Twitter co-founder Biz Stone sent out an Email earlier this afternoon to a number of users who had previously enabled ‘autofollowing’, stating that the company is planning to shut the feature down. ‘Autofollowing’ allows users to automatically reciprocate whenever another Twitter user follows them. The feature has never been widely available to the public (at least not through Twitter’s site), and was only enabled by sending a request to Twitter support.
While Stone ackowledges that the autofollow feature does have some uses (such as for applications built on the Twitter API or simply to be polite), generally speaking most of these autofollows are disingenuous. Many of the more popular Twitter users who have autofollow enabled are now following tweets from thousands of people at a time, the vast majority of which they clearly aren’t paying attention to.
This is probably a good move on Twitter’s part, as I’ve always found the practice to be pretty spammy. Of course, there are still a number of third party services that help users accomplish the same thing. What remains to be seen is if Twitter will try to disable these third party services, or if it simply doesn’t want to be officially condoning the practice.
Below is the letter in its entirety:
Hi There,
I’m contacting you because you have a Twitter account for which
we enabled something called “autofollow.” This is not a public
feature, it’s something we did for a limited set of accounts
such that they automatically follow any account that follows
them.We’re going to discontinue autofollow because this behavior
sends the wrong message. Namely, it is unlikely that anyone can
actually read tweets from thousands of accounts which makes
this activity disingenuous.However, we understand that there may be exceptions such as
applications built using our API or the ability to exchange
direct messages. There are also some who think it’s simply
polite to follow back other accounts.While we’re going to stop supporting autofollow, we’d like to
find a way to support the other goals folks are really trying
to accomplish. Please feel free to reply to this email and let
us know how we can do this better together.Thanks,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.
Thanks to Kent Nichols for the tip.
God thank you.
Agreed, autofollow created a situation where you would have essentially spammers following spammers creating massive networks. It’s one of the things that made twitter so attractive to MLM or Network Marketers, automatically growing networks.
Well I don’t use auto follow from starting..But I think it would be good for those who were using it earlier but now they can’t.
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
You literally hit the nail on the head. MLM marketers are taking over twitter.
I think they are updating their interface right now – but they seem to be not quite done yet. When I use the search box I get a message that user name and password is required and that search is only for employees.
Here is a screen shot http://www.flic...397101/sizes/o/
I agree 110%. A few weeks ago I spent all afternoon and determinedly went through hundreds of people and unfollowed them because there was so much noise.
totally thanks god for that
totally with you .. guy kawasaki is gonna be pissed.
I would follow Guy. I agree I keep removing people form my follower/following list the re-add themselves and I hate to be forced to block them.
We doubt twitter can do anything about the GREATEST twitter app – SStwitter that we exclusively profiled at twi5! SStwitter – The Best twitter app ever!
I agree that’s a good move. Stone is correct in his statement that the autofollow behavior sends the wrong message. You can always tell which users only care about themselves if they are following thousands of users.
So if I follow lots of people, I only care about myself?
Then I guess to show I really care about others, I should follow no one.
That’s some pretty warped thinking.
If you follow thousands of people you obviously aren’t reading much of what they are writing. Or you are using a program like TweetDeck so that you can real your “real” friends list.
If you really care about others you should follow a manageable about of people. And send @ replies now and then.
You hit the nail on the head here it is quite easy to manage thousands of people on tweetdeck. Add a few permanent columns and a one or two for topics you want to deal with for that session to sort out all your peeps and you can actually manage tens of thousands of followers.
What most people don’t get about those of us who follow several hundred to several thousand people is we follow people from all over the world, which is very different from following the same amount of people in your own time zone.
yeah I think it is the other way around if you follow no one then ou only care about yourself. I don’t like one way conversations. If I wanted to talk to myself I would go into my bathroom and shut the door. :-/
Chris I agree with you 100%, It is easy to have that Guru Mentality, To me Twitter Is not about me Only, It is about my followers also.
Simple solution: Let someone send a DM to a person without having to follow them. I run a trivia bot on Twitter called Twivia (@playtwivia), which uses DMs to send in answers privately and keep the game fair.
Although, I have autofollow enabled for that account, but I haven’t yet gotten this email.
