{"id":68,"date":"2009-02-18T14:27:16","date_gmt":"2009-02-18T19:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.adam-jackson.net\/?p=68"},"modified":"2009-02-18T14:27:16","modified_gmt":"2009-02-18T19:27:16","slug":"the-rules-of-following-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/02\/18\/the-rules-of-following-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 The Rules of Following [Twitter]"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:15096,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/140characters.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20250929092146\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.140characters.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-06 08:24:09&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-06 17:54:57&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-10 14:16:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-14 00:17:19&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-25 15:48:26&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-30 01:07:56&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-03 13:41:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-08 13:03:49&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-15 06:43:48&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-21 13:17:43&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-25 09:42:47&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-02 06:58:44&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-09 01:34:50&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-13 02:07:56&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-16 09:25:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-21 15:51:02&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-25 22:12:44&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-25 22:12:44&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><img  decoding=\"async\"  class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-72 pk-lazyload\"  title=\"untitled-2\"  src=\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABAQMAAAAl21bKAAAAA1BMVEUAAP+KeNJXAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAAAlwSFlzAAAOxAAADsQBlSsOGwAAAApJREFUCNdjYAAAAAIAAeIhvDMAAAAASUVORK5CYII=\"  alt=\"untitled-2\"  data-pk-sizes=\"auto\"  data-pk-src=\"http:\/\/blog.adam-jackson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/untitled-2.png\" ><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been holding off from posting this for a while. It&#8217;s actually going to be a section in <a href=\"http:\/\/140characters.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">my book<\/a> that is nearing completion but I think it&#8217;s time to say something because I&#8217;m coming off as a complete ass. I can understand how some people are bothered by me not following them especially when I reply to every reply as a direct message. For those who don&#8217;t know, you can&#8217;t send a direct message (DM) to anyone unless they are following you. I like it that way because it really eliminates spam. I&#8217;m sure I would be getting a crap load of spam if anyone could DM me and people would start gaming the system with auto-DMs so let&#8217;s keep it the way it is for now.<\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s the big deal with me not following people? Well, I have nearly 2,400 followers now. It&#8217;s not many compared to others but I only follow about 550 people. Those are 550 people that are influencers in my industry, companies that I love or people that I&#8217;ve met in person and have real friendships with. 500 seems like a whole lot of people but it&#8217;s not really. Would you believe that I&#8217;m not following Zappos, Robert Scoble or Gary Vaynerchuk. Those are 3 guys that everyone follows, right? Well they send way too many replies and it clogs up my stream.<\/p>\n<p>To be honest, I unfollow about 50 people a week and block about 2 people a day. I&#8217;m very serious about who I&#8217;m following and not following. If I see a hint that someone is being a complete ass to someone else or is supporting things that I don&#8217;t agree with I&#8217;ll block them. If someone is sending replies any more than 1 out of 4 of their tweets then I unfollow. I should be able to look at the twitter stream of my friends and see real information, something informative, educational, inspiring and real. Replies, chat rooms, spamming and angry messages I don&#8217;t have time for. If I&#8217;m not growing and learning from you, you&#8217;re unfollowed.<\/p>\n<p>So now that you know how I do things on Twitter, I&#8217;d like to explain why I didn&#8217;t follow the two guys who asked me today &#8220;why aren&#8217;t you following me?&#8221; Well I looked at your page, and you both reply to too many people. I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;re great, smart and inspirational guys but your Twitter stream is equivalent of a 7th grade social butterfly and that&#8217;s why I didn&#8217;t follow you.<\/p>\n<p>So why the hell do I DM everyone? Because I love showing people that I absolutely read every single mention of @adamjackson or &#8220;adam jackson&#8221;. I see all of them and even if you&#8217;re talking about me, to me or retweeting what I say, I quickly send a DM to you saying, &#8220;hey thanks for the retweet&#8221; or I&#8217;ll reply to a quesetion that you have. What I won&#8217;t do is start following you unless I see a value in following you based on my personal made up Twitter algorithm for people worth following. Does that piss people off? Sure it does and it forces them to publicly @reply to me in response to my DM but that&#8217;s the best way to use the system at this time.