I've decided to take on a liberal policy of following people back on Twitter. I look at this way: if you think you want to listen to me go on and on about stuff, then I figure I should return the favor. It's just being nice. However, I don't just blindly follow everyone back. I get requests to Digg and Stumble stuff and generally if I don't think it's something I would honestly Stumble or Digg, then I won't. And if I take a look at somebody's Twitter and don't think I would consider following them if they hadn't followed me first, then I just don't.

So when I look at somebody's Twitter, there are a few things that just shut me down and I won't follow them back. That's not to say if I'm not following you back you're not a lovely person and you probably help feed orphans or kittens or orphaned kittens or something, but you're just not my cup of orphaned kitten tea, if you know what I mean. (Or it could be that I've been getting a lot of followers recently and I missed you in the shuffle–dreadfully sorry about that, if that's the case.) Anyway, a few things to watch out for:

1. If your updates are protected, then I can't make a judgement call on you. In fact, what can you possibly be saying on Twitter that is that confidential? I mean, honestly, I'm as paranoid as the day is long and I don't have my Twitter secret.

2. If you have no updates, then again, I can't make a judgement call on you. Now Twitter actually sends out a quick thumbnail sketch of your number of followers, number of people you follow and your number of updates. So if I don't know you already and you follow me but have said nothing, I probably won't bother to even click.

3. If you talk about something I have no interest in. If I go to your Twitter account and all of your updates are about your fungi farm, then I'm probably going to not follow you, once I wake up from falling asleep reading about your farm. If your fungi farm is from Yuggoth, though, you might have my attention.

4. If you talk about something and I can't tell what the hell it is you're talking about. I literally have gone to somebody's page and seen nothing but smiley faces and "You know it!" replies and so forth and so on. I would take fungi over that, seriously.

5. If you are so completely marketing-centered that it's bloody obvious you just want to sell me something. I'm talking about those Twitter accounts that have seven updates and they're all "I used to be an exec but now I breed emu in my back yard make $$$ I'll show you http://bit.ly/emupower"–if that's you, then I have very little interest in following you.

6. If you are so completely marketing-centered that you tried to hide how marketing-centered you are but did a piss-poor job of it. I mean seriously, if you're going to try to sell me stuff, at least entertain me. And if I had a dime for every Twitter account I've seen where it's Emu Power! bits sprinkled with supposedly motivational quotes from famous people, I would have, on my account right now, "I used to be a shmoe who ran a website but now I get dimes for reading lame Twitterz http://tinyurl.com/lamepower." Or protip for people who do that, at least get different quotes…I think there must be a quote RSS feed somewhere that they've all piped into their Twitter. Blah.

If your bio amuses me, if you graphics amuse me, if your post amuses me, if your attitude amuses me, then I will follow you back. But if you've got none of that going for you, I'm afraid it's going to be a one way street. No offense, though. Good luck with the orphans and kittens.

Man, this is great tea.