Why I Stopped Following You on Twitter

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Maria Langer

Breaking up is hard to do.

Despite all efforts to conduct my life in a rational way, I have a number of stupid, self-inflicted superstitions.

For example, when I receive my author copies of a book, the first book I remove from the box becomes my copy. It goes on the bookshelf I have reserved for my author copies in the chronological order of its publication date. Translations of the same title come after it on the shelf. I don’t write in, discard, or give away that book for any reason. I don’t even lend it out. If I need another copy of the book after all author copies are gone, I buy one. My brain tells me that something bad will happen if that book isn’t saved with the others.

That’s just one example. Hopefully, another will spring to mind before I finish typing this blog post. Otherwise, it’ll have to do.

I have a Twitter superstition, too. It tells me that I should always follow the first person I followed on Twitter. I didn’t know this person — we’ll call him Number One — when I began following him. Twitter was much smaller in those days and I found Number One on the public timeline, which I used to check periodically to find interesting people. (There were no Twitter tools for finding interesting people as there are now.) I followed him because I thought his tweets were interesting and, after all, I had to follow someone.

I’ve been on Twitter for more than 2 years now, so I have been following Number One for that whole time. And he tweets almost as much as I do.

The trouble is, I have absolutely no interest in 98% of what Number One has been tweeting for the past six months or so. He has different interests, his life has changed, his job has changed. He tweets about these new things. I can’t connect with them. They simply don’t interest me.

Number One is not the first person I follow on Twitter to drift out of the sphere of what interests me. (Or perhaps I’m the one who has drifted.) In most cases, I simply stop following that person. I don’t mean to offend anyone, but if a person’s tweets don’t interest me, I really don’t see any reason why I should let them clog up my timeline. It’s nothing personal — it’s all practical.

Unfortunately, the longer I’ve been following someone, the more difficult that unfollow decision is. And this decision — with the first person I followed — has me stuck.

Because of that stupid superstition that tells me I should keep following him.

You need to understand that unlike many people on Twitter, I actually follow the people I follow. Their tweets appear in my timeline and I read them. I respond to them when I have something to say. I don’t collect followers: Twitter is not a popularity contest. I’ve found that following more than 100 or so people overwhelms me, so I don’t generally follow much more than that. In order to follow new people, I have to drop old ones that aren’t as interesting as they once were. I need to “make room” so to speak for the people who do interest me.

So Number One has got to go.

If you’re reading this, Number One, you know who you are. Please don’t be offended that I stopped following you. I certainly won’t be offended if you stop following me — which you may have already done.

Why I Suspended My Facebook Account

Posted on June 2, 2009 by Maria Langer

There simply aren’t enough hours in the day.

It’s hard to believe, but I was extremely productive before social networking came into my life. Not only did I write or revise up to 10 computer how-to books in a year, but I wrote articles about using computers, learned to fly a helicopter and then built a helicopter charter business, and even held down a “real” seasonal job one summer. In my spare time — which I did have — I worked on several novels, went motorcycling and horseback riding, and had a vegetable garden.

People used to say to me, “How do you get so much work done?” I truthfully replied that I didn’t watch much television. I still believe that TV is the main time sucker of “civilized” nations.

What Sucks My Time

Maintaining a blog was the first thing to cut into my time. I took to blogging like a Portuguese water dog takes to water. I always wanted to keep a real journal and the original idea of blogging was a “Web log.” I started blogging in 2003 and have since written about 3,000 entries for this and two other blogs. Many of them chronicle days in my life and things I’m thinking and are a valuable memory aid for me. Others provide information on how to use software or avoid scams. Still others are history lessons or opinion pieces about politics and other controversial topics. I couldn’t give up my blogging any more than I could give up eating. It’s a part of my life.

The loss of my novel manuscript in a hard disk crash — I really thought it was backed up, so you can save the lectures; it was a difficult lesson to learn and I don’t need it rubbed in my face — was extremely painful. I haven’t been able to write any fiction at all since then. Maybe I’m using it as an excuse. Or maybe social networking has cut too deeply into my time, making it impossible to spend time on the things I used to care more about.

I managed to avoid the MySpace craze. That was the first experiment in social networking and a good friend of mine was hooked hard. I didn’t see the point. She was using it as a home page and I already had one of those. (I’ve had a personal Web site since 1994.)

