Since I started tweeting, many new users have joined the “social network” Twitter. I’ve noticed significant increases in followers, replies, etc. This is good and bad, and there are no doubt a lot of blog posts about that, but I would like to discuss my reasoning for blocking people.

You see, I haven’t ever necessarily liked “blocking” people in any medium whether it be AIM/iChat, Facebook, or even Twitter. But lately (within the past few months), I’ve decided to take a slightly different approach to it all. With iChat, I started whitelisting users. Facebook, I started un-friending people who I have actually never met in person. And Twitter, well, it’s a different story.

Twitter, as you know, broadcasts your tweets publicly by default with a toggle to make them private. I have no desire to make my tweets private, because then people can’t know if they want to follow me, without seeing me tweets. That being said, I like to have a bit of control over who actually reads them.

Almost every day, I check the latest additions to my follower list (I don’t have email notifications on because I find them bothersome), and I block people that I believe are either spammers or are already following a good amount of people.

It’s a very subjective process, and by no means is it completely black-and-white. Spammers are easy to spot, they are usually named something like “adjectivenoun123″ and post mostly links. The real people on the other hand are a bit more difficult to deal with. I usually give a good look at each person’s page, and see if they are genuinely interested in reading my tweets. It’s hard to do, especially since I’m not conversing with the person and only looking at statistics and their own tweets, but here are a few things I look for:

How many people does this person follow? If they follow less than 200 people, I generally let it go. If they follow more than 200 people, I look at who else they’re following and what they tweet about. If they seem to be following people like me (artists, designers, Mac/iPhone geeks) and I see that they’re interested in those topics, I let them continue following me. If they don’t follow people like me and don’t tweet similar topics, I begin to wonder why they chose to follow me. It must be that they’re either a “social media expert” or someone who just wants attention. (I know, I’m generalizing. And sometimes I get it wrong.) I find that there’s a lot of people out there who follow me that have no business doing so. They just wanted me to give them 5 seconds of attention and then proceed to follow them. Well, I’m going to block ‘em. I follow people I really genuinely want to listen to, and if you follow just anybody, then “you’re not doing it right.”

If you’re that Twitter user that follows 500+ users, how valuable are the tweets from those people? Are you really paying attention? Are you really reading them? Why are you following that many people?

I ask the same question about people who have 500 friends on Facebook. Maybe I look at friendships differently, but I don’t even think I know 500 people. Surely I’ve met that many people, but by no means would I ever call them friends. Likewise, with Twitter, the people I follow are people that I intend to listen to and converse with.

Which brings me to another point: When I follow somebody, it’s not because I saw they were following me, it’s because they sent me an @reply somewhere down the line and I liked what they said, read over their past tweets, and I want to read more. That, to me, sounds like a more real interaction with people.

If I’m out and about, have a small conversation with somebody, and I thought that person said something interesting to me, I want to hear what more this person has to say. But that’s not to say that person necessarily wants to listen to me ramble every day about how cool the Haunted Mansion is.

I know it’s not something Twitter would provide, but I would love if I could “accept” users to follow me on a publicly-viewable account. I don’t like blocking people, but I don’t want to inflate my follower count with people who aren’t really reading my tweets. If I don’t remove spammers and people who over-follow, that number is completely meaningless to me.