, bring a sting with it.

You’re argument is reasonable.. you’re basically saying “look kids, we need to have a certain level of social media literacy to give context to these social cues.”

But people are not guided by reason. You don’t need to be Freud to understand that reason accounts for only the tiniest percentage of human behavior.

The problem.. then.. in my view.. is you’re “the be human guy.” That’s a big part of you’re brand… so I mean… I think both the unfollowing.. and if you (and probably you’re followers to) are too insensitive to the emotional reactions people get from the unfollowing.. you’re potentially damaging your brand.

http://twitter.com/megfowler Meg Fowler

I think the only thing Chris owes you is product or service satisfaction. If you’re not satisfied, you don’t buy again, or you ask for a refund (if that’s within the terms of your buying agreement, as it were.) But telling him he has to do something on top of the product or service to ensure that you’re satisfied says more about *why* you bought than *what* you bought. Did you buy from Chris and Brian to be a part of something bigger than 3rd Tribe? Were you looking for their validation more than their products or services?

The emotional add-on to their products that you’ve developed, and your expectation of a relationship as a follow-on to a sale was bound to disappoint you in the end — not because Chris and Brian are bad guys, and not because they don’t care about the people they work with. Nope — because it’s *business* they’re doing, however “human” they make it.

Tough marketing lesson, but not a bad one to learn.

http://www.margieclayman.com Marjorie Clayman

You are probably right, Meg, but (because I always say I have a big but), the online world was all about “Hey, we’re lovey dovey human types” when I first started. Relationships developing on top of a business foundation was hinted at albeit not promised, per se.

Like I said, and I think you agree, there is a big lesson for personal “brands” here in the online space. If you are all business all of the time, there needs to be a way to indicate that. Remain personable but not personal. And that’s why a plan at the start for a business is so important, because you don’t want to have to reconfigure 2 years in.

Right?

http://twitter.com/megfowler Meg Fowler

Marjorie, I understand what the tone was, and what was hinted at — but “relationship marketing” (even the touchy-feely aspect) is as old as used car sales or Amway. It’s not unique to the internet, although many would say it’s been taken to a new level by all the real-time, always-on communication.

But as to the lesson, I don’t think they’re going to change things because people blanch at being unfollowed or suddenly realize they’re not best friends with their marketing mentor. It still works, for all the fuss (and I use that term loosely, to indicate a tempest in a teapot) this has caused. There are still more than 100K people following Chris, and probably just as many listening / not listening as there ever were.

Heck, there are probably people who’ve come on board because of this.

The reality is that, however much of the time people are “on” or “off” in the business sense, they still only owe you product or service satisfaction. If you love the product, but you’re pissed off that the person who sold it to you isn’t your friend (or in a relationship with you beyond working colleagues), then it was never about the product.

And if it was never about the product, why are you trying to buy friends?

The argument taken in the other direction still seems like the bigger lesson to me.

http://www.margieclayman.com Marjorie Clayman

What if part of that service satisfaction *is* online interaction, however? That seems to be the corner a lot of people are painting themselves into.
http://twitter.com/megfowler Meg Fowler

Then they’ll lose some customers when they stop offering that level of interaction, and gain others.

I guess I’m cynical or pragmatic enough to think it won’t make much of a difference, or it will even out. Or the business model will change according to the amount of time they have to give to one of their previously key marketing tasks. Maybe the rarefied interaction will give way to a new form of mentoring. It’s hard to say, but there’s always a way.

For everyone wondering why Chris doesn’t have time to @ with them on Twitter quite as much, there’s someone new who just wants an eBook or to hire some help.

http://www.margieclayman.com Marjorie Clayman

You are probably right, Meg, but (because I always say I have a big but), the online world was all about “Hey, we’re lovey dovey human types” when I first started. Relationships developing on top of a business foundation was hinted at albeit not promised, per se.

Like I said, and I think you agree, there is a big lesson for personal “brands” here in the online space. If you are all business all of the time, there needs to be a way to indicate that. Remain personable but not personal. And that’s why a plan at the start for a business is so important, because you don’t want to have to reconfigure 2 years in.

Right?

http://www.savvysexysocial.com Amy Schmittauer

I love that you posted this for all the people that are just SO impressed with my 5,000 followers. Seriously? Like I am actually reaching all those people every time I tweet? I’m definitely not. You have to work harder than just the push if you want those followers to look for an remember you. Just cause you’ve been followed, doesn’t mean you’re in.

http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

I don’t reach very many people. I have the stats to prove it.