To hell with that. Anyone auto-following or auto-direct messaging as soon as someone follows them should be perma IP banned. That shit is fucking annoying. Every time someone does that I instantly unfollow and block them.
The whole point of Twitter is that you can talk to another person. If I wanted machine syndication, I’ll subscribe to something via RSS.
Aaron, you have quite the anger issues. That is, of course, your right though. The whole point of twitter is not to talk to another person. It’s to broadcast yourself to a whole bunch of people at once. If you want one-to-one, still with IM.
Agree with that Jason,
And it is simply polite and in good taste that everyone who follows you be followed back…auto-follow or not…I don’t mind getting “free gifts” through auto-DMs but leave the spam in my inbox =)
*facepalm*
It’s people like you who really *don’t get it*.
Well, I do follow most followers back, but I consider it less of a given than I once did, particularly with the rise of follow-spam. It takes me time to follow because I always read some of the profile page first. I wish more people would.
I did come across a kind of spam utilizing the auto-follow once. Practically the whole first page of someone’s recent followers showed the “halt! Who goes there?” message instead a profile. I figure someone had poked around looking for accounts with auto-follow then inundated these accounts with follows from accounts they controlled. To what end, I can’t fathom.
Anyone complaining about others auto-following should be banned! How do you like that?
And banning by IP is stupid- shows that you don’t understand how the Internet works.
Yeh it’s stupid that’s why almost EVERY online corporation in the world does it.
Saying that shows that YOU don’t know anything about the internet. Tell me, internet guru, a more effective way of banning somebody from a website? There isn’t one.
Aaron, it’s nice to have these purist ideals, but that’s not how a lot of people are using Twitter. It’s a communication system, like the telephone or the mail. Are you saying any automated systems should be removed from those mediums as well?
And Twitter could be the next generation of RSS. Most people don’t know what RSS is or how it works. Believe me, I know. I run an RSS filtering service. But the simple nomenclature that Twitter uses means everyone can get on board. And the 2-way communication and push model means it can go beyond what RSS does.
Anyways, to the central point of being able to send DMs, perhaps a fair compromise would be to only be able to accept DMs from people you follow. That way the relationship doesn’t have to be two way. Plus, if you’re following someone, you’re already getting their public updates. If they’re going to spam, you can completely unfollow them to cut off both communication channels. I think that makes some sense. But I’d love to hear some holes poked in the theory.
I agree with Aaron. I find it annoying when I get automatic DMs from people I follow back, rather than them taking the time to DM me or @ me and say hi. Half of these automated accounts don’t even pay attention to who you are or what you’re interested in. It’s starting to be a lot like MySpace and the random band friend requests.
I run a Twitter account for a company that has over 550 followers. At first, I DM’d or @’d everyone who followed us. After a while it got to be a little much time-wise, so I started tweeting out general welcomes and @’d a few people who caught my eye and were relevant for the company to interact with. Otherwise, I pretty much talk to everyone of our followers, especially when they @-reply us.
I like the DM system the way it is. I wouldn’t want random people DMing me.
As for having lots of followers versus just a few, I think it’s all in who is managing the account. Could I manage thousands of followers? Probably not, because I manage several accounts for different companies, non-profits, and myself. It would be impossible to pay attention to everything, all at once! However, if the point of your account is to get people aware of your cause or product, you would ideally WANT thousands of followers.
But like I said, I think it just depends on the user. (:
Everyone is making great points.
1. no human can sustain and converse with thousands of people.
2. The one-way conversation [i.e. a person with thousands following without following others] is their particular mode of communication, which may be speaking without listening. Or else they can be using the DM function
3. That comes to Timothy Dorr’s “Simple solution: Let someone send a DM to a person without having to follow them. ” I’ve wanted to send DM to someone who wasn’t following. Can’t do it.
This could be problematic – see #5 spam overload
4. Auto follow is robotic, no human behind the activity. Thus it is hollow and empty. All a numbers game.
5. Spam and grossness is abounding more. Necessary to block more follows. Why is this happening?
6. Use of tweetdeck and other applications allows people to sort through tweets and categorize more efficiently
7. Twitter is just a babe and as problems arise it will grow and change with the times. This is to be expected.
8. This is the playful stage and it’s lots of fun for everyone. The “people” will create its functionality
Debby
I like how you said that the people will create Twitter’s functionality. I think the Twitter team has done a marvelous job of paying attention to their users’ needs and adjusting their product accordingly.
