Friending vs. Following

I was talking to someone who works at a non-profit.  They had built a strong Twitter presence by following users who seemed to be interested in their organization’s cause.  The time had to come to prune the people they were following back a bit and some of the users reacted negatively to this.  They stopped following the organization out of protest.  To me, this is slightly illogical.

Facebook conditioned us to think of “connecting” on a social network as a 2-way system.  One person initiates the request to become connected, and once the other approves it, the relationship exists.  This makes sense within the context of Facebook because on some level, Facebook manages our relationships.  Within our circle of friends, we can see all the interactions/exchanges/dialogues, and this is what makes Facebook a great tool for keeping in touch and staying updated on the whereabouts of our contacts.

Not so much with Twitter.

On Twitter, we don’t “friend” someone; we “follow” them.  Example:  I follow @pamslim because I get value out of her tweets, which are directed towards people like me.  I wouldn’t expect her to follow me back because most of my tweets won’t hold much value to her.  She doesn’t know me and I don’t tweet about one particular subject enough to cater to a niche.   Twitter requires no approval (unless you prefer it) when someone is followed.  It’s an RSS feed for many micro-blogs.  It’s not a two-way connection.

Of course, this means that following someone to get yourself noticed is also a counter-intuitive practice.  That’s not “following” – it’s “hey, look over here.”  Maybe I’m a purist, but if your content is really that relevant to my interests, I will find my way to you and I will follow you.

So is it ever appropriate to follow someone because you think they’d be interested in your tweets?  As long as you’re truly interested in what they’re offering.  For instance, if I tweet mostly about tea, then it makes sense for Adagio to follow me as I’m in their target market and probably useful to them.  If I tweet about my own life and happened to have one tweet about how much I enjoyed Adagio’s sencha, it’s appropriate for them to Tweet at me to thank me for my business, but following me makes little sense.  They don’t care about my music, my friends, or the concerts I go to.  It’d be strange if they did.

The rule of thumb is simple.  On Twitter, if the content is relevant to your interests, Follow away.  No more following to get followed.  Focus on being relevant and the right people will find you, eventually.

Stumble it!