The Twitter Ratio

June 3, 2008 - Leave a comment...

Every morning I roll out of my bunk, shove caffeine down my craw, and find five to ten new Twitter followers in my inbox. Typically, I don’t have a clue who these people are or how they found me, but I check all of them out.

If I don’t know them, though, the first thing I look for is their follower-to-following ratio. I’ve noticed lately that the ratio is a big part of my decision whether or not I follow them back. I don’t really have a set rule on this yet, but sometimes it’s obvious; if someone’s following 1,000 people and only has 52 followers, I don’t even bother reading their short bio.

So what is the Golden Ratio for Twitter? I’m sure I’m not the only one that considers the Ratio, but I don’t yet have any set logic for following someone back. Do you? Assuming you don’t know the person (maybe you’ve just heard of them through blogs or whatnot), what makes you decide to follow someone on Twitter?

And, most importantly, when will I be able to change the twitter logo to an osprey? I think it’d look a hell of a lot cooler.

UPDATE: And yes, I find it amusing that all the early commenters so far found this post because my blog auto-tweets to my followers.

[tags]Matthew Ebel, piano rock, twitter[/tags]

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  • http://chelpixie.com chelpixie

    Haha. Of course it would look better as an osprey.

    Here’s my thoughts on this, which is related but not the same. I’ll admit I’m barely following people back these days.

    Part of it stems from having 1200 followers that I could follow back, but then knowing if I did I wouldn’t be able to hear the people that are speaking to me very well. Mr. Penn and I were talking about this yesterday and he’s sorta applied Dunbar’s Law. You can have meaningful relationships with 150 people before things start getting nutty. Sure we all want to make everyone feel meaningful in social media but we CAN’T. Not reasonably.

    At this point what makes me follow someone is having a personal connection with them before hand or if what they are doing is very interesting. I won’t follow users who have a huge number of followers unless they are a company I’m interested in listening to.

    *breathes* You asked. ;)

  • http://RockStarLifeLessons.com Carla Lynne Hall

    Hey Matthew,

    I like to look at past twitter posts from the new followers to see if they’re on the same wavelength as me, or if they have something interesting to say.

    As always, your mileage may vary ;-)

    Carla

  • http://thebrandbarry.com Barry Reicherter

    I’ve been wondering about this too. My followers are just slightly above those I’m following, but there’s maybe 20% of those who are following anyone with a tweet-pulse. I’m not sure dividing into those three types bantered about lately is not too blunt and instrument. Is looking at your entire following as one group the right method? I don’t know because I have some friends that may want to know I’ve just taken a firm dump, but that could be hurting my business tweets. Good “conversation starter” sir.

  • http://www.xianfox.com/ Xianfox

    I start by looking at their ratio, but I give concession to those with low numbers (ie following 10 but only 2 followers) as they may be new to the system. I look at the overall number their following (if they’re following 1,500 people, I’m just part of the noise).

    The biggie in my book is to look over their recent tweets. Are they someone I’m interested in following? (Hint: If you have the word “marketing” in your bio, that’s a huge strike against you.) Do they tweet every 5 minutes? There’s precious few of those I’ll follow.

    First-time reader. Been listening to your work for a couple of years now. Love it, keep it up. Ciao.

  • http://matthewebel.com Matthew Ebel

    Chel- Yeah, I indelicately covered that ground before when I asked my followers why I should follow them back. As of this comment I have 777 followers (lucky me) and there’s no way I could follow them all back and actually read what they have to say.

    Carla- Content, as usual, is indeed king. Sometimes I’m amazed that people follow my banal regurgitations!

    Barry- Good to hear from you again! Bear in mind that I am indeed someone who’s done the Twitter-from-the-shitter thing. Twice. Fortunately, my business is linked to my personality and attitude, but for a guy in your line of work that might not be the case. I definitely don’t follow the Cedric Spam-again‘s of the world, though.

    Xian- Yeah, I typically give a bit more credit to noobs as well, especially since the noobs are more likely to post something meaningful in their first few dozen tweets. Once again, tho, content rules.