inputs/outputs

I’m writing this post from my laptop while sitting on the top floor of Papa Bear Cabin in Gatlinburg, a cabin which overlooks the smokey mountains.

I’m described as a “connected” guy, when it comes to technology.  I have an iPhone and I update my Twitter/4square frequently from the road.  I use Urban Spoon to see what type of food is nearby, and of course, I’m a fairly frequent email checker.  But when I go on vacation (or some other special trip or event), I don’t turn off my iPhone.  I don’t avoid the laptop.  Most likely, I’ll use these devices more.  I’m sometimes condemned for this:  ”We’re in [somewhere cool]!  There are gorgeous mountains over there!  Put down the iPhone and enjoy it!”

And then the same people go back to reading their book.

If you’ve ever read a book while you’re at the beach, you’ve consumed information in the same way that I do when I’m on Twitter or Facebook.  I don’t get why reading RSS feeds on a cell phone is worse than reading a Dan Brown novel.

It seems to me that “vacation” should mean “no obligation.”  So, while those mountains are excellent, I shouldn’t be obligated to stare at them if I want to write a blog post.  Vacation is an opportunity to get away from the stuff you must  do, so you can focus on the stuff you want to do.  So, anything’s acceptable if you enjoy it.  (And it’s not as if I haven’t noticed the mountains, by the way.)

I get why technology on vacation is frowned upon.  If the use of technology is work related, and your goal on vacation was to get away from work, then maybe it is a good idea to put down the Blackberry.  It’s easy to start feeling guilty about not being in the office, so you’ll do a quick to make sure everything hasn’t fallen apart without you.  And of course, it hasn’t.  It’s the same thing if you came on vacation so that you can catch up rest and relaxation. No need to take a 6 am hike if you’re re-charging your body.

So, if you’re on vacation this weekend, do what feels right as opposed to what you think you’re supposed to do on vacation.  It might be the only chance you get until Christmas.

Think about all of the social media services that you use.  Most of them seem to follow a pattern:  user A produces some kind of output (tweets, blog posts, facebook news bits) and the users in User A’s network “follow” User A’s latest output.

Recently, we’ve seen this output getting smaller and nimbler (think bit.ly and 140 character tweets) and we now have the ability in most networks to “follow” or “subscribe” to any user’s content stream without their approval.

Facebook conditioned us to think of social relationships as bi-directional.  If someone requests a friendship on Facebook, you have to friend them back in order for the relationship to exist.

When Twitter became popular, it seemed polite to “follow” your followers back.  But if you follow someone back as a courtesy, you now stream their thoughts – thoughts which might not be relevant to your life or your interests.

As we move forward, we’re going to see a huge increase in opportunities to “follow” people – whether it’s on Google Buzz, Twitter, RSS, or YouTube.  Unless we think before clicking “follow”, we could be in for some heavy information overload, to the point at which we avoid (or get sick of) social media because of the sheer amount of content.  Some of us already are.  Haven’t you ever clicked “Mark all as read”?

Every time you follow or subscribe to someone’s content, ask yourself if the person you’re about to follow is going to lead you.  Is the content relevant to your interests?  Is it adding value to your offline life?  If not, it might be worth it to consider that their stream of content will just add to the clutter and render your social media experience useless.  You can’t expect me to believe that there are Twitter users that follow 40,000 people and actually keep up with their content.

I understand the value in following friends to keep in touch, even if their content isn’t relevant to your interests or life.  This type of engagement is worthwhile, but it’s all the more reason to make sure you’re very particular about who you follow outside of your core group of friends and relatives.

Of course, this also means that people will have to make the same decision about the content that you produce.

If you’re not leading, why should you be followed?

NOTE:  This is a cross-post from the Collision blog.

“Respect our class/office/home.  Respect our community.  Respect each other.”

