Ever since I joined Twitter, I wanted a lot of followers. I wanted to be a guy who gets a lot of @replies from people all over, and get retweets left and right. You know, the common dream for a Twitter user.

If you haven’t noticed from the sidebar, my Twitter account is @AlexFraiser. Basically, I tweet about any web development/WordPress stuff, I tweet/retweet links, chat with people I follow, and talk a bit about what I’m doing.

I like to connect the most with people in my age group, but I will follow anyone who interests me in general. That sounds like a common Twitter user right?

WRONG! I don’t believe that many Twitter users nowadays use the service so much to find information, but to spread it. I’m not saying that Twitter isn’t a great information portal — because it is. What I am saying is Twitter seems to have become more of a service where you share information instead of finding it most of the time.

One of the reasons that this thought even popped into my head is all of these “How to Get XXX,XXX Twitter Followers” articles that are constantly published on blogs today. If you’ve ever read those articles, nowhere in any of them does it talk about “building an account that can easily reach information,” but how to create a Twitter account where you can “share information to a vast audience.”

I just feel like a lot of people are really missing out on a lot of knowledge because of one of the methods that is used to draw so many followers to your account.

What Method Is That?

The method I am talking about that is used to draw in so many followers is the simple: I Follow You, You Follow Back *Hopefully*. Basically, you mass follow any amount of people a day, and wait for a little while for them to follow back. If they don’t follow back, you unfollow them and repeat the process.

This is common, and I think the large majority of Twitter folk have tried it before on their account.

Doing this method completely conflicts with my idea of using Twitter to get information rather than share it all of the time. Think about it, if you follow a bunch of people you don’t know just to get them to follow you back, you’re going to have a feed of tweets from people you don’t give a crap about! Is this the Twitter we really want to use?

Do Tons of Followers Outweigh Relevant Information?

This is a question I think we should all ask ourselves. If you follow the people you are only interested in, then you will learn so much more and come to value Twitter so much more. With all of these irrelevant tweets coming through on your Twitter home page, what’s the point of even visiting Twitter?

Even if you want to promote a product of yours or something like that, does mass following work even then? Unless you do a lot of research and target potential people who would be interested in following you, mass following random people will not help you. Most people fail to do this research, and they think that because they have thousands of followers, all of those people will actually listen to their tweets.

What I Did

So with all of these thoughts in my head, the thing that gave me the idea to what I did next basically changed the way I use Twitter now and forever. Hopefully by me sharing this article with you, you think about the way you use Twitter and if that’s the way you really want to use it.

I stumbled upon this article from a fellow youg blogger, Joel Drapper titled “Why I Unfollowed Everyone on Twitter and Why You Should Too” where he raised some extremely valid points about the way we use Twitter, and I basically agreed with everything he said in his article.

After I read that article, I made the choice that one night I would apply what he said into my own Twitter account and watch my account change. And it changed, it changed quite a bit!

How My Account Has Changed

So my account did change in quite a few ways. I think by unfollowing these people has really opened my eyes to how Twitter works, and I feel like I really understand the Twitter community after doing this.

My New Twitter Stats

1. I now get tweets from people I only care about (people I talk to, or who tweet about stuff I am interested in)
2. I went from following 982 people to 353
3. I went from 1,036 followers to 898

You can even look at Joel’s Twitter account. He had 13,000 followers, then he started to unfollow, and now has 9,200 followers. Is it worth it to drop all of these followers for you?

So I pretty much got rid of whoever tweeted information I couldn’t give two craps about. I discovered I had followed people who were into pet grooming. Was that the kind of information I wanted to read about? Information I’m not even remotely interested in? Forget that!

What I Discovered

So besides seeing changes in my Twitter account, I leaned some things about the small community of people who I used to have connection to until I unfollowed most of them.

I mentioned above that I had 1,000 followers, and I dropped to about 900 followers after I did the unfollowings. That means that 10% of the people who followed me didn’t care what I had to say either, which means that they were pointless followers; followers I gained by mass following people and getting them to follow back.

What Is Your Opinion?

Alright, so i think this kind of topic can bring up quite a bit of controversy and discussion. At Joel’s blog, it sure as hell did. As a matter of fact, he wrote a followup because there was quite a bit of confusion.

I don’t regret doing what I did at all, I can now find all of this great information any time I log onto my Twitter account because I follow only people I care about what they have to say. I urge you to consider your Twitter usage and see if you’re doing what benefits you the most!

I found this awesome site called DailyBooth.com a while back, and I have to say that it’s really addicting and fun. Basically, you post pictures of yourself once a day (or more if you choose.…or less if you suck or forget about it) and it’s like a journal of how you have changed from when you started to the present. I think it’s an amazing idea, and is growing in popularity like crazy.

Go to the site, check it out some. If you don’t get what it is exactly, then listen to a summed up version. It’s basically Twitter with pictures. Simple enough to understand, simple enough to use. If you want to see more about it, check out the Tour, read their blog, or follow them on Twitter.

I got crazy lucky here. I joined DailyBooth within it’s first day or two of opening when it wasn’t that popular (because it just opened, duh) and I nabbed my first name as an account. Looking back, that’s pretty damn awesome. The URL to my profile is http://dailybooth.com/Alex, man. That’s going to be awesome as hell when the site gets to be like Twitter sized.

Some Sick Features

The guys behind the site seriously went all out in developing it. Like, they have a pretty awesome Live Map Feed, a Regular Live Feed, an OS X Dashboard Widget, YouTube Integration, and the list just keeps going on.

But one thing that beats all of that is the Widgets they give you to display your pictures on other websites. Look at this thing:

The site is really addicting, and once you start making friends on there and start getting into the vibe of things, you won’t feel like an idiot posing for pictures and getting ready for them. I don’t know what it is, but the site is just so addicting. Don’t worry, it will get you over the fear of taking pictures of yourself. Don’t ask, it just will.

Check it out, and follow me (yeah, they use a lot of the same lingo Twitter does).

Image nabbed from the DailyBooth Twitter account.