I’m pretty good with visual memories. This definitely comes in handy in many circumstances, but perhaps the least likely place it’s proven useful is when dealing with those I follow and vice-versa (and for the record – for some reason I’m really bad with face-name associations – apologies in advance). The problem is I can’t remember usernames sometimes so need to utilize FriendOrFollow.com to find someone I may not have chatted with in a while (and hope they haven’t changed their avatar).
Where it’s been particularly handy is finding folks who have followed, unfollowed and then refollowed. Combined with a Gmail account and good tags there’s no reason to not know who’s following you and find out when they started if needed. It’s definitely come in handy when I have to go dig up the name of a person who works at a certain agency.
Anyway – the “refollow” is great fun, particularly when you look at that person’s account stats. And yes, I know, as preached before – follower counts don’t matter. If you like the content’s quality it doesn’t matter who else agrees with you or if you’ve found a hidden gem. But…
when you find a user with 4x the “followers” than “following,” pathetic content and they’ve followed you multiple times you’ve discovered perhaps the feeblest of all Twitter users – the Hoarder.
Yes, that’s what they are – they’ve gotten it into their heads that they need to up their follower count. So they go around adding people, then unfollowing them a few days later. For those of us non-“gurus” / pseudo-celebs / etc. (including authors, agency heads, etc.) that don’t attract people merely because of who we are, anything close to a 1:1 ratio is usually pretty standard (and this does vary based on a user’s conduct when it comes to spam or “Brittany” accounts). There are of course a few exceptions. When you’ve got a 4 to 1 ratio for the Joe Average PR Pro – there’s something else afoot.
I can accept being unfollowed once, I truly do.not.care. Follow me twice and it can be a fluke or I was flooding your stream with content you didn’t necessarily need (perhaps a chat, or a nice long Foo Fighters playlist), do it three times and I’ll ask you publicly what your problem is, particularly if your ratio is off. And in all reality, if the subsequent follow(s) is only guilt based – a recommendation, or I realized when trying to DM you I couldn’t – it’s entirely possible I’ll take you out for a public flogging at that point.
(Now before you leave that idiotic comment, sit the fuck down. Yes, I know, I spew a lot of content that not everybody needs all the time. Does anyone now NOT use lists? If so, learn – they’ll be the most valuable tool in your sociamedia arsenal.)
Why would I call out a Hoarder? Because I can and am not embarrassed to.
And now that you’ve been warned…. >:)