I now know who Jib Hunt is and what he does, have his site bookmarked, friended him on myspace and subscribed to his myspace blog. Why? He wanted to follow my tweets on twitter.
When someone clicks the "follow" button on my twitter profile, whether on twitterific, snitter, their cell, or the old standard website, I get emailed to me a notice about it.
Lately, as in the past three months, I've been getting "followers" I've never met. Jib Hunt is one of those followers. As a nobody who would find it neat to be somebody on the web someday, I first found this once-a-week validation of my online humanity thrilling. I jumped to the conclusion that they must want to follow me because they read one of my three blogs, found a comment I left on another's blog insightful, liked my flickr photos, enjoyed the videos on youtube or ustream or blip.tv...and then found my twitter feed and liked what they saw there, as well.
But now that people keep coming (and they do) I question my assumption. I do this not because of anything they do, but something I am doing. Now when I receive a notice that a person wants to follow my tweets, I take steps to learn about them. Here's the typical scenario:
1. View their Twitter homepage. This involves checking their latest tweets to see what they care about and if i'd want to follow them myself.So I ask you. That seemingly innocent interest in following me...is that a backdoor way to get me to explore and learn about these people and their media? I think it is. And if so, kudos. They've found a new way to self-market. But beware. These people might just be out for self-promotion and nothing else.
2. Visit their website or blog.
3. Subscribe to their podcast or blog.
2 comments:
I generally view these Twitter-drive-bys as spam. I got one from a guy with 10,000 friends who talks about aliens (but only 200 followers). However, yesterday I got one from the wife of someone who follows me on twitter, but I think I've never met him or his wife in person. What do I do with these twitterfriends? Mostly, I take a look at their site and ignore them, but like you, I sometimes find hidden gems hiding behind the "eating lasagna at Olive Garden" and "watching Heroes".
I am willing to follow someone if they've got content I want. The second I get crap, I drop them. (Though I still an following the founder of Twitter, Ev, who says nothing of importance on his feed.. But hey, he founded the company.)
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