Lately I’ve noticed a huge trend in my Twitter followers: real people giving a “fake” follow.

As people turn to bots and other services to accrue massive number of Twitter followers at a steep price, I’ve noticed a huge number of people following me only to dump me a day or two later when I haven’t “returned the favor.” Interestingly enough, most of the twitter usernames that I see come and go on my follower list have  high numbers of people following them and vice-versa. While at first I was wondering how I was so quickly offending some of these people, I realized that what I had was a fake follow and not a legitimate follow to begin with and that I did not really care in the slightest what those who fell in the fake category really thought. There is a pretty significant chance that these people will never see what I have micro-blogged on the social networking sphere to begin with anyway, so why should I care?

So as Twitter itself evolves and begins to become a more permanent thing in 2010 rather than the trending thing it was in 2009, I’ve started classifying what the different levels of Twitter users and the difference between a worthless follower and a significant follower. Here are four examples of worthless followers and four examples of significant followers:

Worthless Followers

1) Anytime you get “followed back” by a super-popular twitter user who simply follows everyone back (whether it’s a news-outlet, band, celebrity, company, etc.). Now this doesn’t mean they’re worthless to follow yourself, you can get great information/links/etc. from these sources, but as a follower on your list, they will never actually see what you have to say.

2) The guy/girl who follows 800 plus people. While it is possible that they are very organized with the lists feature that Twitter offers, it is highly unlikely and you will easily be “just another face in the crowd” (oh cliches..)

3) Anyone who follows you and then dumps you within 72 hours.

4) People who tweet incessantly. This is probably the least worthless of this group, but people who are constantly tweeting are either A) too busy tweeting to read your tweets or B) conversing with a short list of people/directing their tweets at the same short list.

Significant Followers

1) Your friends, family, and coworkers. As lame as that may sound, they are probably (especially to begin with) the most likely to read your tweets and also click on the links you place in your tweets.

2) Someone who follows less than 800 people. I use the number 800 (here and earlier) because it is where I believe the line begins to become more distinct between one who follows for the sake of following and one who follows for the information you are updating your feed with.

3) Someone you yourself consider to have good quality twitter updates. If you believe someone has quality stuff and they return the favor, a lot of times it means they believe the same about your content. Always a good thing.

4) Probably the most significant are those who are below the 800 mark but have 3000 or more people who follow them. This means they are probably seeing what you have to say, with the possibility of re-tweeting it and/or sharing it in some capacity. Plus, these people have built a certain clout around them that impresses people which means those 3000+ people who follow them are going to look to see who they consider to hold worthwhile information by checking out who they follow.

I hope you found something useful here. Feel free to comment with your agreements, disagreements, etc.

- Ted