I think a lot of people take Twitter way too seriously and might be missing the fact that it’s still a relatively new thing and it should be fun. It shouldn’t be about how the numbers. Just enjoy it! Ever since I got my BlackBerry and downloaded TwitterBerry, I’ve been enjoying it even more.
“generally speaking most of these autofollows are disingenuous”
Ironically enough, I tweeted this exact issue yesterday.
http://twitter....atus/1412269500
How can you possibly follow thousands of people? You can’t. Rather, you’re just using them to further your own “follower” goals.
Good move by Evan.
The Greek
How is that ironic? That’s not even remotely ironic. That’s damn near the exactly opposite of irony.
Ha!
Some people just never get It. Twitter Is a two way street.
thank the lord above that someone is finally introducing common sense into this social networking stuff. disingenuous is the perfect word, sums up everything i hate about f.book and why i like twitter so much better.
“We’re going to discontinue autofollow because this behavior
sends the wrong message. Namely, it is unlikely that anyone can
actually read tweets from thousands of accounts which makes
this activity disingenuous.” -@Biz
I’ve been saying this for awhile.
Next, kill autodm’s.
Many of us instantly unfollow anyone who sends one. Vote with yer feet!
Starting to miss the simplest iteration of twttr 1.0
Ed gets it. +1
At Tipjoy, you can signup by following @tipjoy. We email you a temporary password, and a link to OAuth.
What do you think of that? Are apps different than people?
This is a totally legitimate use, and really hurts services built on top of Twitter (like Tipjoy). Thankfully it sounds like Biz is not against these kinds of uses, just in trying to find another way.
This is a totally legitimate use, and really hurts services built on top of Twitter (like Tipjoy). Thankfully it sounds like Biz is not against these kinds of uses, just in trying to find another way.
i find the auto-response DMs redundant. if i am genuinely interested in following someone and i do, then moments later i get an email saying “thanks check out my site http://www.whateverdomain.com!” then the person has no faith that i’ve actually checked out the URL that is posted in their profile, which is why i followed them in the first place.
Allowing accounts to set it to let anybody DM them would take care of a lot of the problems that applications would need autofollow for. Just yesterday, I was looking to see if it was possible to set up autofollow for an a new app I’m setting up, mainly because I want people to be able to DM to it.
That could easily make the spam problem worse. I get DMs to my phone, because DMs usually require (or imply) an urgent or actionable nature.
If *anyone* could DM anyone, spam would be uncontrollable.
Then everyone would just start ignoring DM’s. Keep it private please Biz!
I think it’s fine the way it is. Twitter works well in its simplicity. Adding new settings that you can mix and match might defeat the whole purpose. Leave DMs the way they are! (:
Makes sense.
The purge has begun: Twitter round 2.0
I agree its a good move.
I had them enable this feature on my account in 2007, because I wanted to have an open line of communication via DM with anyone who followed me. However, during 2008, Twitter spam started getting out of control and I found that spammers would follow me to get my follow reciprocation, sometimes unfollowing later. I had Twitter disable the feature on my account several months ago because I hated the idea that my account was benefiting spammers.
Good move.
Thank you Twitter!
The auto-follow feature was only used by spammers and bad marketers who’s only purpose was to collect a bunch of followers on any subject and then tweet-bomb them.
Why would anyone serious want 10.000s of followers with no specific interest? No wonder people think twitter marketing doesn’t work if you try to sell Hard Drives to people interested in Tulips?
http://twitter....m/Spideroak_Inc – Online Backup, Storage, Access, Share and Sync – 2GB Free!
WTF? Isn’t what you just left at the bottom of your comment spam?
I agreed with you, until you plugged in your link after complaining about spam.
Make Sense.
Spam is inevitable.
That’s certainly a feature twitter can do without. It’s getting very clutter over there as it is. In fact, it would be nice if the would add some filters and user management tools.
First, who gives a hoot how many people you follow, or that follow you. Who cares if you can’t read every friggin tweet in your stream. Having the option to do so at any given time is an unmatched way to dip into an information river.
