So, who are you following on Twitter? I mean really following? Do you have a list only of people you know or is it mixed between real personal contacts and complete strangers?

My guess is you’re like most people using Twitter and you have a mixed list. Maybe your following Darren Rowse and Yaro Starak. Maybe your following me. It’s hard not to have one or two curiosity follows. So, the next question is why are you following strangers on Twitter? Do you expect them to say something interesting or do you think they will one day be your close friend? Again my guess is your like most people and you don’t know. Let’s come back to this in a moment.

What if you don’t know who to follow? Maybe your new to Twitter and you want to follow someone, because that’s what your suppose to do right? But who, who do you follow in a sea of little thumbnail faces and cartoon icons?

Well whether you’re following Steve Jobs for no apparent reason or your looking for someone to follow, you might want to check out the Twitter friend finder tool at Twubble.com.

According to their website, “Twubble can help expand your Twitter bubble—it searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow.”

This is an interesting way to stalk, er research people to follow on Twitter because it gives you a loose reason to choose those people. Twubble looks at your follow list and tries to match you up with other people you might be interested in following. I’m not sure exactly how they determine who to recommend, but I think it has to do with common friends.

Twubble gives you a list similar to this one and you can choose who you want to follow from there. You can also Google search the person to find out more about them.

There is a transference of trust and an element of social proof that is carried in the list that is returned because Twubble tells you who and how many people are following the people they recommend to you. So six of your friends are following someone, you might want to follow them too.

Personally I see this as a research tool that can lead you to groups of people who are thought leaders in a particular subject.

Let me give you an example of why this might be useful information.

A few days ago I received an email from Twitter telling me that ObamaNews was following me. I didn’t think it too strange because I am following Obama and Hillary on Twitter. But when I eventually went to check out ObamaNews to see if I wanted to follow them I found more of an adsense site than a campaign site. This got me to thinking. Is it possible to follow people just to get them to follow you, or at the very least to visit your blog?

I think the answer is definitely yes. It is possible to find a Twitter group, follow everyone within that group and wait for them to either follow you in return or at least visit your blog to check our who you are.

This might not be your thing and you might see it as underhanded. I’m not debating that point here. What I am saying is that there are unexplored automatic response at work here that are largely untapped on Twitter. But, as people discover this you can bet you’ll see more of it and it will likely make some people a lot of money.

Perspective:

Take some time and evaluate exactly who you’re following on Twitter and honestly ask yourself why you’re following them. If there is a reason fine. If there isn’t a reason fine. Just know that there is more to Twitter than just following strangers for no apparent reason and don’t be surprised when people you don’t know start following you.

Use the tools we’ve discussed so far to find people to follow and look for trends and opportunity in the connections you create. You’ll be amazed at what’s there if you just that the time to look.

Researching,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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