OK this may be a narcissistic post but here I go anyways. I enjoy cleaning, well not really cleaning but throwing away stuff. I adhere to the model “When in doubt, throw it out.” So as I obnoxiously tweeted yesterday I unfollowed almost 300 people on Twitter and told people if they want me to follow they need to talk to me. I am here for the conversations. So here are my reasons for following/unfollowing someone:
* If I have had a “conversation” with you through @ messages on twitter then I kept you. If you have never tweeted @ me then I may have unfollowed.
* If I recognize your avatar in my stream because I often read your tweets I kept you. If I feel like I never have seen your avatar, I checked your page and if you rarely tweet or haven’t tweeted in months I unfollowed.
* If I have met you in real life I kept you even if you rarely tweet. Those relationships are more important than Twitter.
* If you tweet about your meals, your kids, your vacations, and your favorite sports teams I kept you. If you only tweet about education and links I might have unfollowed you. If you only tweet links I suspect you may be a bot rather than a human.
* If you are a social studies teacher I kept you. If you are a math teach I might have unfollowed you. Social studies is my new focus and math was my old one. If I connected with you as a math teacher and you are active I kept you (see first * point)but if you are a math lurker then sorry you are gone 🙂
* If you are an international teacher or live outside North America I kept you. I am looking to make world connections related to social studies and expanding my network.
* If you are an educator in Michigan I kept you. Local connections are important too.
* If you are part of New Tech network I kept you as this is part of my new school.
In short, for me Twitter is about getting to “know” people. If you want me to follow you all it takes is a few @ messages. I don’t judge or rank my followers other than whether they interact with me as educators (not interested in spam :)So if I dropped you just starting talking to me. Also I don’t block any educators so anyone can follow me. I am not elitist. I just don’t see the point in listening you if you don’t want to talk to me.
Ps. My favorite people on Twitter are those who give my crazy ideas pushback. Yeah I like to respectfully “debate” people 🙂