I only follow people who:
a) have a common interest with me – usually environmental issues;
b) sound interesting or funny from their tweets;
c) live near me, so we might meet up at a tweetup.
If someone follows me, I’ll only follow them if they meet at least one of the above categories. But I can understand that people who use Twitter for business might want to follow (and be followed by) lots of people; for me that would just be a pain in the arse, and boring!
With best twegards
Charles

@ Wesley…I couldn’t agree more!

I don’t really care what someone Tweets about, but I do expect interaction and if they continue to blast personal messages without responding or interacting then I will drop them.

“I am subject to a LOT of incoming information. Twitter can be total information overload if not managed correctly.”

David, one might argue that whether you follow someone back or not is completely irrelevant to the filtering of your information stream, which depends more on your filtering tools than the tools of the “built-in” stream and interface that Twitter supplies.

I usually follow everyone back, unless it seems like a complete waste of time, and I’m tenfold rewarded because I tend to get noticed by people in other ends of the TwitterSphere, which would otherwise not find me. On the other hand, I care less and less about the almost near random “stream” of info that Twitter supplies in “my feed” and depend more on my Facebook “stream”, RSS feeds and live searches via http://search.twitter.com/ for my “incoming” stream, when I need it. My point is, that there is a variety of tools for handling your information streams, which does not necessarily prevent you from handling a lot of “followed”.

Good post David. I follow people that seem interesting to me. Many happen to be celebries since I guess it’s interesting to get a more informal look inside their lives, or their heads I guess you could say. I follow some of my friends too but most of mine haven’t gotten on Twitter yet or are just coming around to it. Twitter is getting alot of press as of now and should increase greatly in the coming months. I don’t unfollow people who don’t follow me. If they want to follow me, they will and I don’t have a problem if they don’t. I’ve tried to start tweeting more and will occasionally try to do some humorous tweets to make my otherwise probably boring life more interesting to those who might want to follow.

I do not remove people if they don’t follow me. I mean why? Why take it so personal?

If you follow someone that is your choice, and it is their choice whether to follow you or not.

I think its cool that celebs are joining Twitter because it shows they are human like the rest of us. We as the general public put these people on some sort of pedestal, but in reality, they are simply People too, they just have more money than most.

When I get notice that someone is following me, I check their profile. If every post is an ad, if it looks like porn, or if their subject matter doesn’t interest me, then I don’t follow back. Otherwise, I follow in hopes of seeing something interesting as time goes by.

I do wish I knew the way to unfollow someone quickly – because sometimes I make a mistake and follow the wrong person.

I don’t spend a lot of time on Twitter and don’t follow too many links because there just aren’t enough hours in the day – but I have found interesting websites and learned some things by clicking.

I also haven’t taken the time to learn about all the different applications – Tweet Deck and all the rest are still a mystery to me. And, since I’m “technologically challenged,” they may remain so.

I totally agree. I am new to twitter and I still don’t really get it. I was told to follow as many people as possible..but then I was reading all this info that didn’t matter to me…I couldn’t figure out the benefit. So, I refined my list..and went back to the truth of my brand..quality not quantity! Now it’s beginning to make sense. Your articles have been real and helpful..thank you!

Excellent post and always great to see others that are full time on the net making a living. I started with a niche membership site, ecommerce store, blogging and now micro niche mini sites with my own products.

Great high quality content my friend and I also live here in Florida, maybe we can meet one day and share some stories!

You are now free to move around the plane,

Bob Ratcliff

Hey Ed Lucia, have you thought about trying an MLM? Just joking. I couldn’t resist.

I am fairly new to twitter also and I just don’t use it to its full advantage. Although I do it just for my business, I’m hoping that people who actually follow me will end up becoming a customer.

What would a company's strategy be not to follow those following them?

feel the same way as you David, I follow people who I'm interested in. I don't use any auto service, in fact, anyone who wants to follow me goes to my email 1st. Yeah, it can get hectic, but I am fussy about who's following me. To me it's not a numbers game, it's about good info I can use; headline news, or a joke or a cute puppy pic or sometimes a good spiritual quote. When I'm reading the timeline, I don't want it filled with spam or nonsense talk. I really don't understand why people would want to gain 1,000 followers in a week, doesn't that just defeat the whole purpose? I see it a lot with IMers, but if u don't build a relationship with them, to me it's just an empty list. And some people who I follow and they don't follow back doesn't bother me, I am interested in what they say, but they don't know me from a hole in the wall and most of my comments I know wouldn't interest them anyway. I'm not offended, oh well, chaulk another one up for the diversity of humans…lol

Funny.., went to follow on Twitter; “Dancing Naked Down the Street” was the last tweet.., should I still follow (yes, I did, but I’ll click on the link when I’m home).
Oh.., and the article was good.., my thoughts exactly.