We hear this over and over from the earliest days of pre-school.  We hear it when we get to college and live in a dorm and we hear it in the workplace during diversity training.  We hear it so often that it starts to lose meaning.  We start interpreting as “be nice to each other” and “don’t litter.”  By 4th grade, my sister’s students have already become accustomed to this mantra.  Their class had an ever-growing problem with respecting each other, and nothing she tried seemed to get the message across.  Lesson plan after lesson plan, the effects were always temporary.  Forgotten within a few days.

So instead of trying harder, she tried different.

Aleena put a piece of chart paper and asked the students for words & examples associated with the word “respect.”  That part was easy for them; it was a matter of recalling every other activity about respect from earlier grades and regurgitating the usual examples of no name calling, being quiet during lessons, not making fun of other students, no gossip, and active listening.

Then she flipped the paper over and wrote the word “self respect.”  She asked for examples.  The students were completely blank.  It probably wasn’t that they were unfamiliar with the word, but the contrast between this relatively uncovered concept and the previous familiar (boring) one was so stark that they struggled to produce examples.

She had the students write poems about themselves.  The only rule was that the poems had to be centered around qualities that they liked about themselves.  For some, this task was fairly easy.  For others, it was challenging.  One child burst into tears as he struggled to complete the assignment.   When the other fourth grade teachers saw this, they quickly adopted the template so that they could do the activity with their own class.  It made the school newsletter.  It also raised an extremely important question:

How did we leave this incredibly important lesson out of the curriculum?

Why is it that a child, at age 10, can tell you what colleges he’ll be applying to in 8 years, but can’t give you two qualities that make him special?  How can someone analyze a literary passage with ease, but not have the courage and determination to recognize her own talents?

There are so many lessons to be learned from this story, so I’ll try to keep the list short:

1. Contrast.  It’s one thing to bring up the concept of self-respect.  Using the familiar term “respect” as a backdrop is utterly effective.  It makes the idea sticky.  It makes neurons fire.
2. Thinking about thinking. The thought process during the “respect” section was ingrained.  It was easy because it was rote.  When the children had to think about something they’d never thought about before, they were cognizant of that switch in thought process.
3. The cause vs. the symptom. The class’ respect issues were directly related to their respect for themselves.   The lack of respect for each other was just a symptom.  By attacking the root of the problem, Aleena was able to lessen the symptoms.
4. People are multifaceted. It was a lesson for my sister as well.  There were students who surprised her.  It was impossible to predict which child would find the exercise easy or difficult based on their personality.  Having this context allows her to address problems with students more effectively.
5. Sticky. The long term effects remain to be seen, but I’m certain that her class won’t forget this lesson any time soon.  It was different because it truly involved personal development, self reflection, and critical thinking.  This can’t be said for most of the lessons we learn in school, especially when we’re so focused on standardized testing.

Of course, this can’t have a long lasting effect as a one-time lesson.  It needs to be just as ingrained as multiplication tables or the names of all 50 states.  I’ve talked to a few people about this exercise, and the most common response I get is: “I wish I’d been taught that.”   I do too.  We grow up in a world of hard numbers.  Our test scores are what get us into college.  Our GPA is what gets us a good job or admission into grad school.  We’re rated on a 1-5 scale in our jobs.  It’s extremely easy to become your number.

Become a number and get suffocated by your addictions.

Become a number and put aside meaningful work in exchange for perceived status.

Become a number and hurt the people in your life.

Last week, my sister proved to a class of 10 year olds that they aren’t numbers.  They’re people.  They can celebrate their strengths and work on their weaknesses.  They have the freedom to love themselves.  They can be who they are without flaw.  And if they can be who they are without flaw, then they can accept their peers for who they are, without flaw.  We just have to let them know that it’s a pre-requisite for a healthy life.Not just for them, but for anyone that interacts with them on a daily basis.

Think about this:  there are hundreds of millions of people who never received this lesson.  That means that your friends, family and co-workers may still adhere to this dangerous mentality at whatever age they happen to be.  If they do, please give them a message from my sister and I.

At the end of the day, you write your own report card.  There’s no GPA.

NOTE:  This is a cross-post from the Collision blog.

