I’m feeling a bit shady this morning for an idea I have in managing my Twitter accounts. Yes, that’s plural. At last count, I have 11 Twitter accounts that I am responsible for. Four for work. Two for the cats. Three that are “mine.” One for the business. And one for SGFblogs.com. Don’t judge me.
The accounts in question this morning are my* accounts: sarahjoaustin, tweeples_guide, and bloggers_guide. First, let me explain why I have these three personal accounts. I started with sarahjoaustin, which was fine until January when Twitter hit the social media radar and everyone and their mother (including mine) joined Twitter. I follow a lot of people I know personally, and I’m pretty liberal in following anyone in my geographic area. Until Twitter’s new popularity sprung up, I tweeted at my whim about whatever I liked, including blogging and Twitter and other social media news. Over time, I was friends with more “real-life” friends than before and a lot of those people aren’t keen on getting an article about blogging or Twitter or social media news every other minute.
So I first created bloggers_guide, and a month later I created tweeples_guide. Both were created to I could share the helpful and interesting blogging and Twitter and social media news as I liked. I have been pretty diligent in finding such resources for the last six months.
But I took a break from blogging in July, and I declared Google Reader bankruptcy, deleting all** of the feeds I was subscribed to. Like many people, I don’t use a lot of discretion when choosing what to add to gReader, and eventually, there is just too much to read. My theory is this: After deleting all these feeds, the blogs I remember liking and reading regularly are the blogs I can resubscribe to because they obviously left an impression with me. I added anew those blogs this morning. Most of those are personal blogs that I read for myself, but I switched up what I did for my Twitter and blogging resources.
Instead of subscribing to them via RSS, I tracked down the blog/author on Twitter and began following them with either bloggers_guide or tweeples_guide, hoping they’ll a) tweet links to their recent posts and b) provide links to other resources, too. Essentially, these accounts are resources for me because of who I follow and resources for others because of what I tweet.
So here is my question: Am I complete scum if I unfollow those friends who are not resources to me on these accounts? Here are the pros and cons I came up with:
Pros
- A concentrated stream of blogger- or Twitter-related information for me.
- A list of Twitter- or blogger-specific resources for my followers (the Followers list).
- A less cluttered RSS reader.
Cons
- Getting the same tweets across multiple accounts.
- Hurting/breaking some “relationships” on my side accounts. (But I don’t dialog with those accounts much anyway.)
This is my quandry today. Any insight to my problem?
* I say “my” accounts because while I maintain administrative rights to them, I’ve also given Linden exclusive permission to tweet for tweeples_guide and bloggers_guide as she fancies.
** All RSS feeds except the ones from websites I administrate.
Not shady at all! I was just cleaning out my reader because half of what’s there I never read. “Mark all as read” is my most used button and with the exception of a few bloggers who aren’t on twitter, most of what I read now I find in my Twitter accounts.
You are not scum if you unfollow folks who are not resources. Just don’t unfollow me. If you do, then you will, in fact, be scum.
Hmm. Even your cats are on twitter?
Yes, the cats are on Twitter. But just so they can automatically update their Facebook statuses.