Pingback: imSocial – Following does not equal attention
http://twitter.com/megfowler Meg Fowler

I’m pretty sure most of my *friends* aren’t paying attention to me on Twitter. I used to yammer a bunch, so a lot of folks filtered or muted me. I’m not bothered by it. I know I’m not interesting 100% of the time, so I don’t expect anyone to care 100% of the time. They’ll check in when they’re curious. Only Gradon reads every tweet. :)

http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

As it should be. : )

Anonymous

As a corollary, having x number of “likes” on Facebook does not equal attention. Attention is really hard to earn, and even for those who get attention, it’s often fragmented due to multitasking. “Pay attention” is a very appropriate term. Attention = time = money or love.

http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

LIkes are the most frivolous of all attempts at attention. : )

http://www.deaddinosaur.co.uk Chris Norton

Interesting, I often think about this Chris. When I started using social media I started with a blog and not that many people were doing it and then I moved onto Twitter. I remember there were about 200 of us in the UK on Twitter at this point but it has grown hugely since back in 2006 and now there is a lot of noise and I struggle sometimes to see everything from all the people that I follow – so following doesn’t mean attention although that said. If you do share some content with something interesting – they may well pick it up once in a blue moon.

Brilliant Post though!

http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

Thanks, Chris. I think that we are all finding new ways to use it these days.

http://www.deaddinosaur.co.uk Chris Norton

Interesting, I often think about this Chris. When I started using social media I started with a blog and not that many people were doing it and then I moved onto Twitter. I remember there were about 200 of us in the UK on Twitter at this point but it has grown hugely since back in 2006 and now there is a lot of noise and I struggle sometimes to see everything from all the people that I follow – so following doesn’t mean attention although that said. If you do share some content with something interesting – they may well pick it up once in a blue moon.

Brilliant Post though!
http://www.thevividword.com Matt Meakins

I agree, just because you’re being followed doesn’t mean they’re paying any attention — especially those who have already established a major following/brand for themselves. One thing that I don’t see mentioned (correct me if I’m wrong) is Twitter’s list feature. In effect it permits filtering of your Twitter feed; for example, you might have one called “horror writers”, populated by other horror writers, and it’s the main focus of your attention because, well, you write horror too. Then you might have one called “news”, another called “friends”, and the rest… don’t make any lists at all. A good analogy is the Facebook friends newsfeed hide feature.
I regret adding myself as a follower too early in a few cases (of people I admired, that is) — I’m sure I wouldn’t have made their important lists! That just means I have to do some work to attract their attention in other ways. That’s what Twitter is all about really, anyway — interaction and sharing.

http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

You can certainly put people into lists. On 3rd party apps like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, those lists can only serve so many views. So Twitter will stop sending you things like DMs and @ mentions. You can tune it a bit with each app, but in every case, the app is asking you, “what do you want to miss out on? @s, dms, or posts?”
http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

You can certainly put people into lists. On 3rd party apps like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, those lists can only serve so many views. So Twitter will stop sending you things like DMs and @ mentions. You can tune it a bit with each app, but in every case, the app is asking you, “what do you want to miss out on? @s, dms, or posts?”

http://www.HamillLawOffice.com Leanna

What struck me as odd about your Unfollowing of people was that some were so bothered by your unfollowing of them since they thought it meant you were making a judgment about their tweets and deciding not to look at them anymore. And those same people were the ones who clearly weren’t reading your tweet, and didn’t even bother to go check your timeline or read your blog to see what was up.

I only follow 183 people/companies. I interact with probably 25 of them on a regular basis. The others entertain me or provide useful info. And I’ll interact with people I don’t follow if they talk to me.

Then there are some people I don’t follow (Like you) but I’ll go check out there stream once a week to see what they are saying.
John Doherty

Chris -

Good stuff. I totally agree with you. I have never understood how someone can engage with, or get value out of, following thousands and tens of thousands of people. I personally only follow back 1/3 of the people who follow me, and even then they have to engage with me first or offer something of value as an authority.

Earn my attention and I’ll give it. If you give your attention away to everything that comes along, you focus on nothing.
http://bitoftech.mkronline.com/ Michael Robinson

There’s a study somewhere (forgot where I found it) with a worrisome statistic: Some FB pages with a million or more fans have a CTR of 1% or so.

That helps reinforce an ancient wisdom: it’s not the size that matters, It’s how you use it.
http://www.kherize5.com Suzanne Vara

Hello hello! Ok so I watched the Great Twitter Unfollow unfold and saw a lot of the tweets and the reactions thereof. It got me thinking a lot and then some more and then some more. I completely understand what Margie is saying and there is some validity to that when we think of targeting. She is your customer, we generally follow our customers (there are many reasons why and also reasons why we would not). As an example. Let’s say you are a retail consultant that works in a store that sells mens’ clothing. You would follow your customers so gain info about their lifestyle and need for new clothing. If they are tweeting about a speaking gig in the future, they may need a new suit. You have a new line that came into the store, bam, you now know that they would be more apt to pay attention to YOU and the new line you are telling them about as they might need a new suit for that speaking gig.

