One of the unique things of Twitter (e.g. compared to Facebook or LinkedIn) is that it shows a users Follower / Following numbers prominently and more importantly it gates progress in regards of following other users on follow back. If memory does not fool me, Twitter installed these limits to avoid abuse and spam. E.g. there is / was a gate a 2000 people followed, where you could only follow more people once your own follower count would pass 2000 followers. So Twitter strives for balanced users - ultimately.
With this as a background, when looking at a Twitter use, there are four 'personas' - you can pick them out by the relationship of followed vs. following:
- The Twitter NewBie - characterized by a substantial lead of users followed vs. users following. I think every Twitter user starts like this... at the end of the day you need to follow other users to get going. The first users followed is an interesting insight for anyone who wants to do some social analysis of anyone on Twitter.
- The likely Spammer - characterized by a 10x+ relationship of following vs. followed. These are the dark side of Twitter, often not human accounts.. but they play a role - as you will later see.
- The Hoarder - characterized by a 5x+ relationship of followers vs. following. These are the Twitter users who have 'made it' in the classical sense of reputation management - with other users following them, but them not following back. At some point - e.g. for news organizations and the big celebrities - it is impossible to follow back... that creates an imbalance in the Twitter equilibrium.
- The Social User - characterized by an almost even count of followers vs following. The difference being human error, and often the spammers that aren't followed back.
MyPOV
Twitter is practically a null sum game for all users from a follower / following perspective ... Imbalanced follower / following accounts trigger their inverse in single or across multiple accounts, as users try to get over the gated hurdles that Twitter has setup... so the Hoarder creates the opportunity for the Spammer... So in my view Twitter would do better in case it would motivate more balanced follower / following ratios. Some of the problems are Twitter self inflicted, as it does not do a good job to help, assist and teach users from managing the Home feed efficiently.
For me I stayed in the Social User category... my following count is less than 10% under my follower count and I routinely go over my followers and follow back based on a few criteria... check my tweets.
What is your Twitter persona?