Following (and being followed by) a large group is attractive because it enables deeper/wider information discovery, marketing, collaboration, feedback, etc. If you want to keep your stream to 150, great. 10,000, knock yourself out. Do you really want Twitter enforcing a number limit?
Second, while I’ve never used auto follow or auto DM, my main concern is with automated software tapping Twitter’s API (Hummingbird a nasty example). THIS is what Twitter should be most concerned about. With a few simple clicks, people can create unlimited ‘niche’ (crap) accounts and set in motion software automatically ‘mass following’ entire groups of people – (all 4,000 that follow a particular person, for example). Very different from choosing to auto follow those who follow you. And you can tell it to ‘mass unfollow’ anyone not following you back within, say, 24 or 48 hours. This is how people with 100 hollow tweets and two weeks on Twitter are amassing 10,000 follows/followers. It’s the social media equivalent of crawling for e-mail addresses.
I’m OK with the demise of Auto Follow, and if they shut down outside services offering it, fine as well (that’ll help shut down software like Hummingbird). But get your panties in a bunch for the right reasons. High numbers is not one, especially if those connections were made the old fashioned way – by hand – via conversation and discovery.
I agree. Who cares how many people you follow? I follow over 2K people and I don’t read every tweet (but I never read every tweet when I followed 50 people). But I do interact with my twitter followers on a regular basis.
And that is what really matters. (:
Man, I was wondering when someone who thinks like me about follow numbers was going to show up!
Twitter can be used in numerous ways. My way is to follow a significant number of people I CHOOSE to follow. and it’s way more than 100. Damn near 1000.
How? I dip in and out whenever and wherever I like. No one on planet Earth ever said you had to follow and read every single tweet in your stream!
Where did all these people come from who think you have to see and respond to every single thing anyone sends out? Or that you should get really stressed about “missing” something?
Twitter is boring and useless as hell if you only follow a couple people.
Exactly Jack!
Pretty much, if you only have a few folks in your stream, what’s the point in being “into” Twitter?
Having a varied group of folks that you’re following adds “spice” to the stream, and is possibly similar to going to “socials”, where you may not know a soul there, but you leave knowing more people than you knew when you arrived…
Be Well!
ECS Dave
Well said…
I had, at one time, utilized a 3rd party app to auto-follow. This was when I was even more a Twitter “newbie” than I am now. That said, after discovering that I was following “spammers”, I ceased that practice. Currently I go through the most recent followers once a week (usually), and if they appear interesting to me, or if they appear to have an interest in what I have to say (not just by their following me action), then I reciprocate.
As that number changes, I will mostly likely have to change my “scan” frequency…
An interesting development though, I agree with it, for what that is worth…
Be Well!
ECS Dave
I look at the profile of every Follower I have on Twitter when I recieve the “X is following you” email. If yhey are someone I want to listen to, or if they follow some of the same people as me, I usually reciprocate.
I am definitely a twaddict, though.
http://thephatb...power-tweeting/
as a note: that’s not my website.
Sorry I just saw this and thank you Jeff for being one of the first on the other side……Explanations…
The first time I entered tweetdeck and could watch the flow I was literly bowled over by the power, the reach, and the amount of INFORMATION available at ones fingertips…I am a researcher and following the economics of our times and sociopathic behavior.
The second time I went in after the collaspe but before the election I was bowled over by the desperation and sadness of the masses…..
BricknClick says it perfectly,
“Following (and being followed by) a large group is attractive because it enables deeper/wider information discovery, marketing, collaboration, feedback, etc.”
When people ask or are sarcastic about my numbers I say to them…If I am replied to RTd or someone talks to me directly…unless I miss I try to answer and or talk to all……..which is for sure a fraction of the people…..HOWEVER…the reach is there…
I found that out first with the India incident RTing news before the news had it….I’m concerned about certain things happening in the world today and want to be able to shout out if something very important happens…We are on the edge of one era and the begining of another. I was surprised it took people so long to discover the twitter power and RT effect…..
Thank you so much for giving us this tool…Never heard of the tool you talked of and disengaged auto DMs in my email, that’s not contact…also don’t have auto follow through twitter but do prune the tree unfollowing those who unfollow you…..After all they are neither listening nor engaged with you..this includes those who unless you somehow stand out will never follow you anyway….
