I have mentioned on more than one occasion here that I’m not much of a social media person. Generally, as a professional writer that doesn’t really hurt me. Sure, there are all kinds of organizations and people out there who are looking for people to write, but care more about the network the writer has than they do about their writing. To me, that’s no different than a hacker with a bot army getting a programming job because he can get his software distributed to more users than the regular programmer whose work would be superior. I’m really not interested in working for such people anyway.
Lately, however, I’ve actually come across some people who I have followed, and vice versa who are people that I am glad I know, and I like to think, they are glad to know me. So, I’m giving Twitter a more serious effort these days. This, of course, has led to more followers.
At first, I used the “you follow me, I follow you” rule only to find out that several spammer-types send out indiscriminate follows, and some of them even un-follow you after you follow them. So, I’ve been trying to figure out how to filter some of it. The obvious ones are easy, but not everyone who is a worthless addition to your network is easy to spot.
Ironically, I came across someone with a similar issue that he termed “friend inflation”. I liked that. Good well thought out article too. Guess where it is from? PBS. I hate that they really are smarter than the regular pandering channels.