Saturday 14 April 2012

The great Twitter experiment is, mercifully, over

Last month, I wrote about my great Twitter experiment - a somewhat cynical attempt to gain more followers. I felt a bit uncomfortable about doing it, but at the same time it seemed a viable way of attracting new readers.

Because I felt uncomfortable though, I decide I would only actively hunt followers in this way for a month, and that month ended at midnight last night. As the clock struck twelve, I had amassed 1,361 followers - and increase over the month of 1,254. Not too bad, I guess. On the downside I was following 1,995 people (as opposed to my usual 77), leaving me vulnerable to spam DMs and making my timeline so hectic as to be almost worthless.

The month's up now though, so (nearly) all bets are off. I have already dispensed with all the new people I followed who did not follow me back, making my timeline marginally less frantic. Beyond that, I've decided:

  • if you tweet anything I find offensive, I'll unfollow you.
  • if you tweet predominantly in a language I do not understand (i.e. not English, French or pigeon-Russian), I'll unfollow you.
  • if you spam DM me about weight loss programmes or the fact that someone is spreading bad rumours about me (spammers, you can think of something better than this, surely?), I'll unfollow you.
  • if you don't tweet for a month, I'll unfollow you.
  • if you tweet anything about Bieber or One Direction, I'll unfollow you.
Seems reasonable, doesn't it?

You can find me on Twitter here.

P.S. None of those bulletpoints apply if you're one of the original 77. You know who you are.

5 comments:

  1. One more thing - if you only tweet banal twaddle, guess what? #AnyExcuseToUnfollow

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  2. One more: if you retweet garbage from the Daily Mail, unfollowed.

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  3. I'm following less than 900 people now. My following is holding up at around 1,290. Make of that what you will.

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  4. A postscript... Following less than 600 now. Followers around 1,165.

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  5. Following: 158. Followers: 1,108.

    Lots of banal twaddle out there...

    ReplyDelete