People You DON’T Want to Follow on Twitter

I’ve seen some followers pop up in the last few days on my Twitter account that I sure don’t want to follow.  And you probably don’t either.

This afternoon a guy showed up who is a “fundraiser.”  When I first saw it, I was inclined to follow, because I’m interested in fundraising for nonprofits.  But when I looked at his stream, it was obvious that his goal was raising funds for him.  His racket is to get each of his followers to give him money.  His definition of fundraising.  Turns out he is fromNamibia.

Then there was the guy in London who has developed a script for getting you thousands of followers using a multilevel marketing technique.  You join (for a fee, I’m sure) and you’re automatically added as a follower to all these people above you in the chain.  Then as you move up the chain, you get hundreds and probably thousands of followers.  And the best part, is you don’t have to do anything — especially tweet and connect.  Then when you have your followers, you can spam them with your marketing message.  Yeah, right.

It is amazing, though, how many followers I have had show up that have no photo, few or no tweets, and 600 to several thousand followers.  Why?

If you haven’t figured out from the title, I don’t approve of these folks’ tactics, and I don’t follow them.  In fact, some of them I block.

You see, social media is about social networking — making connections, having conversations, contributing to the community, and occasionally talking about your stuff.  And these folks are not about doing any of that.  So I don’t need them even on the fringes of my network.

And neither do you.