There are two (and only two) reasons to follow somebody on Twitter:

1. You are interested enough about what this person is tweeting that you want to see everything they're posting in your public feed.
2. You want that person to be able to direct message you.

#1 is an easy one. Just look at the person's feed when they follow you. Are they saying interesting things? Do you find the information useful, or otherwise entertaining? If not, don't follow as it just adds noise.

#2 is also pretty easy. If it's important enough for somebody to DM me, they can always @ me publicly to say "Hey! I'd like to talk to you" and I can decide what to do from there. It's rare that somebody I'm not follow has anything useful to DM me that can't be put in an email though.

MAKE SURE YOU'RE RECEIVING ALL @ REPLIES:

Finally, and most importantly, the reason the follow/no follow spurs such debate is because people are worried about not being included in a conversation or receiving @ messages from people they aren't following.

Part of this has to do with the way Twitter @ messages are configured for a new user and many people fail to change the option.

By default Twitter will only send you @ messages if you are following that person. This is a very unintelligent default and I'm not sure why Twitter has it set this way as it's entirely counterproductive to the overall Twitter experience.

To make sure you can receive @ messages from the entire Twitterverse, login into Twitter, then go to Settings -> Notices. Make sure to change the option from "@ replies to the people I'm following" to "ALL @ replies."

I get much value from some of my followers who are in the Tech or Business sectors, but are understanding that I don't have extensive knowledge in that area and are willing to meet me halfway. We learn from each other. That's what I think Twitter is about. People from varying backgrounds sharing, conversing, getting to know each other. Frankly, I'm not much for continuous RTs, links and so forth, as it clogs up the stream. There's only so much I can digest.

I could care less if I have 50 or 500 followers, as long as there is some interaction. I can honestly say I have made an attempt to reach out to many followers with a "good morning" or "how is your day going?" and receive nothing in return. If they are either too busy, or are simply ignoring me, there's no point in continuing the relationship. After a couple of days, they are unfollowed.

Thanks for the opportunity to share. This is an interesting topic.

My reasons for not following a user are:
* The user is new and hasn’t proved that they are going to be an active member of my community.
* The user only promotes their own content and never engages other users in conversations.
* The user is an obvious marketer/spammer.

Good article and I completely agree.

Tsudohnimh
website: http://Knowthenetwork.com
follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/tsudo
interact with me on Friendfeed http://friendfeed.com/tsudohnimh

Actually, you make a good point about using groups to follow different people. That way, you can follow a lot of people efficiently.

cheers, Mark

Great post, and great question. I agree that it depends what your purpose on Twitter is. If it's only for personal reasons, perhaps you would only follow people you know. In my case, I tend to follow people who either have valuable content, or who are located close geographically.

It also depends which application you're using to manage Twitter. I use TweetDeck, so it's easy for me to follow certain groups of people using the columns. This way I have an "all friends" column that I look at sometimes, but follow my "Toronto" column very closely since these are the people I interact with and get the most value from.

Erin