I published a post yesterday explaining how I decide to accept a friend requests on Facebook.

Today let’s talk about [Twitter](a href=”http://twitter.com/garycarpenter).

I follow a lot of people, and I don’t intend to changing that, but I am cutting those who fill my stream with useless noise. The following are the basic principles I will use to decide weather I follow someone back after being followed.

1. Do I know you. If yes I will probably follow you back unless you violate enough of the following points.
2. Do you tweet? Something is fishy if you have a thousand followers, follow two thousand, and only have three tweets. Not following.
3. Do you follow three thousand and have two thousand nine hundred followers? That screams list builder. I know this because I tried it for a while. Not following.
4. Do you have some type of avatar and is your profile filled out? If it feels like you are trying to hide who you are, I won’t likely follow.
5. @reply me with an affiliate link, or a porn link, or to any page that tries to sell me something. If I am following you I will quickly unfollow, then I will block and report you as spam.
6. If all of your tweets are retweets, not following.
7. Are all of your tweets broadcasting? Tweets that sound like “new post, blah, blah, blah,” or “new podcast up, yada yada yada,” or even,”the latest sermon is posted.” These are fine, and even expected, I do them too, but if there is no conversation happening, not following.
8. If every post is a scripture verse, a quote, or even a prayer request, not following.
9. I follow a lot people who talk politics, both liberal and conservative, and I love the discussion and debate, but I unfollow people who only post angry criticism of those with the opposite view.
10. I follow a lot of religious leaders, pastors, authors and thought leaders from evangelical circles, but I hold you to the same standard as those mentioned in number nine.
11. Unless we know each other, or have interacted online before,@replying me asking for a follow back is not likely to work.

Note to Minors: I volunteer at my church’s youth group. I never intentionally follow teenage girls, weather I know them or not. If I am followed by a young lady that I know, I will usually will follow back, but I make sure to follow on twitter or friend on Facebook at least one of their parents, and let them know about the twitter follow from their daughter.