If you've been on Twitter a while, tweeting now and then, you'll probably have experienced what I have come to think of as reverse following.
These are the times when I get followed by someone, or more likely, some company, who pretty transparently are more interested in spreading awareness of their services than actually hearing what I want to say. The curiousness about reverse following is that the language of becoming a 'follower' provides a semi-legitimate alibi for reaching out directly to someone with marketing - 'Hey, I'm just following you'.
I guess I have come to think of much of what passes for following on Twitter is really a hint for 'Follow me'. Find someone who you think will be interested in your feed, follow them, and they get the not so subtle hint that they may want to follow you.
There's nothing terribly wrong with this, except that I'm sure it provides dramatic inflation on the number of legitimate Twitter followers who actually want to hear what each other has to say. But it's perhaps also a small lesson in the power of a well chosen word - follow, in this case - to enable and legitimize behaviours you might not have predicted at the start. I would venture that more than part of Twitter's success is predicated on this handy, novel metaphor for online interactions.
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