I wrote this at about 2 am this morning, and decided to sleep on it before posting.  This morning, after reading it again and getting 5 or 6 more requests to check out TweeterGetter, I'm even more prepared to hit the "submit new post" button.

As you may or may not know, Twitter is a revolutionary socializing website that allows people to communicate 140 characters at a time with people who are following you. The more followers you have, the more people theoretically see your message every time you tweet.  Yesterday, I got about a dozen updates from fellow Twitterers talking about how I could get over 15,000 followers if I just jumped on the TwitterGrader bandwagon (in their downline.)

College Flashback:  Suddenly, I'm having flashbacks from about 18 years ago when I got a "Dave Rhodes" chain letter in the mail.  I was a Freshman in college, and got a letter stating that I'd become a millionaire if I just send $10 to the 5 people listed in the letter.  I almost fell for it... Afterall - if it made perfect sense on paper to me, I'm sure at least a thousand other suckers would think the same and send me their money, right?

However, instead of spending the $350 in postage and copier charges (and the $50 "sucker fee" to the five people in my "upline"), to send the letter to 1000 of my "closest friends", I spent about $10.50 to see if it was a scam.  I took a twenty dollar bill, tore it in half, put a stamp on an envelope and sent it off to the person at the bottom of the list. (Afterall, he was supposed to almost be a millionaire by now.)  Along with the torn twenty dollar bill, I included a note.  It said "I was only supposed to send you $10, but instead -- I'll send you the other half of this $20 if you'll just drop me a line and tell me how the Dave Rhodes letter has worked out for you."  I included my mailing address, my phone number and my email address.  A week later, I got an email from the guy stating that he got $30 in the mail from 3 other folks over a period of about 5 weeks since he sent the letter.  I put the other half of the $20 in the mail to him and thanked him for his honest answer. I figured it saved me about $400.

Back to present day:  So here I am looking at all of these updates (some from some pretty smart friends) who have taken a sip from the TweeterGetter flavored kool-aid, and have decided to jump on the bandwagon. Why the heck not? How popular would you feel if you suddenly had over 15,000 more followers on Twitter?

My first thought was "heck - I'll try it as long as I don't have to follow them back, but then I decided against it, but there are other "costs" involved. Am I prepared to pay those costs?

1. I manually review each and every follower I get to decide if I want to follow them back (A portion of my followers are spammers, or have nothing to say that interests me in the least, and I don't want to clutter up my twitter stream with their messages.)  It's a lot of work as it is. If I had hundreds or thousands more followers in a matter of days, it would be that much harder to review whether or not I should follow back.
2. Considering the fact that I won't reciprocate by following people who don't interest me, they'll eventually unfollow me anyway.
   
3. The first thing I did was go to the bottom of the list, and check out the twitter profiles of those folks. About the only person I saw that had actually picked up a decent amount of followers had spammed the same message over and over about 60 times over the past 2 days. (yes - 60 times, and he allegedly got 500 followers out of the deal.)  I'm surprised he didn't get unfollowed by more people than how many started following him.
4. Even if this were something of value, and I did decide to try it, there isn't anything to prevent someone from whacking my username, bypassing me (along with the 5 sponsors in my "upline"), and just going straight to the top level at TweeterGrader.com.

Sleep on it: When I was a child, my parents ALWAYS made me wait at least a week when I saw a toy I wanted. After a week, if I STILL wanted it, I could choose to spend my allowance or birthday money on it.  Likewise, before YOU decide to spam your Twitter friends telling them how many followers they can get by just following you (along with 5 other people you may or may not know), look up the person at the bottom of the list, and make note of their follower count.  Then check that person's follower count tomorrow, and the next day.  If they have a lot more followers, and the idea of getting more followers (cough, suckers, cough) is attractive to you, then go for it.  If they don't have a lot more followers, you will have saved yourself the trouble and heckling you will otherwise have received from your already loyal list of friends and followers.

If you need to stroke your ego and get more followers for the sake of having higher numbers, you just might get a few hundred more followers by drinkinking the TweeterGetter flavored Kool Aid.  Unforunately, you're going to have to spam the heck out of the followers you've worked hard to build relationships with -- and get them to do the same thing if you want to see any real results.

Or... You could just continue down the same path you've been following and keep getting to know your existing list of followers, have engaging conversations about things that interest you, and let people who like what you have to say follow you naturally.

@Joelrunner

Image courtesy of http://www.harryhofnar.com/2008/08/09/holy-ghost-hofnar/