I read a really interesting story on Sophos’ Naked Security blog today and it moved me to action. The story was about Twitter taking spammers to court. Spammers are the scourge of anything online. Quite frankly, after a while, I don’t even give them the time of day whether it’s email, blog comments, or Twitter messages. I just blow them away in the case of email and blog comments. On Twitter, I report them as spam and then block them.
But, last week, I was with some new people talking about social media and one of the gentlemen flipped over to my Twitter account and said "Hey, you follow 4,000 people. How do you do that?" It’s a little hard to explain that you never really follow a discussion from the very beginning to the very end but rather jump in on a moving target. But still, I wondered about that number. I don’t use any of the "get users" services and they have all been hand followed by moi. There are some great people; some software developers; a few celebrities; some news services; and some entertainment sources. Also, I’m a sucker when someone indicates that they’re introducing friends to Twitter and ask if I’d follow the new person back. I always like to help out – who knows the new person might be dynamite? Or, it might turn out to be a one timer. I wonder how many of the 4,000 are like that?
And, how do you identify these people? SocialBro! That’s how.
I fire up SocialBro and do an up to date synchronization. Then, I apply a filter to try and nail this down.
It’s all done by adjusting sliders on the left column.
I decide to be ruthless and adjust the bottom slider. I’d like to take a look at people who haven’t sent a message in at least six months.
Wow, there were quite a few!
As I took a look at the results, it was a trip down memory lane to identify accounts like this.
Awwww, Flock. At one point in time, it was my web browser of choice. Sadly, it’s not around any more and neither is any activity from their account. It’s time to let it go.
I wandered my way through many of the accounts wonder where and how they got entered. Obviously, they hadn’t contributed anything to catch my attention. For the most part, they were now just eggs.
The last page was a baker’s dozen collection of eggs. (names and handles photoshopped). I had done some serious weeding. When all is said and done, I had chopped the count back to about 3,300. I had accumulated quite a bit of accounts that I followed for one reason or another and they just didn’t pan out. I feel a bit lighter now.
SocialBro to the rescue for me again.
What about you? Do you keep an eye on the accounts that you follow looking for non-participants? Is there value in following someone who doesn’t tweet?
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The content of this blog is generated by whatever strikes my fancy at any given point. It might be computers, weather, political, or something else in nature. I experiment and comment a lot on things so don't take anything here too seriously; I might change my mind a day later but what you read is my thought and opinion at the time I wrote it! My formal education includes a Bachelor of Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo and a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Toronto. Ontario Ministry of Education and Training qualifications are in Data Processing, Computer Science, Accounting, and Mathematics. My personal website is at: http://www.dougpeterson.ca Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dougpete I'm bookmarking things at: http://www.delicious.com/dougpete
Doug, this is a very interesting post! I think I have the same problem too. I just hope that by some of us following the “eggs” and continuing to share what we share, maybe these new tweeters will add to the conversation too. I’m not sure if this is happening, but I’d like to believe it might. With following as many people as I do, I honestly don’t keep track of everyone that does and doesn’t tweet regularly, but possibly I need to start looking more and even trying the service that you did. Thanks for getting me thinking!
Aviva