When people you don't know on Twitter follow you, do you return the favor?

Twitter, in all its ramifications, seems confusing and pointless.

Proud to say I don’t do Twitter. I don’t need anyone knowing when I go to use the john.

I think Twitter has its uses for getting breaking news out fast or crisis situations. However, I have other sources for that and have never been inclined to tweet. It’s bad enough that I Fluther and Plurk.

No, I don’t.

I deleted my Twitter last week because I had the account for two years and hadn’t posted a single tweet. I tried to get into it, but I don’t get why so many people like it so much. I never even paid attention to who followed me, though people did for some reason. I didn’t bother logging in, let alone returning the favor.

@janbb Plurk?

@livelaughlove21 Yeah, it’s a little known social networking site that someone on here turned me on to. I like it because I am relatively unknown there.

Follow only the people you are interested in. Don’t follow everybody. People who follow you randomly are often just advertising themselves.

For me, the perplexing thing about Twitter is how ephemeral it is. You open it up, there is nothing that would drive you to scroll back more than the last ten tweets. At least Facebook gives you notifications of postings and comments from friends,

I had a scrolling twitter feed on one of my monitors at work so I could watch breaking news about the stock market. When we got upgraded to a new operating system it was incompatible with the twitter app I was using, so I have not had twitter up as a regular item for the last two months. I really have not missed it at all.

No.

I abstain from using twitter.

I check them out and if they look interesting then I might follow them. I don’t just follow because they followed me though.

@gailcalled Twitter, in all its ramifications, is confusing and pointless.
@ETpro It’s a pretty clever idea, though, and I can see it as being even more useful than Facebook in some ways.
I have one. I got it in high school and then deleted it because I never used it and thought it was stupid. Then I reactivated it again recently but still rarely use it. I just use it to follow accounts that post humorous or cool things.
I follow people I know and interesting pages. I occasionally get followers from strangers and odd pages, but you have the option of blocking anything.
Please buy a melon or something for me at Haymarket. The farmer’s market here isn’t nearly as good.

To all, thanks for so many confirming my feelings that a constant stream of updates on daily routines is beyond boring.

@Rarebear Thanks. I appreciate that advice.

@dxs I got into it back when we were discussing things we could do to help Fluther attract new users. I post each of my questions (the SFW ones, that is) to my Facebook Wall and to Twitter. When I think enough of a political or scientific article, I’ll share it on both. Same goes for petitions I find worthy of signing, and comments to media outlets like the Washington Post, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, Politico and Media Matters.

I have a twitter account that I use solely for educational and interesting chat sessions. The last one I took part in was with astronomer Phil Plait.

I have no idea how I would know if someone was following me, as I’ve never looked that closely at my account.

@Seek_Kolinahr Notable people have hundreds of thousands of followers. I’d guess they don’t go through them one by one either.

As I said, I mostly do astronomy on Twitter. But I followed an author I really like, and then a bunch of different authors followed me. I followed a music group, and then a bunch of different music groups followed me.

Twitter is an advertising tool for them. If they follow you, it increases their chance that you’ll pay attention to them.

It really doesn’t bother me, actually. It comes with the territory. I know a lot of people who get their news off of twitter. But to really use it properly, you have to have it going all the time. I’m only on it two or three times a week, which sort of defeats the purpose.

I just checked, and apparently Edward James Olmos has followed me back. Admiral Adama himself!

@Seek_Kolinahr He refollows everybody who follows him. He does it to advertise his social cause which has something to do with maintaining clean water sources.

Wow, learning a lot here about Twitter. Thanks and keep up to revelations.

I tried joining Twitter once. So I make my account and all, then it asks me to follow five things. So I follow five things…then it asked me to add five more…after adding about 25 different things, being asked to add some again before I could access my account, I was like, fuck this already. Don’t know if it was a glitch or what. Seemed interesting for news source, but I could never finish the account. :/

Always. The same goes on any site. I feel bad if I don’t follow someone back. I will also follow someone if I like them, are friends with them, or interested in what they say.

@Symbeline Must have been a glitch or perhaps a temporary test of how highhanded management could get. It never did that to me.

@Valerie111 That makes perfect sense. I will do the same.

@ETpro I don’t recommend that, actually, unless you are actually friends with those people. I used to follow everybody back and my twitter feed got filled with irrelevant stuff that I really don’t care about. For example, I often have conversations on astronomy on Twitter regarding esoteric equipment issues I may say, ”@astro—- my PHD is giving me an RMS of 0.35 tonight any ideas?” And then “Astro—-” will respond to me with a possible software fix, and I’ll respond. That’s something that you and @Valerie111 really wouldn’t give a crap about.

@Rarebear Thanks. I’d like to learn such internal workings without having to to so the hard way.