Then LinkedIn came out and it seemed like a good idea for professional networking, so I joined up. I never spent much time there — and I still don’t. I have a decent sized “network” there, including other writers and editors and even a few pilots. When work got slow, I tried working LinkedIn to get new connections and jobs. I failed miserably. Everyone else on LinkedIn was looking for work; no one was looking for workers. I wrote a bit about it here and elsewhere in this blog.

Then Facebook, which seemed like the grownup’s version of MySpace, caught my attention and I was sucked in. But I was never hooked. It seemed to me like a complete waste of time. I was apparently expected to build some sort of community based around my home page and “wall.” There were applications and advertisements and a never-ending stream of “friend invitations” from people I did and didn’t know. And e-mail. And I think I was expected to visit the home pages of my “friends” and write on their “walls.” And use applications to share frivolous information or give hugs or sign petitions. I never really participated and tended to ignore all that e-mail Facebook sent me.

But when Twitter caught my eye in February or March of 2007, it seemed far more interesting to me. “Microblogging.” Meeting new people though short comments they post. At least that’s what it was supposed to be. Like most new Twitter users, I didn’t “get it” at first. But unlike many new Twitter users, I did finally decide that it was for me. I embraced it, and still do. It’s my water cooler, my way to socialize in my otherwise lonely, home-based office. Best of all, it’s easy enough to take on the road with my cell phone. I’ve met people on Twitter who have become real friends and enjoy the interaction with the 100 or so folks I follow and the others who follow me.

Why?

Meanwhile, Facebook continued to bug me with e-mail messages from “friends.” Check out this Web site, add this application, join this group. It never seemed to end. Even when I thought I’d shut down all the e-mail notifications, it continued to dribble in, like there was a leak in the dam, threatening to open up and overwhelm me. I’d visit my Facebook account and look at the home page and wonder why it had all that crap on it. I hadn’t put it there. I couldn’t get rid of most of it. I’d see comments posted by people I knew or didn’t know days or weeks before. Questions I hadn’t answered. Remarks related to Twitter updates.

How could I let something I had almost no control over represent me to the strangers who wanted to know me better?

And why should I bother? I already had a blog that can be found with the easiest address of all: my name.

The other day, a real friend used Facebook to suggest that I follow (or friend?) another Facebook user, FactCheck.org. I was already aware of that user’s Web site. I didn’t see any reason to follow their content in two places any more than I’d see a reason for someone to follow my content in two places. I didn’t see any reason why my friend couldn’t just send me a link to their Web site. Why use a third-party application to get me to follow a Web site in a third party application? Why add a layer of bullshit to ever-more-complex online experience?

I’d been considering suspending my Facebook account for some time and had almost done it twice. But this was the last straw. I had enough social networking bullshit wasting my time. I was obviously missing the point of Facebook and didn’t see any reason why I should devote time and energy to “getting it.” I was already wasting enough time with LinkedIn and Twitter. I had a life to live and I didn’t want to live it in some kind of virtual world. Facebook would be the first step in shedding the social networking crap weighing me down.

So I suspended my Facebook account.

Will I be back one day? Probably not. Will I miss it? Definitely not.

My Advice

Once again, I’m putting out a plea to the folks who spend more time in front of their computers than with their real friends and families: think about what you’re doing. Are you really getting any benefit from the time spent online? Can’t you see how it’s sucking your life away? Wouldn’t you rather spend most or all of that time with real people who matter to you doing real things and building real memories?

I know I would. And I’m trying to.

LinkedIn is likely the next to go.

Twitter is NOT a Popularity Contest

Posted on March 21, 2009 by Maria Langer

And Twitter is being destroyed by the people who think it is.

The other day, there was an update in my tweet stream from MrTweet. It said:

New Posting: Twitter & the Law of Reciprocity (Why you should be a generous Twitterer, and how to!) http://bit.ly/Ni5tb

MrTweet is the Twitter account name for an online service that supposedly helps you find Twitter users who are like you. I joined up a while back, interested in adding a few people that I might connect with to the list of people I follow. I don’t know what MrTweet’s algorithms are like, but it didn’t come up with any matches. Still, there were few incoming tweets on that account, so I kept following it. That’s how I received the above tweet.