~jude
PS. my website says it all in matter of numbers…
http://www.proj...tworldawareness
~jude
Amen! If I wanted to have a SM site dictate to me who I can follow or not or how many, I’d have stayed with FB! The answer it to stop spammers not people who have grown to love Twitter and who use it responsibly. It’s very easy to follow or unfollow using Tweetlater and until Twitter offers such functionality it should deal with the actual problem of spam and not its evangelists.
Good call…
Glad to see twittering growing up and making lots of good decisions. Seems to be that they are in mature/refining mode….cool to see
I’m guessing most spammers used a 3rd party site to autofollow, and if the didn’t they will be upon hearing this. It is spammy most of the time, and if you have it enabled, you have to constantly prune your follow list to get rid of the spammers.
I am new to twitter and follow lots of tweeters. I have learned sooooo much from these tweeters and Have read so many of the helpful websites that I am AMAZED!!! I have gathered a wealth of information and broadened my knowledge base form a myriad of places. I thank all of you for sharing. I would hate to be limited in some way. I appreciate the vast communication base.
I learned a lot of new things from using Twitter, too. Glad you’re enjoying it! (:
1. Never used it – I manually look at all new followers and decide from there.
2. It doesn’t bother me if others use it. It’s up to them if they want to be “genuine” or not. I know who I actually interact with on Twitter and follow others like them.
3. Disabling it is unlikely to have anything to do with how people are using the service. It’s a low value feature that can be removed to free up quite a bit of processing power. No one will stop using Twitter because auto-follow is gone.
4. I could write an app in 15 minutes to auto-follow if I absolutely needed the functionality. Guaranteed there are apps out there to do it for you. I won’t.
Follow me if you want, I’ll follow back if you’re interesting, into programming, or love the tech world
@jonreid
I am glad that you are cancelling this feature. Although, I never used it – I like the freedom of choosing those I wish to follow.
Thanks,
Miss Truly
I disagree with those that say the auto-follow function serves no point because it’s used predominantly by the marketers. I myself am not a marketer, but they seem to be the ones who are driving Twitters explosive growth while making an honest buck and that’s a good thing. The beauty of the internet and social networking in particular is that it has a history of evolving into something that nobody could have predicted. If Twitter censors auto-follow, free enterprise, or anything else on their site they could be dooming themselves just like Friendster did to itself.
You make a good point, that marketers are a driving force behind Twitter. I don’t think that they are the driving force, though. I think auto-follow is spammy, and if it wasn’t available to everyone in the first place, no one is going to miss it.
I’m thinking it was a sort of test feature, to see the response that it got, which was negative because of the spam.
Great stuff, the sooner the better.
The whole issue with auto-follow is akin to a big cocktail party. Would you auto-follow anyone and everyone who propositions you in a bar? Of course, not.
The general idea of auto-following is to simply boost your numbers for a) egotistical reasons (”look how many people are following me!”) or b) to sell/market to them, looking at it as a form of “prospect list.”
I’d rather have 3,000 “real” fans following me, than 30,000 who simply want me to be among their followers.
Seth Godin said it best in this short video with Tom Peters:
http://www.open...socialgood.html
Auto-follow is a tool. And just like a hammer is not the one responsible for how it is used but rather the person using it, one can’t lump all auto-follow users into egotistical self-serving marketers.
I personally began using it as a time-management tool. Even with just 25-50 followers a day, it becomes very difficult to personally look at everyone’s profile, let alone hundreds of followers per day.
So I found that it enabled me to open a line of communication and a level of interaction with my followers that I would not have had otherwise.
That leaves time to engage those that communicate with you and find and connect with those that you can form real offline relationships with.
So it’s the INTENTION of the user that determines the value or not of a particular tool.
@yisel
That’s a wonderful example. I think Twitter itself is sort of like a cocktail party. You work the room, shake hands, say hi, and then when you leave you decide who you want to continue a relationship — be it the friendly, networking, or romantic kind — with.
That would make spamming INCREASE on Twitter. Spammers would create throwaway accounts just to DM a thousand strangers.
