Tech talk, social media, blogging, computing tips and tricks
Twitter Decision Flowchart
May 7th, 2009 · by David Bradley >> 34 Comments
Twitter is the place to be online and tips abound. But, how do you decide whether to follow someone who has followed you? There are some basic filters you can use, like not following back obvious spammers and scammers and generally not following people with protected tweets unless you know them already.
Anyway, I’ve created a flowchart to help you decide whether to follow someone who followed you on Twitter (click the image to get a fullsize view). Incidentally, I am not quite so strict as this flowchart implies so please do follow me as @sciencebase:
I asked (Anti)Social Development blogger Kim Woodbridge for her editorial thoughts on the Twitter flowchart before publishing, and so the decision diamond for avatar/photo assessment is more lenient than it was. It was Kim that mentioned locked tweeps too, although I didn’t embed that thought process into the flow diagram.
34 responses so far ↓
Kim Woodbridge // May 7, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Hi David – Thanks for letting me know you had posted it. When I commented on a couple of articles yesterday I was actually looking to see if this was available yet.
I hope others stop by and let you know if their thought process is similar to this one.
David Bradley // May 7, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Yeah, already had some good tweets about it…
Rudy // May 7, 2009 at 5:26 pm
You don’t follow anyone who follows over 50 people? Seems a little harsh to me.
David Bradley // May 7, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Hah…no, only if they’re following >> 50 and have Followers = 0 Should I have used a combined box do you think? Those tweeps are usually spammers…
Rudy // May 7, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Ah, that’s right, I missed the Followers = 0 box. However, chances are spammers will hit a few people who runs auto-follow, so they’ll have at least 1 follower.
David Bradley // May 7, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Ooh, that’s a point. It’s a general rule of thumb though. If someone is following 1846 followers but has just half a dozen people following them back, they’re probably not likely to be the most engaging of tweeps.
Tracy // May 7, 2009 at 6:56 pm
It cracks me up to think that there are probably significant numbers of spammers whose following list consists only of other spammers having these Tweetlater-enabled monologues at each other.
I bet somebody who is smart and science fiction-y could right a fine novel about that.
David Bradley // May 7, 2009 at 7:23 pm
I think you’re right Tracy, in fact didn’t somebody do a spoof on April 1 about email systems sending autoreplies to messages and automated responses being sent back and so on ad infinitum?
Kim Woodbridge // May 7, 2009 at 7:29 pm
@Tracy – Ok – that is the funniest thing I’ve read all day
It sort of sounds like a possible Cory Doctorow novel.
Mike Nichols // May 8, 2009 at 3:49 am
Your reasoning in the flow chart matches mine to the “T.”
I’ve tweeted with lots of people who think that if you don’t follow everybody, you’re a snob.
Not so. I’ve got only limited time, and I think that choosing to follow those I think will make best use of that time is the smart way to go.
Thanks for a great decision tree!
Yuri Alkin // May 8, 2009 at 5:25 am
Great and useful chart. It’d be good to showcase it Twitter site — almost all new Twitter users would benefit from it. Better yet, some parts of this logic can be implemented as part of “follow” button code, so that people trying to follow a spam account would get warning (obviously that’d be an opt-in feature). The logic of this chart would fail to catch a more sophisticated spam accounts (“twitterators” and “twones” whose evolution I’ve been following on my blog http://bit.ly/6akmW), but it can be certainly extended.
David Bradley // May 8, 2009 at 8:16 am
@Yuri I don’t think we’d need to use the Twitter API to run this flowchart, I’m sure some clever programmer could create a Greasemonkey script that would do the job of filtering and perhaps have variable parameters.
@Mike Yeah, who’s got time to follow everybody? Moreover, when you’re providing regular news a lot of followers are following simply to keep up to date with what you’re offering, they don’t necessarily want to engage and stop by for a chat anyway.
Dr Shock MD PhD // May 8, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Nice, completely agree. Also value a link to a blog or website for some information, some bio’s are just not ensuring enough. So after bio> landing page >yes>follow
Kind regards Dr Shock
David Bradley // May 9, 2009 at 8:44 am
Yes, I usually check out a person’s link too. If it turns out to be a long-form marketing web page selling some scammy nonsense, they get blocked.
Karen James // May 10, 2009 at 12:53 am
Ditto on checking the link, plus several other tweaks:
Number of updates (if 1, then I scrutinise for spam-like qualities, e.g. free laptop) and the date of last update (if >2 months=defunct).
I would add “or background image” to “lame or otherwise off-putting avatar”.