I followed the link. The blog post that appeared, “Twitter & the Law of Reciprocity,” included the author’s opinion of Twitter: “People may not like it, but Twitter is as old-fashioned a popularity game as high school is…”

WTF?

Is that what people think? Or, more likely, is that what people have turned Twitter into?

The post went on to provide tips for increasing the number of people who follow you, prefaced with this word of warning:

This isn’t a magic “popularity” ingredient, nor can I ensure you’ll get followers by the droves if you take my advice. This IS however, a philosophical theory that can bring you benefits if you understand it and are able to take advantage of it in your self-promotional efforts.

Among the pieces of advice were to reciprocate follows. That means if someone follows you, you should automatically follow back. It doesn’t matter who the person is, where he’s from, what he tweets, what his motives are, or how well you could possibly connect with him. Just follow him blindly.

This advice made me sick. It’s this attitude that’s turning Twitter into a meaningless waste of bandwidth, full of self-promotional links and blatant advertising.

Not long afterward, I caught wind of a new site called TweepMe. This is a pure piece of automated trash with just one goal in mind for the user: increase follower count. Here’s how it works: you sign up, providing both your Twitter user ID and password. You’re automatically followed by everyone else who signed up and you automatically follow all of them. So if TweepMe has 1,000 members, you automatically have 1000 followers. Ready for the punchline? The service is free to start out. Afterwards, you pay for your membership (and new followers).

Holy f*cking cow! What moron is so desperate for followers that he’d pay to get them? Oh, yeah. These morons.

Has everyone forgotten the original purpose of Twitter? It’s a social networking site, a way to connect with people you know. It’s “microblogging.”

If you’re a Twitter member, log out of your account on Twitter and go to http://www.twitter.com/. Here’s what you’ll find right on the Home page, under “What is Twitter?”:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

I don’t see anything in there about selfishly eating up bandwidth to create hundreds or thousands of meaningless connections to strangers whose only interest is to do the same.

Tell me something: are these thousands of strangers you’re collecting as followers your “friends, family, and co-workers”? Are they likely to ever fit into any of those categories? Do you even care about them?

Why the hell are you “collecting” them, like a kid collects pretty rocks at the beach?

Have you read Jennifer Leggio’s excellent post on ZDNet, “I am popular on Twitter. Here’s why this means nothing.“? She echoes my sentiments exactly.

While I’ve been watching the growth, use, and misuse of Twitter for some time now, the childishness of follower collectors has only been a source of amusement for me. Until now.

The increase in demand on Twitter’s systems and bandwidth may be causing service outages. While that was bad enough as Twitter went through its growing pains, it truly sucks if it’s caused by what one Twitter user, @pageoneresults, refers to as a “Twitter Self Replicating Human Virus.” While I don’t usually link to SEO sites (I don’t believe in messing with Google search results), Edward Lewis’s blog post, “TweepMe Twitter Application,” is more than just an angry rant. It provides a wealth of information about what TweepMe is, how it works, how it can be compared to trojans and viruses, and how the idiots who initially signed on can make a clean break with it. He also opines about TweepMe’s possible role in recent Twitter outages:

There appears to be a bit more with this TweepMe application that many have overlooked. The thing is growing exponentially. It is a Twitter Self Replicating Human Virus. If it continues at its current rate, it may even hamper the performance of the Twitter pipelines. Whale Watchers are claiming that TweepMe is behind the recent Fail Whale sightings on Twitter although none of us can be sure of that.

Personally, I’m saddened by what is happening to Twitter. Since becoming an active Twitter user two years ago, I’ve always thought of my Twitter friends as “water cooler buddies.” I work in a home-based office and spend most of my days alone. Having the 100 people I follow in the Twitterrific window on my computer’s desktop gives me the social interaction I need during the day to keep my sanity. While some of these people are friends — including folks I was very close to 20 or more years ago! — others are people I met through Twitter. I’ve made good, solid connections with quite a few of them. I’ve met several of them in person and can now consider them real friends.

To me, that’s what social networking is all about. Twitter makes it easy. It enhances my life.

So you can imagine my anger and frustration when I see blog posts and Web services created with the sole purpose of increasing follower count, wasting bandwidth, and undermining Twitter’s original purpose and goals.

10 Reasons Why I Won’t Follow You on Twitter

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Maria Langer

My own list.