(OK, that was weird: This is supposed to be a reply to Timothy Dorr’s post. Stupid %&%$@&^@-ing Facebook Connect…)
I have been using SocialToo for a couple months for auto following on @mediabistro because we started adding over 200 people a day. There is an actual human being behind the feed (me), but it’s extremely time consuming to manually follow that many people each day.
The reason we autofollow: It has helped our organic growth tremendously. While it is true that it’s impossible to read tweets from 20,000+ people, I have a pretty elaborate setup with Tweetdeck and other services.
We are a media and news organization (among other things), and we do get tips and other resources from the people that we follow back. While it’s true that we probably get a fair share of spammers or people who don’t directly engage with us, there are many who do. And I would rather be able to auto-follow people, and have Twitter implement an automatic sweep of accounts that are spammers and remove them from our follow list (which I believe they have done before)
Not all auto-following practices are evil. To think that, as some have in the comments, is unfair.
Absolutely. I autofollowed with a third party because it increased connectiveness. I use Tweetdeck to see who the spammers are after I autofollowed. Removing the autofollow makes the system harder to use and now something that was simple will now be time consuming.
I run an account for a media and news company and we are doing just fine without auto-follow. I think interaction is important, otherwise the entire point of having a Twitter account is moot.
I don’t necessarily think auto-follow is “evil,” because it is just another tool on the internet. I do think that it’s unnecessary. I strongly believe that if you are going to use social media, you should put the manual, REAL time into it or get out of the sandbox.
It’s a big movement for Twitter regarding spam.
I auto-followed via SocialToo for about the first week or two I was on Twitter. Thought it was great. Then quickly realized how utterly stupid it was. I found maybe 1 out of 20 people I auto-followed even remotely interesting – the rest just made it difficult to find Tweets from people I was actually interested in.
I don’t see spam as the issue. It’s more of an ego thing. Some people actually believe that other people care how many followers they have.
People who say it’s rude to not follow-back confuse me. Is it not rude to follow someone and then never have any conversation with them?
its about damn time these parasites get rooted out.
I think Twitter is taking the right approach. Certainly, there will be a group upset with the decision. I think Twitter is wise in trying to get info from people who might have a “legit” reason for the feature.
Who knows, maybe they’ll develop classes of services and people who want this feature will pay a different rate. In the meantime, I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing petitions from some disgruntled folks.
I joined Twitter about a month or so ago and used SocialToo to auto-follow and auto-DM new followers. My goal was simple.
Too many people are at a loss when it comes to buying diamonds. 15 years experience has given me unique perspective to answer questions and give advice in picking your special diamond.
It would be impossible for me to do this manually although I try as much as possible.
I also noticed that inevitably, 100s of my followers are “spammers” so I use TweetDeck to manage it all.
Although I have answered many questions about diamonds and jewelry I have been using Twitter to show my clients that I am human too. I balance out my tweets with personal info in addition to interesting news articles, pictures, diamond info and retweets.
Cancelling the auto-follow alltogether will make it harder to reach as many people as possible that might have a question I could answer for them.
@yourdiamondguy
Given that you are so interactive, I don’t think you’ll have a problem keeping up the account without auto-follow. It’s all a matter of taking those ten, fifteen minutes a day and going through your followers to follow back the new ones and to say a quick “Hello, new followers!”
I think you’re doing this the right way. Rock on! (:
Again, while ego may be a factor for some, our followers act as additional eyes and ears for what’s happening in media. Last week, the day of the NYTimes pay cuts, and some other newspaper related stories that went down, we got tipped by followers first. Twitter needs to acknowledge that Twitter’s uses are vast and diverse.
I’m also completely against the reciprocal follow policy some people have, but for brands, it’s a different story. You have to follow your customers.
Good points Seamus. One thing to remember, if all auto follow capability is disabled down the road (even from clients), it’s fairly easy to pull up your ‘Follower’ page and quickly click ‘follow’ on new followers, which are in chronological order (newest followers first). So you could ‘hand follow’ 200 new followers in less than five minutes.
Personally, as a consultant concerned with my brand (however small it might be:-) I want to follow back all those who add value to Twitterville and have taken time to connect with me – the more real the connection the better. Following back enables DMs between people as well, so conversations can be taken private. I take the extra time to check each profile and get a snapshot of tweets too before deciding to follow because I want a quality stream of people. I also don’t hesitate to BLOCK spammers, weirdos, overly pushy marketers and those who follow/unfollow/follow multiple times in an attempt to gain my attention.