<\/p>\n<p>A plan that I have is to create an account @adamDM that auto-follows everyone that mentions @adamjackson or &#8220;adam jackson&#8221; and that way I can DM those people from that account and they are able to DM me back but that account doesn&#8217;t ever tweet or do anything else and is simply a way to communicate with people over DM without any limtations. Ideally, I would like it if Twitter was smart enough where when I DM someone, it gives them a 5 minute &#8211; 1 hour grace period where they can DM me back without my following them. Until that happens, this is the system I must work with.<\/p>\n<p>Apologies all around for not following every single one of you. For the record, I receive nearly 100 replies a day and 80% of those are from people I&#8217;m not following. It&#8217;s unfortunate but that&#8217;s how I must do things and I apologize. It&#8217;s nothing personal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I&#8217;ve been holding off from posting this for a while. It&#8217;s actually going to be a section in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-68","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ideas","7":"cs-entry","8":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-16","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":557,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/10\/06\/are-iphones-push-notifications-killing-sms\/","url_meta":{"origin":68,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 Are iPhone&#8217;s Push Notifications killing SMS?","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"October 6, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"For the first time in a very long time, I used a title to rope you in. Congrats and thanks for clicking through and you won't be disappointed. Push has been around for a while. In the mobile space, it was popularized by RIM's Blackberry devices as a way to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Ideas&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Ideas","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":894,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2010\/06\/10\/why-i-delete-my-twitter-replies\/","url_meta":{"origin":68,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 Why I Delete My Twitter Replies","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"June 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Since coming back to Twitter full time in March, I've been trying new things but first, a little history on my Twitter \u00a0style and how it has changed. I used to reply to everyone. Then, I replied very selectively and never did more than 1 or 2 responses before ending\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Social Media&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Social Media","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/social-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":205,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/04\/08\/adage-tells-us-about-twitter-my-response\/","url_meta":{"origin":68,"position":2},"title":"\u2605 AdAge Tells Us About Twitter &#038; My Response","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Today, I clicked through someone's tweet to a post on AdAge.com about Twitter. What intrigued me to click was the title. The post was called, \"Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn't Tweet\" and it was written by BL Ochman. To make things a bit easier, I've posted the ten\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Ideas&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Ideas","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":455,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/08\/03\/boxcar-for-iphone-twitter-track-is-back\/","url_meta":{"origin":68,"position":3},"title":"\u2605 Boxcar for iPhone: Twitter Track is Back!","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"August 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"When I started using Twitter (December, 2006), there was a feature added shortly after I started called \"Track\". When it was released, I immediately added unlimited SMS to my mobile phone. Twitter explains it in this blog post from September, 2007 but Justine Ezarik really explains it the best in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;My Thoughts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"My Thoughts","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/my-thoughts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3494,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2012\/01\/17\/adam-why-dont-you-follow-celebrities-on-twitter-theyre-sooooo-entertaining\/","url_meta":{"origin":68,"position":4},"title":"\u2605 Adam, why don&#8217;t you follow celebrities on Twitter? They&#8217;re SOOOOO entertaining!","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"January 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I get asked this pretty often so, following the\u00a0festivities\u00a0of this weekend, I opened on my home iMac a few tabs of people I met who are \"celebrities\" but YouTube stars which is different than a real celebrity. Anyway, I gave it 48 hours. Basically, twice a day I refresh the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Social Media&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Social Media","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/social-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Screen-Shot-2012-01-17-at-4.28.17-PM11.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5523,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2016\/03\/01\/linked-is-it-too-late-to-go-back-to-the-twitter-that-might-have-been\/","url_meta":{"origin":68,"position":5},"title":"LInked: &#8220;Is It Too Late to Go Back to the Twitter That Might Have Been?&#8221;","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"via Fortune: In a nutshell, Twitter could have been a little like email, or the SMS messaging system. And it probably could have become a little like what Slack is now\u2014the messaging service that has brought social communication to hundreds of major corporations and could be worth almost $3 billion\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}