Let me start by saying that I LOVE to connect with people. Last month, when I blogged about culling my Twitter list, I really meant it when I said "I hate breaking up with people".
It seemed natural to me, a few months ago, to want to follow-back people who follow me on Twitter, and to make friends with people who wanted to befriend me on Facebook. On Facebook, I've befriended most people, and it's not as if I'm being inundated with requests. So the philosophy works fine there. Twitter is another matter.
Back in January or so, when I gave Tweetlater.com instructions to automatically follow-back every person who followed me, Twitter was a great big party of users, some commercial and more just having fun. If someone followed me, I figured it was because they genuinely thought I had something to say. I didn't mind the occasional marketer, because I could perhaps learn a thing or two from the way they used Twitter to engage potential clients.
Twitter being what it is (and I think that might be a constantly mutating, highly contagious virus right about now), things have changed since then. Every snake-oil salesman and would-be Internet millionaire is climbing aboard. People who have their accounts set to autofollow are sitting ducks for these hucksters.
Hucksters, I have news for you: you are BORING!! Honestly, if you are going to sell to me, at least make it interesting. Make me feel like you care about me. The philosophy of social media is engagement. Dance with me. Date me. Show me why I should fall in love with your product. I know you only have 140 characters to make an impression.
That makes Twitter a lot like real life, where you only have a few seconds before your customers have passed judgement on you. I'm sure you wouldn't start a Real Life conversation "Hi. Let me show you how to get 16,000 new customers in a month" - even at a trade show.
Therefore, the autofollow is turned off, at least until the hucksters stop trying to stuff me in their sales funnel. And really, it's not as if I'm following Mr. Snake Oil's advice and using Twitter Secrets to Gain 16,000 Followers This Month. My following is growing at a nicely manageable speed of a couple of dozen people each day. I can stay on top of that manually by going into my "following" list, and only selecting the people with real photos, real names, real bios and (if I have to really dig deep to decide if I'll follow back) real conversations.
I am no longer a sitting duck!
A technical aside: I actually thought I had my autofollow turned off about a month ago, when I took that option off of SocialToo.com. But I forgot about my initial deal with Tweetlater. It's a good idea to write down somewhere which third-party applications you are using, and what for. Keep it with your other administrative records.