This is a follow up to my post called “Dear American Idol Rejects, You Don’t Need a Green Light.”

In my last post, I explained why being an American Idol reject is completely irrelevant to your success.  In this post, I’m going to explain why there’s a huge upside to being in the top 50.   Now you can aim to fail.

American Idol is a show where the status quo wins.  You have judges that have an eye for the status quo, who mold the status quo, and who tell anyone who strays from the status quo that they don’t have what it takes.

But meanwhile, the people who make the heartfelt, important stuff wouldn’t win an American Idol contest if their lives depended on it.  Do you think Jeff Tweedy of Wilco would get the thumbs up from Simon Cowell?  Would Justin Vernon from Bon Iver get booed off-stage for singing in a raspy falsetto?

You sing because you want to make earth shattering music.  You auditioned for idol to be judged against the status quo.  Something doesn’t add up here.  But there’s a huge opportunity now.

Because now, you can aim to fail.

That’s right.  The lower the vote count, the better.  The audience wants a status quo singer, too, and it’s not their fault.  That’s what American Idol is.  All we’re ever shown on Idol are the status quo and the complete morons.  Never the stuff in between.  So the worse you do, the more you can pave the way as a member of a remarkable community, instead of having the way paved for you by the remnants of a dying industry.

Do it with all the cameras on you.  With millions upon millions of viewers watching.  When you walk out of that spotlight, perhaps you’ll walk right into a crowd of people who’ve been desperate for the art you provide.

Out-compete the competition by breaking all the rules.

Here’s an open letter I wrote to the American Idol rejects.  It’s also a passive letter to anyone who believes in “getting discovered.”

Dear American Idol rejects,

During some random season in the American Idol series, I started thinking about how I would feel if I was in your shoes.

Your whole life, you’ve believed yourself to be talented in some way.  When you were a kid, your parents reinforced this belief, and no one ever gave you any negative feedback. You made art because you felt like it.  You didn’t care if it was good or bad.  Those cassette tapes of your made up songs that you recorded on your Fisher Price microphone?  Masterpieces, all of them.  They existed, and therefore they were perfect.

Then you grew up.  You got some constructive criticism.  You started judging others and yourself.  You developed “taste.”  You acquired real confidence.  You dreamed about your day under bright lights, crowd roaring, screaming your name.  You picked out a stage name and a song that you could kill it with.  You paid for voice lessons.  An agent.  A head shot.  You got the lead in your local communit theater’s production of Aida.

You were so close, so close, but there was one missing piece.  Without this piece, you’d be doomed to a life of being a waitress at the Waffle Shop, playing local jazz clubs at night for cheap.

The missing piece?  Your big break.

You cried when they rejected you.  You cried because when you walked through that audition door, you saw your big break in front of you, in the hands of 4 or 5 industry “experts.”  You cried because you watched as they packed that big break away into a box and throw it out the window.

Or perhaps they attached a helium balloon to it and let it sail off into space.

Your one and only chance.  Your big opportunity.  Gone in a flash.

Huh?

Take Nick Blaemire.  He spends 4-5 years writing, slaving over, and editing a musical which makes it’s way through high school theater, to community theater, to a national tour, and eventually to broadway.  His big break gets destroyed when the production closes on opening day.

The thing is:  Nick’s “big break” came long before that.   It came the minute he decided, at age 19, that he was going to write a musical that would end up on broadway.  The “big break” was more of a “big breakthrough.”  And nobody handed it to him.  It was his decision to make.  Same with you.  His musical closing was just another thing that happened to him.

You don’t need a green light from Simon Cowell, or anyone else.  If you’re someone who needs to be “given” a green light then, hell, consider it done.  Me, a tech blogger musician consultant from North Potomac, MD just gave you the green light.  So pick up a guitar (or pick up a friend who plays guitar) and go sing wherever you get the opportunity.  Record yourself with your crappy computer microphone and outdated version of Garageband.  Record yourself singing on Photobooth and stick it on YouTube (yes, I’m serious).