As most folks who follow me have discovered (if they’ve bothered to look), I don’t automatically reciprocate follows. I check out new followers before I follow them. I also attempt to keep the number of people I follow down to a manageable count of 100 or so. That’s because I actually read the tweets that the people I follow post. And I interact with them.

I take Twitter seriously and have been doing so for the past 2 years. And with all the media attention it’s been getting lately, it bugs the hell out of me that people are trying to use Twitter as a meaningless chat room where the only thing that matters is how many people follow them.

Sheesh.

So I’ve come up with my own list of reasons why I won’t follow people on Twitter. If you’ve recently started following me and I haven’t followed you back, here’s why.

You’ve posted less than 5 tweets and/or your bio is incomplete. How am I supposed to get an idea of what you’re all about if I can’t see your tweet stream? And who are you? Unless I know a little more about you, I’m not likely to follow you.
You’ve posted less than 10 tweets and more than half of them are links to your own content on the Web. You might think that Twitter is a good place to toot your own horn and it could be — if your content is worth reading. I’ll follow @NYTimes and @NPRNews, which consistently tweet just links to their own content. But unless your content is as good as theirs, don’t expect me to follow you.
Your tweets add absolutely nothing of value to my day. Make me laugh or smile or see similarities between your life and mine. Teach me something. Show me something I’ve never seen. Give me a link to some content of real value. Help me understand the world. Be an engaging friend that can do more than use @replies to offer words of wisdom like “That’s cool!” or “Gr8!” or “LOL!”
You follow more than five times the number of people who follow you. First of all, I don’t believe you actually read the tweets of all those people. Second, the only people who follow like crazy and get only a handful of reciprocal followers are either spammers or complete losers. Why would I follow either one?
You consistently refuse to use standard spelling in short tweets. No, the letter b is not an acceptable alternative to the word be and the word sounds is not spelled sounz. Yes, I understand these are txt message abbreviations, but I see no reason for it in a tweet shorter than 100 characters when there’s plenty of room to spell it out, in English. I don’t think it’s funny or cute. I think it’s immature and a sad statement on our education system.
You end 75% or more of your tweets with an exclamation point. Are you really that excited about the sandwich you’re eating? Or the episode of Heroes/Lost/24/American Idol/fill-in-the-blank that you’re watching on television? If so, I’m sorry to hear that. There’s life beyond your tweet and the rest of us don’t find every one of your tweeted utterances exciting enough to warrant this particular type of punctuation. (See above comment re: education system.)
You consistently tweet very long stories by posting 4 or more consecutive tweets, each ending in “…” to indicate that there’s more to come. Unless the story has immediate value to your followers, save it for your blog. Twitter is microblogging. That’s 140 characters.
More than 50% of your tweets are about your follower count or tweet count or Twitter stats as calculated by yet another Twitter-based Web service. Does it really matter how many people follow you on Twitter? Do you really think all of them are actually reading every tweet you send out? Get a grip — and a life. And read this.
You are apparently stalking me. That’s how it looks, anyway. You use @replies to make mindless comments about my tweets that really don’t start or add anything to a discussion. And you do it all the time. Stop it. It’s freaking me out. If you keep it up, I’ll likely block you.
I’ve followed you and you’ve sent me an automated direct message or @reply. That’s an immediate unfollow in my book. It’ll also get you reported as a spammer to the folks who run Twitter.

Back in January, I linked to an article on Mashable titled, “FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter.” On reviewing the Mashable piece after I wrote the above, I realized that many of my gripes are the same as Atherton Bartelby‘s. I’m just apparently a lot pickier and more sarcastic about the way I present them. Still, I hope you’ll go read his take on this when you’re finished here.

And one more thing…don’t be offended if I don’t follow you or if I stop following you. It’s [usually] nothing personal. I only have so many hours in a day and a lot of that is taken up with work. Remember, I can only follow around 100 or so Twitter users before being overwhelmed.

Want More?
Read my other posts tagged “Twitter.”

I want my Twitter experience to be high-quality. I want it to build relationships. I want to learn from it. Just because I don’t follow you doesn’t mean I don’t like you. It just means you’re not making the “Top 100” on my Twitter user list. That doesn’t mean you’re not on the top of someone else’s Twitter user list. You’re just not on mine.

And let’s face it: does it really matter anyway?