Another aspect of targeting is we follow people we learn something from. If we follow Mark VanBaale we know that he is doing some great work in KC in helping to those unemployed become employed. I follow him to learn some ins and outs of job hunting but also to help him spread the message (and he is a super great guy).

We follow people we want to get to know better. We see what their interests are and see if they match ours. Crazy, I know, we have other interests outside social media.

We follow people we are friends with. I have a whole slew of METS and JETS fans that while we are associated by a team, we have become friends. We talk offline and on different platforms. There are meetups at the games we have a deeper connection that what SM friends are.

So as this starts to sound like a book, in a nutshell we follow people we are targeting. It can be different groups as it relates to our work and interests. We make that decision for us and because someone has US on their target list, it does not mean that they are on ours. It may cause some hurt feelings but really it should not. Become their target if it means so much for the follow.

Just some thoughts that needed to escape.
http://katdish.net katdish

Everyone is different. You have a large following because you’re considered an authority in your field. There is a celebrity status attached to your name. If I received 600 follows a day I would be tempted to auto follow (and hire a publicist), but that just sets people up to be disappointed later on when it all becomes noise and you’re drowning in DMs and unwanted spam. By NOT following people back simply as a courtesy, you retain more people who actually care about what you’re offering them rather than a bunch of people who follow with the expectation of gaining you as a follower. I have just over 2500 followers. It has taken me 3 years to get there, but the vast majority of my followers are real people, because I typically only follow back real people. The social media marketers and spam accounts typically unfollow after a few days when they see I’m not going to reciprocate. I also check who I’m following who’s not following me occasionally, because apparently there’s some sort of ninja unfollow service that my NutShellMail service doesn’t catch.

All that to say I don’t think auto-following is a good idea.

Sbrogan56

Hi,
Katdish, I agree. I do follow as a courtesy but you make good sense. I am rather new at all of this and I don’t want to get huge, fake numbers. I am adding followers one at a time and as I learn and grow, I hope my content will deem me worhty of following.

http://www.facebook.com/knowprose Taran Rampersad

For my part, I missed your question in my stream. Oops.
http://twitter.com/JudyHelfand JudyHelfand

Chris,
“Following is a potential onramp to attention”: Here is hoping that when I am going up the onramp, someone is not driving the wrong way and coming down the onramp. It is like the child that wants attention and is willing to accept any kind of attention…including abuse.

Imagine all of the energy expanded today on your two posts by your followers and readers. Imagine if all this energy could be put to good use. Myself included. Years ago I learned that if I don’t expect or anticipate “good” attention…disappointment will be lessened and unexpected surprises will be fabulous.

Gotta run…
Judy
Richard

It’s not for for no reason that Twitter is referred to as a ‘stream’. Same as a blog or any other media for that matter. When i’m by the stream I watch if flow by. Sometimes an eddy will catch my attention and I’ll engage, but mostly it flows on by. Following by itself does not imply engagement, it merely segments the river into streams. On one twitter account I follow about 30 people – a very narrow stream, but on my othersI run a numbers game, I use those to broadcast on.
BobOnBusiness (Bob Taylor)

I am sincerely sorry Chris if I touched an exposed nerve. To tell me to “shut the f*ck
up” is not what I expected from someone I have admired & followed
since I started on Twitter in Dec 2008. I have read a whole bunch of
your stuff over the years, and so like many others, I am surprised at
some of your latest tactics. For those of us that joined Twitter AFTER
they smartened up to prevent people from playing team follow back in the
early days, many of us gained our followers through a slow, organic
process. We also have cultivated our own lists of people we follow
through many hours of searching, convo’s, and networking activities.

When
you posted the question; “Who are your “always posting great stuff”
Twitter follows? (not me, not you)” It struck a nerve with me. Although
Twitter has always been a special place where we inherently share and
engage, I thought it amazing that you of all people would have to ask us
who WE follow. It kind of struck me as “where have you been?”

In
closing (I, like Margie cannot be brief) It is unbecoming of leaders in
an industry like you to tell someone that dare question you to “shut
the f*ck up” or go ahead and unfollow, because you know it makes little
difference to you in your stature or position. But most of us can’t
afford to behave like that. So remember how you started, or better yet
how you would start today, and ask yourself if perceptions of a few-are
as important as perceptions of 190k.

Peace.

http://www.sheilasguide.com Sheila Scarborough

I’m just gonna butt in here. I’ve known Chris for awhile (not super-well, but enough) and yes, that was rather out of character for him. I know that he has wrestled continuously with being the generous, open person that he is, but being “loved to death” by the community that he himself builds.