You don’t need to get discovered.  Discover yourself and what you feel like doing.  Don’t consider how well it will sell.  And if you find yourself one fan, there’s more than likely a group of people out there who want to hear you sing.

American Idol’s judges maintain the illusion that they are the gatekeepers in order to keep their jobs.  Maybe this was reality 10 years ago, but not today. Sure, you won’t rise to stardom as quickly as you would on TV, but when did speed alone ever get anyone anywhere useful?

Whether or not you’re as good as you think you are isn’t important.  What’s important is that no one can stop you.

Coming tomorrow:  Dear American Idol Top 50, Transcend.

Susan Boyle is an example of why raw talent is (sometimes) irrelevant.

Love her or hate her, what could we learn from this?

Any video or news story that goes viral has a memorable and home-hitting story attached to it.  Even the inane stuff.  For Boyle, it was the emotional connection between her and the people who are too scared to live out their dreams.  Those people that believe they aren’t good enough, or that no one will take them seriously (a large percentage of the population, in my opinion) – Boyle gave those people a voice and those people roared with applause when she got off that stage.  Not only was there an emotional connection, but it was the type of emotion that made the masses want to show support, whether it was through re-tweets or through CD sales.

I don’t think Boyle cared about the result of her audition.  You could tell from the minute she walked out.  This was about that moment, right then.  No formal training, no aspiration to have a hit record.  Just her, a stage, and her creation.  This is precisely the attitude that brought her to her current level of success.  By doing it, she had already opened a door that most people in her shoes would’ve run from.  Remarkable.

Boyle separated her audience into two crowds:  believers and non-believers.   And the believers, most of them, admitted that she wasn’t a Mariah or a Whitney.  The non-believers were annoyed that there were any believers at all.  And it’s this duality that made Boyle’s story even more remarkable.  The non-believers found the story to be an illustration of how silly humans can be when their expectations are shattered.  The believers found the story to be a reminder of how the underappreciated can win through perseverance and courage.  Neither story is more important than the other; what is important is that both stories exist and are re-told daily.  If it were only one or the other, she would’ve been a passing YouTube phenomenon and that’s about it.

Though there are many success stories related to someone’s talent, this was not one of them.  The fact that Susan Boyle’s voice isn’t remarkable is what makes her story remarkable.    The fact that she is adored and also despised is what makes her story interesting.  But most importantly, the revelation that it’s not always about raw skill is what makes her story valuable.

It was about doing it, knowing that there will be those who laugh at you and that there will be those who wildly cheer you on.  It’s boring, otherwise.

There’s this idea that the minute employers start to review your job application, they do a google search on your name.  Your Facebook, Twitter, and Blog are all under scrutiny and if there’s anything degrading or embarrassing on those pages, your application might get tossed.  Perhaps this happens after you’re hired, and your boss gets interested.  Conventional wisdom says that we need to strip our profiles of anything personal so that we’re left with a shell of what our e-presence once was.  We’re left with something neutral and bland so that our employers (or potentials) can’t extrapolate anything.  They’re left with what they originally had – our offline presence, as we showed them in our interviews and resumes.  No pictures of beer pong in the dorms, or last Saturday night’s blackout.  No favorite bands like the Fuck Buttons.  No status updates.  Maybe you even shut down your Twitter account.

Huh?

Do you really want to associate yourself with something that lifeless?  Do companies want to hire a neutral, bland robot?  And if they do, is that the type of place a person like you wants to work, anyway?

I propose a new movement.  Instead of filtering out our content, provide more of it, but let’s make it really good.  Instead of worrying about our co-workers, bosses, and future employers stumbling across our Twitter accounts, let’s be ourselves, even if your content isn’t completely relevant to whatever job you’re doing/applying for.  Let’s make our e-presence a true representation of ourselves, because no one wants a phony.  And if you trick someone into hiring/working with a phony, how long can you keep up the act before the real you comes out?  Surprise.

