Twitter: Who Do You Follow? Why?

What I'm reading: The Bargain Bride, by Marbara Metzger (bike) Saving Fish From Drowning, by Amy Tan (book club)

Promo alert – there are only a few days left to get Deadly Secrets for your Kindle or Nook (or apps thereof) for 99 cents.Also, my contest for a USPS Flat Rate Box of Books ends Jan 6th. Details here

Although I never thought I'd be a Twitter person (Tweeter?) I've found the platform to be a fun place to visit. Working in relative isolation, it's like the office break room, where you can exchange quick bits of information, pictures, and other updates. Do people care what you eat for breakfast? Probably not. But they might care about your weather (I've got one follower from Florida who's extremely jealous of the climate up here. Others are glad they don't live where I do.) People ask and answer questions. Also, quite frankly, it's a way for me to know what my kids are up to!

After the holiday weekend, I noticed I had a rather large (for me, anyway) number of new followers. I thought I'd share what makes me follow someone, or follow them back.

First, unless it's clearly a spammer, I'll never block someone who wants to follow me. There's no limit (as far as I know) as to how many followers I can have, so why kick them out? I also don't "unfollow" people who don't follow me back. To me, it's not a game of reciprocity. If someone finds my Tweets interesting, why not let them have access to them? If they unfollow me because I don't automatically follow them back, that's their right, and if that's the way they're using Twitter, that's fine. I think it's a kind of snobbery, but that's just my opinion, and they're free to have their own.

Here's how it works for me. I get an email that says Jane Doe is now following me on Twitter, and there's a link to her profile. I'll click over to that and look at:

Quick Followup

What I've discovered after changing the "comments" settings:

1. Virtually no spam in my spam filter. Perhaps the embedded format thwarts these bots.

2. Some difficulty in leaving comments for those with IE. If you're using IE, I found that clicking the 'preview' before trying to submit a comment sometimes shook things loose. And I did have to sign in to Google again. Perhaps that also helped clear the pipes.

3. The Followers via Google Connect Gadget seems to have a mind of its own. I'm sure this is because I put out a plea for more followers.

*** New: According to Blogger, there's some sort of filter and cookie issue (I don't speak that language) which is keeping some IE users from commenting. I've tried the last option, and we'll see what happens. If you use IE and are willing to give things a try, I'd appreciate it. Still don't have an answer on the followers gadget thingie.

If you want to comment but can't, my email is in the contact tab.

Have a great weekend!