What are the different reasons people request to Follow You on Twitter?

I have no idea why people follow me on Twitter, but they do. I rarely tweet. I use twitter more to keep up with things that are happening news wise and in relation to my work field. I have over 50 followers though… and some have followed me recently. Odd.

Because some of us hate the phone. With a passion. It’s a different psychology if total strangers are asking to follow you, but for friends, it pretty much means “I want to know what’s going on in your life, and this is a good way to do it”. And if people have to request to follow you, then they don’t know before you allow them to follow you that you never tweet.

In your situation:
A lot of people will follow random strangers in hopes that those strangers will follow them back—To them, having a high Follower count is the way to win at Twitter. Just like having a high friend count on Facebook or MySpace, or getting tons of Lurve here.

In addition, spammers will follow you and tweet at you in hopes that you’ll click on their links. It’ll be pretty easy to tell who is or isn’t a spammer—you’ll see a sexy bikini-clad girl in the avatar, and every tweet will be @ someone, with a link in it.

Otherwise:
People find what you say to be interesting.

I wish that was it @Sarcasm (my tweets are interesting). My first tweet, which was my only tweet for a long time, was about procrastinating. I had quite a few followers based on that. I think you also pick up followers based on who you follow. I have noticed if I follow say photographers, I will get people with photography courses following me.

I actually really like Twitter, but as an information/news source more than a way of keeping in touch with people as @Aethelflaed does.

Twitter is just a popularity contest. Which is the exact reason I found this site instead…

I enjoy reading other peoples Q’s and A’s instead of worrying about gaining points to look like I’m a website veteran.

Aka – ‘shallow minded idiots’

In the words of Harry Partridge, “I don’t update it very often, and when I do, I wish I hadn’t.” Basically, close friends of mine follow me, and no one else. I mostly use it to stalk celebrities.

Using a phone is a high committment activity. You have to take time out to specifically do it, and then there’s the perssure of having a productive conversation that ends positively.

Twitter otoh, is very low commitment, you can do it while doing other things and immediate responses are not required, or any response at all. A lot of people like that passive non-confrontational type of communication.

I don’t know I partake in twitter for school events since I’m student gov vp. So I have about 300 followers, I assume they’re following me to stay up to date. Some are just creeps, ex. my one ex boyfriend was following me for a while who graduated 2 years ago and then showed up at my bowling match which I didn’t tweet about he just looked up the schedule….like I said some people have an actual reason like staying up to date whileothers are simply weirdos.

I use mine to keep up with news and political events (am a bit of a politics junkie), but I also like to check in on what Mr Fry (as in Stephen) is doing. People who follow me are fellow admirers of Misters Fry, Rickman and Isaacs, fellow political junkies or fellow spoonies

thanks….I think I won’t need to using Twitter ;)