I’m not suggesting that you post pictures of yourself as Frat King on top of Beer Pong Mountain.  I’m just saying that we know that our bosses, clients, and partners use the web, and that they might be searching for us.  Sure, we don’t want to embarrass ourselves, but it’s probably more embarrassing to have an e-presence which says you’re boring and lifeless.  We don’t want to hurt our chances by posting off-color YouTube clips, but how about the opportunity to help our chances?

If you’re given the opportunity to design your online brand, do you opt for tasteless, boring, or true?  Would you rather have the google search take 10 seconds when they find out there’s nothing new to learn?  Or would you rather have them drawn in to your strategically presented yet authentic world?  Who would they feel better hiring?  Seems obvious to me.

About a year ago, I started looking into platforms that would allow me to release my new album as efficiently as possible.  My initial requirements were:

1. user-friendly digital download
2. fans have the ability to name their price
3. fans have the ability to download the album for free in exchange for marketing data (email address/location)

That’s not an enormous list, but you’ll learn later that I had some other requirements that I didn’t even know about when I was planning the release.

I looked at Tunecore, which distributes your record to sites like iTunes, Amazon, and eMusic.  I did end up using Tunecore as a secondary distribution channel because these services are familiar (requirement #1 was met).  I didn’t want to alienate fans* who only know how to use the iTunes store to download an album.  But I couldn’t allow my fans to control the price, so these distributors would become secondary to whatever I chose.

There were places like Amie Street, which would allow my album to start off free but would increase in price as it got more popular.  It would be a stretch to say that this meets Requirements #2 and #3, because it’s the community that is technically controlling the price and not the individual fan.  I also didn’t want to punish those who just happened to get into the music later than the early adopters.

I took a look at some of my favorite musicians.  Glen Phillips had just released an album through Bandcamp.  Bandcamp would let me meet all 3 of my requirements, so it seemed like the perfect choice.  My only qualm with it was that it wasn’t exactly widget friendly.  You could attach a widget to your own web site, but it’s a small player and it just links back to your Bandcamp page anyway.   It was important to me to have my own site.  I wanted to run my own analytics and be able to make it a central hub for my fans.  Nonetheless, Bandcamp still met my basic needs, so I kept it as an option.

Then I stumbled across Noisetrade.  It met requirements #2 and #3, but it had the added feature of requiring the downloader to tell 5 friends about the album (via the widget) if they wanted the album for free.  I figured this was absolutely the way to go.  Every time someone downloaded my album for free, 5 people would get an email alert and would possibly check out the album as well.  And it was extremely widget friendly (in fact, the entire thing IS a widget), so I could embed into my site seamlessly.  I took a big breath and shelled out the $200 set up fee that Noisetrade required at the time.

I began working on the record, picking out good songs, re-working old demos, and finally it started to take form.  In the meantime, Noisetrade dropped its startup fee and refunded me, which I thought was a good move.  I was reading Seth Godin’s Purple Cow at the time, and Seth tends to make me re-think marketing.  I thought, how would Seth Godin digitally distribute my record if he was in charge?  Seth’s way of life is to make the product remarkable, and that viral spread will happen naturally (this became Requirement #4).  He believes it’s more effective this way, and I’m with him all the way.

The first thing that got me thinking about not using Noisetrade as my primary distributor was the interface.  Pretty, yes, but the entire thing is a flash widget.  It’s almost 2010, but there’s a possibility someone won’t have a flash browser and in that case, they wouldn’t even be able to listen to samples, or see the cover art.  It might not load quickly on a slow internet connection.  Noisetrade also creates 30 second samples from the first 30 seconds of the song.  For some of my songs, that’s a horrible place to demo a song.

(To be fair, I still use my Noisetrade account in case someone is browsing the Noisetrade store and sees my record and decides to download it.  No takers yet.  Though I did get some downloaders when I released an ambient record on the site called Still Life as a placeholder while I finished my folk album).