Sometimes, people get frustrated and strike back a bit more loudly than usual….and as a writer myself, when someone tells me I’m “phoning it in,” that cuts to the quick.

Maybe consider balancing all of the positives that he’s brought to everyone over the last 5-6 years, and forgive today’s snappishness. Also, FTP him some chocolate. :)

BobOnBusiness (Bob Taylor)

Touche’ Sheila.
BobOnBusiness (Bob Taylor)

But I guess my apology and explanation above was not well received. Chris has blocked me from following him on Twitter. So much for honest engagement. Maybe ‘ll have to try the chocolate.

Tom

I just went to your Twitter feed and your anger and using the “f” word really out of place.

Why did you follow me in the first place? I suspect long ago you decided to get your follow list high and then do an unfollow.

Good luck on the new book. Books on social media are no longer selling well at all.
Sbrogan56

I did notice you stopped following but I undersood why immediately. As a newbie to Social Marketing, I am not bringing anything worthwhile to the arena of Twitter. I figure I would rather say something worthwhile than just babble bs. However, you were kind to respond to my request for advice for my son graduating from college. Of course, he is 23 and knows everything, but your kind gesture and time meant a great deal to me. And to him. I do follow most people who follow me (out of courtesy) but really, there are only a few I truly follow – and most of them don’t follow me back. I would not expect them to…yet!
http://thoughtsaboutnothing.com @kylereed

Spot on. It is amazing to see how we have confused the word friend with connection.

What is interesting to me is that I have made some great friends because of twitter. Now honestly they didn’t become great friends until I met with them in person and spent time with them in person. So I think that is always important.

But what interest me is the human brain and how we confuse connection with friend. It was interesting to see that after responding to something @julien said the other day and he responded back I felt like we were friends. Like we had that bond. Even though we had never met and probably will never meet nor be friends. It is weird how social media confuses us for connection, attention and friendship
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Claire

That left me smiling – thank you! From within the rather cliquey wedding industry, it’s nice to get a little perspective. :-)
http://BestSellerAuthors.com Warren Whitlock

Doesn’t matter whether @chrisBrogan follows me. I just like it when he talks to me
http://traffikd.com social traffic

Twitter following has been gamified. Get the high score, I have more followers than you I’m winning, I made 600 tweets today and 50 @ mentions I’m winning the twitter. You are welcome to use twitter however you like, and if its fun or interesting to play that game them go for it. When other people don’t play that game and want to be able to actually use their stream to communicate or listen to others then let them. Following back is not polite, not following back is not rude. Just imagine if we migrated some twitter practices to real life how ridiculous it would be..
http://dempseymarketing.com/journal Particia

Hello Chris. Having a large folwing does not mean success. I have always said a small follwing of 100 – 100 followers that I am able to manage and interact with is MUCH more valuable than having 100k followrs and non responsive.
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Anonymous

Agreed – true ‘attention’ can only be measured by interaction…replies and retweets.
http://www.blogstash.com Satrap

I totally agree Chris. I do not believe following means attention. I think these days we are putting too much emphasis on having a huge number of followers,m instead of having targeted followers who are actually interested in what you have to say.

All the automated tools for following people and the other stuff related to twitter, makes it even worst.
http://www.WebBusinessFreedom.com BrandonUttley

Chris, I’m sure at a basic level it was tough to boot a lot of people, knowing it might “hurt their feelings.” I see I didn’t make the cut, which…yeah, OK, I totally understand. I’m not adding value to your stream.

You have the right to cull the herd, and you exercised it. Good for you. It just means if I do take offense at some level, it’s really MY issue: I gotta work harder to earn the right to get back on the list. Simple as that.
chiji computers

really good article..i ever seen like this.its very interesting forever.thanks for sharing……..
http://twitter.com/solrepublic SOL REPUBLIC

Thanks for the in-depth article about Following. Interaction is the real golden-ticket, which is why companies that mass-follow…presumably expecting follow-backs…bother me. No one will Follow you JUST because you Follow them. People need a reason to follow, which is why we attempt to engage our Followers and present them with content they actually care about.
http://sylviacyj.wordpress.com/ sylvia

I agree that following is not attention. Sometimes I follow people not because I am interested in them but they are my friends who ask me to follow them, so following can just be a social politeness, showing your will to make friend with them. And I think not everyone like tweeting, at least for me. I am a sort of person that believe daily life one’s own business that no need to show off and I just care things I am interested in rather than things trifling.Also, I like your word” Loyalty is participating when you can. Loyalty is supporting common causes and seeking to advance those causes. ” loyalty need a not short time span to build.
http://bedstyler.com duvet covers

The subject well..thanks for sharing this with us. .I am really impressed ….the person who created this post surely knew
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