I think its a good idea ..its such a sense of false entitlement to the followee…lol..”oh WOW Michael Arrington wants to follow me” just to find out Techcrunch is on auto follow..:(
The article points out that only a limited number of people had this feature. It had to be requested, it was not publicly available and they had to turn it on themselves. Any other autofollow going on is a feature of 3rd party tools, and I don’t see how the API is going to distinguish a follow request as an auto follow or a manual follow requested by the user.
I run an app @followwatch which autofollows to ensure users have a direct line of communication with me.
I’ve never used autofollow, but my first few weeks on Twitter were spent following as many people as possible, because I read somewhere — probably Guy Kawasaki — that more was better, that this was the point of Twitter.
Well, now I’m spending more time un-following those I blindly followed, before I knew what #tcot meant, for example, and now I’m seeking out those with common interests and modest follow numbers.
People are free to use it however they want, and Twitter is free to limit or change it however they want . . . it is a free service after all, let’s not forget that. Let’s not whip out our entitlement hardons like the poor whiny Facebook users who can’t cope with a little change.
Absolutely correct. Keep Twitter as human and personal as possible so that relationships are kept authentic. I go over all the ppl that follows me and evaluate whether I should follow them back for a little, etc… is it a pain in the a**? Hell yeah, but I also realize that this effort is necessary to create quality followers and followings. Tech should bring convenience to users yet not make it too easy for lazy ppl.
I don’t know. I don’t like spammers but I also like looking at my feed of tweets and spotting something new. It is like a Google News feed. AWESOME! The auto follow I think is a legitimate feature.
Thank god, auto follow was such a nuisance.
Nice to see the blog is not dead despite micro-blogging popularity!
Also very cool to see a few people commenting here that I connected with on Twitter already. See you back in the TwitterSphere.
I predict this will be announced as an April Fool’s joke tomorrow a.m.
I auto follow out of courtesy. It is an excellent way to find people you may not have, otherwise. I track for and delete the spam. And I communicate with people. Also, why can’t I enjoy their content, even if I don’t respond? By logic of folks here, how many followers can one manage? Who decides that in the Twitter commune?
Will Twitter tell people how many they can follow? (2000 is pretty high if you are talking about really interacting with followers.) Who cares how many people have how many followers, let them have at it. If this is real, I think it is a selfish way to solve big-time infrastructure issues that are pretty apparent.
I think sooner or later this was bound to happen. This can be for a number of reason for database management, or is there a hidden agenda behind this decision?
Good move on Twitter’s part. Autofollow doesnt add to their bottom line and makes the site less spammy. That said Twitter still has a ways to go as far as organizing their content goes.
Follow me on Twitter! I’ll auto-follow (urmm, follow) you back.
http://twitter.com/coupld
One suspects this is an April Fool.
Even it not, auto-follow is an external feature that is password-driven so I’m not sure how Twitter could actually block it without blocking any kind of follow.
I’ve never auto-followed, and if the point of disabling it is to prevent >other< automated programs from trolling Twitter than “hooray”.
However, I do feel compelled to respond to those who think there’s something “wrong” or “inauthentic” to following thousands of people.
The reason I follow a lot of people is this:
How on earth am I EVER going to interact with someone if I don’t first hear something they have to say?
And who am *I* to judge as to whether someone might have something interesting to say?
I welcome conversations with *everyone*. That’s the way I am.
You don’t have to take the word FOLLOWING so literally, you know. It’s a connection, and one that always has the potential to lead to something great down the road.
I don’t like auto-follow
Time to cut of the Auto Follow – April fool or not
Cheers…
I actually think the auto DM you get when you follow someone is more annoying then the autofollow itself. It doesn’t bother me if someone auto-follows me.
But if someone messages me for no good reason, as with an auto DM, that’s annoying, because it fills up my inbox.
Beth
@bpvorsight
Sheamus – the article says that it’s referring not to external programs that auto-follow, but through twitter itself. The article says that there’s no setting to get this enabled, but at one point you were able to email twitter and request it on your account.