What kind of tweets prompt you to follow, or even worse, to unfollow someone?

September 3, 2010

Usually when a see a great article in someone’s twitter stream I think “Hey, this person seems smart and interesting, I think I’ll follow them.” Personally, I like to use twitter as one form of a news reader (think this, not this). If one of my “friends” thinks this info is interesting, then maybe I will too.

On the flip side, sometimes I’ll meet someone at an event who seems interesting in person – I like meeting new people – so, I’ll follow them on twitter and see what they have to say. If I find out that their twitter approach is quite a bit different, maybe they’re a heavy Foursquare user (no, I don’t want to know where you are every step of the day) or maybe their tweets are overly promotional (they’re trying too hard to “sell” something on twitter) then I’ll unfollow without hesitation. Straightforward spam gets the “block” selection.

What approach do you take to who you follow on twitter? BTW, I’m @rtooms, but I won’t be offended if we’re not compatible on twitter. 🙂