Mashable has a list based on Twitter vanity – yet it’s valuable

Atherton Bartelby, a Brooklyn-based graphic designer, art director, writer, blogger, and photographer, wrote an interesting blog post on Mashable. He compares his Twitter experience with a party where everybody has a great time – which is in the end spoiled by a person that “doesn’t fit”. So he publishes an article on one of the world’s largest blogs to tell you when he won’t follow you. Ok, this kind of behavior is accepted in 2.0 land and if you ignore his initial concept, “FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter” is actually a very valuable post.

Atherton Bartelby

Here are the ten reasons why Mr. Bartleby from Brooklyn, New York won’t follow you on Twitter:

• You have no user avatar
• You list no location, no website, or no bio
• Your “website” listed is a MySpace profile
• You’re following over 1,000 users, have 20 followers, and no updates
• Your profile features any variation of “Internet expert”
• Your updates clearly indicate that your Twitter activity is always, only, about pushing your own service/product
• Your following and my return follow result in a poorly-constructed auto-DM reading, “Thx for the follow! How can I help you get to a 4-Hour Work Week?”
• Your most recent updates make references to any need to achieve “more Twitter followers”
• Your Twitter stream indicates a propensity for consistent arguing
• You do not engage your Twitter followers

Refer to the Mashable post to see Bartleby’s motivations. You can ignore a couple, like “Your profile features any variation of “Internet expert” – since that one comes from a man who calls himself a “social media connoisseur” (it’s always the social media experts who are truing to critize other social media experts of being one). The first two are pretty obvious and the third really matter of taste. But the ones about pushing, auto-DM’s, “more Twittter followers”, arguing, and engaging are pure gold.