To your list of lame words I’d add ‘social media consultant’. ‘Maven’ and ‘entrepreneur’ okay by me.
Monica Diaz // May 10, 2009 at 3:31 am
Well, probably I am not so scientific about it, but I go see their tweets, to check if I would like them coming up in my timeline. Sometimes, the bio looks interesing but the tweets don’t add value to me. I have people I do not follow, but just search from time to time to see what they are up to…
David Bradley // May 10, 2009 at 10:13 am
Very grateful for all the retweets and stumbles the community is giving my Twitter decision flowchart. It’s gratifying that people are finding it so entertaining or useful, despite it being highly simplistic, very subjective, and rather more than a little tongue-in-cheek.
One twitter user @adavid quite flatteringly referred to it as a Kalman filter for Twitter, which is cool.
David Bradley // May 11, 2009 at 8:21 am
Now, that the flowchart has been widely Stumbled and tweeted I’ve had some great feedback and now updated with version 2.0 It now includes a BLOCK filter for deciding what to do with spammers. It also includes a decision box re the content of the putative followee’s tweets. Also, I modified the guru/expert decision box to get across the real point I’m making about the use of stupid phrases like “social media marketing expert raconteur guru”
Thanks again for all the input via twitter and email!
Oleksandr Shturmov // May 11, 2009 at 8:23 am
Could you define “lame or otherwise off-putting avatar”? Perhaps give some examples of good bios while you’re at it?
Karen James // May 11, 2009 at 11:46 am
‘lame or otherwise off-putting’ avatars, for me, are:
- no avatar
- naked avatar
David Bradley // May 11, 2009 at 11:46 am
Heheheh. Why would I do that Oleksandr? Those terms are deliberately highly subjective as is the whole flowchart, it’s meant to be a bit of fun rather than a definitive way to choose who you should follow back. So, when you “run” it yourself, you’ll have to define what you personally feel is lame and what is a good bio…and make those decisions for yourself
Of course, anyone can see that someone following 1247 tweeps who has only half a dozen followers, a default avatar, and an empty bio is either stoopid or a spammer, or both, so it does work in general too.
David Bradley // May 11, 2009 at 11:53 am
Out-of-focus often puts me off…as does an avatar for an individual that has someone else in the frame, how are we to know which is the tweep and which is just their fwend?
Karen James // May 11, 2009 at 11:57 am
Case in point:
http://twitter.com/ TrondheimTravel
Twitter Search // May 27, 2009 at 3:47 am
thats great that you are talking about the twitter api,a good example of searching with the twitter api is on twiogle.com because you can search on twitter and google at the same time.
Lisa // Sep 22, 2009 at 5:51 pm
If there were lame words like maven in the bio, then why would you answer yes to the question “good bio?” Seems like that is a superfluous step in your chart.
David Bradley // Sep 22, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Yeah, okay…I never said it was perfekt
Kate Smith // Oct 6, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Nice flow chart and in my logic for follow/don’t follow is pretty similar. I however made the ‘faux pas’ of using colorexpert after a well-known marketing ‘guru’
said I’d be crazy not to since that is how I am commonly referred to in the media, etc. (especially since I have a very common name.)
Now with over 1600 followers I really don’t want to change. So what’s a gal to do to let the world know I don’t take myself too seriously or with as you say ‘a sense of irony’ about it?
David Bradley // Oct 7, 2009 at 7:54 am
@Kate I don’t think using the word “expert” unless it starts with an “s” is particularly scurrilous, but if you’d said “color guru”…
Kate Smith // Oct 9, 2009 at 12:05 am
LOL, love your quick wit David. Thanks for the response.
Ed Beerwart // Nov 4, 2009 at 6:10 pm
I like this chart. It has improved my life, and now I understand what twitter is all about. <3
Fiona Godsman // Dec 14, 2009 at 9:46 am
Great flow chart, pretty much sums up what I do too, though I am much more ruthless about blocking people who don’t provide sufficent info about themselves. Now I need never feel guilty about not following someone, or unfollowing the boring ones.
David Bradley // Dec 14, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Ooh, I’m ruthless too…just don’t let on
Charles Lim // Mar 6, 2010 at 1:46 am
Here’s my flowchart, albeit not as nice as yours, on how I make my decision: http://faven.net/blog/?p=138.
David Bradley // Mar 6, 2010 at 9:46 am
I’m not sure your flowchart actually flows logically…especially not that Yes/No about cute backgrounds, looks like you’re basically saying if the person has or hasn’t a cute background you’re not following. You also need arrow heads, so people can tell which way to flow.