But more importantly, why should I require my fans to tell others about the music?  I’m giving them the option to pay nothing for the album because I don’t want to dictate what my music is worth to them.  If the music is good enough, I figured, they’ll tell anyone who they think will enjoy it.  If not, I didn’t create a product that can go viral naturally.  Bandcamp does feature a big Share button on the artist page, so Viral spread is just as possible, but not forced.

Bandcamp also streams the entire album for free (no 30-second samples here), which turned me off at first, but their explanation is quite convincing.

“…whether it’s a pop tune, a heavily political punk album, or an experimental, avant-garde suite — the key is very simple: people have to hear music, then they will grow to like it, and then finally, if you’re lucky, they will engage in an economic relationship in order to consume (not just buy and listen to) that music…

And a 30-second sample is a waste of your time and bandwidth. It’s worse than useless. That’s not enough to get to like your music. Let them hear it, keep it, live with it. And then bring them back as a fan.”

I think of it like this:

Approach #1:  Hello.  Would you like to stream my record for free?  If you like it enough to make it portable (downloading the MP3s), you can pay whatever you want and make it happen.

Approach #2:  Hello.  Would you like to check out these 30-second clips and somehow figure out from those clips if my music is worth buying, let alone worth the bandwidth/time/effort required to download it for free?”

What would you want as a fan?  I’ll take Approach #1 any day of the week.  Bandcamp has got it right.  So why aren’t other digital distributors following suit?

Well, I understand Noisetrade’s point of view.  That whole tell-5-friends thing is super attractive to artists.  The only problem is that, to the fans, it can feel forced.  I’d rather one of my fans take the time to think of two people that will really like my stuff than just send email blasts to the first 5 people they think of in order to get a free download.  I don’t want to force my fans to be viral marketing tools.  I want to create good enough material that they choose to go out and spread the word.  Not only that, but Noisetrade has to stay small and relatively unknown in order to not be annoying.  Can you imagine if that was the only option for free downloads?  Spam city.

I also understand iTunes’ (and the other big players) angle.  Letting artist control the prices will shrink revenues, and I imagine it takes a lot of money to keep those huge stores afloat.  It’s similar to paying $15 for a CD in the old days.  Some people only know iTunes for digital downloads and $10 seems completely reasonable to them.  ‘

But, for the reasons outlined above, neither of these methodologies are as simultaneously advantageous for the artist and the fan.  Bandcamp wins.  Not to mention the amount of customization you have access to is really exciting.  You can set a minimum, you can have the site collect e-mail addresses or not, you can make the download completely free, it can come in any format, you can bundle extra goodies into your digital pack, and you can now sell physical merch.  If you were on the fence before, it’s not even a choice anymore.

The moral:  when marketing your music, forget about forcing anybody to do anything.  They don’t owe you anything until they become a fan, and that’s on you.

*I don’t use the word “fans” to make myself sound important and famous, but “users” seemed too unnatural for a digital album.  I consider you a fan if you enjoy the music, and evidently some people out there do.

The ending of the Pixar classic Ratatouille has always resonated with me.  In the final scene, Alfredo serves his most hateful critic (the film’s antagonist) a dish which, in a very visual manner, immediately takes the critic back in time to being a child and eating his mother’s version of the same dish.  The experience is so delightful that he instantly goes from cynicism to pure bliss.

This is a valuable lesson.  Alfredo managed to turn his harshest critic into a raving fan by activating a memory and creating an emotion bond between his critic and the work.  The experience for the critic was simultaneously fresh and familiar.  We can integrate this philosophy into whatever it is we do.

If you’re a composer, what bank of past experiences are you drawing on when you write a melody?  And if you’re a computer programmer, when was the last time your user was ecstatic about a piece of software?  What type of stuffed animal should a toymaker produce to activate memories of comfort?  How should your bar look if your audience’s happy thoughts are ones of coziness?  Of crazy drunken nights?

Beyond business, we can apply this thinking to experiences such as picking out a birthday gift, having a conversation, introducing a friend to a new band…

If you know your audience well enough, you can allow them to lose themselves in your creation.  There’s no such thing as creating emotion through our work.  All we can do is stimulate.

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.