Twitter Limits

I've been banned, railroaded, stopped.

When I checked my Twitter account yesterday, it wouldn't allow me to follow any more people. *Gasp!* Really??

Apparantly, my follow limit is set at 2000. After spending a few minutes learning more about the rule, I learned I could weed the accounts I follow to get below 2000 which would free me to begin adding people again. Or I could wait until my followers, around 1600, grew closer to the 2000 mark. Twitter adjusts the thresholds as the two merge.

Well, I knew I'd had a brief period where I'd followed back many accounts without checking them out, so I scanned my list see where I could make some cuts.

Twitter Disclaimer: You Do Not Have To Follow Everyone Who Follows You!

I went in with a clear agenda, and I quickly made my own set of rules on who to unfollow.

Jill's Red-Flag List of Tweeters to NOT Follow:

1. Random Businesses. I'm building a network on relationships, and I'm not going to have a relationship with a fish market. I will build a relationship with a reader who owns a fish market though. And I love Taco Bell, so I still follow it.

2. Anyone who doesn't tweet in English. Sorry, I don't speak many of the languages of people who follow me. I wish I did. However, if you tweet in French, I might follow you regardless, because I adore the way French appears.

3. Anyone who's profile contains the following: Network marketer, home business coach, optimization specialist, "help me help you," Twitter secrets, SEO guarantee. You get the idea. I'm not interested in whatever they are selling, yet I'd blindly followed about 50 of them because I wasn't paying attention.

4. Anyone with a profile picture of a. an egg (usually spammers) or b. someone in skimpy clothes or overly sensual (usually nasty spammers). It's not hard to upload a profile picture. It can be of anything--a cat, a gravatar, a flower--I don't care. Just avoid the egg. And put on an extra layer of clothing.

So who didn't get cut?
Real people. People who had taken the time to fill out a personal profile. I follow oodles of writers, both aspiring and published, along with industry professionals. I also follow publishing houses, news sources like the Wall Street Journal and Publisher's Weekly, and various artists. If someone follows me but has no ties to the writing industry, I follow them back because I'm interested in personal interaction.

Do you ever blindly follow back fellow Tweeters? Or do you have your own set of rules on who to follow? Care to share your rules? I'd love to hear them!
Have a terrific Friday!

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