TwitterMASS is an interesting service that can help you build your Twitter network by automatically following everyone that uses a particular hashtag. For example, let’s say you want to follow everyone interested in South by SouthWest so you setup TwitterMASS to auto follow anyone that uses the #SXSW hashtag. The same is true with any other keyword or hashtag you setup such as #AmericanIdol and the wildly popular #FollowFriday.
Now some will have an issue with this method to building your network because it seems to be a shotgun approach that requires little thought or effort. Many prefer to meticulously build their network one follower at a time after careful review of each and every follower’s follow ratio, tweet stream content and style, blog posts and other public data. Others are not as picky about whom they follow.
***Update***
TwitterMass has added some new features including something called Auto Follow Friday that picks people based on who you’ve interacted most with each week”
Here’s a quick video on how easy it is to setup
3 New Followers in 3 Minutes from Jonathan Nelson on Vimeo.
Here’s the easy to use screen for creating an auto follow rule:
Notice the set timer option. That’s where you decide how long you will give these people you follow to follow you back before you unfollow them. You can give them 1 to 5 days or select the never expire option which means you don’t care if they follow you back or not. The set followers option lets you determine how many people to follow, 1 to 15 users ot follow them all. Here’s a video:
Using the Timer from Jonathan Nelson on Vimeo.
For those of you that don’t want to auto follow anyone, there’s an excellent manual method within TwitterMass that lets you search for people according to your keywords of choice. You can then manually pick and choose only those that you find interesting enough to follow.
Final thoughts
The jury is still out for me on this one. I’m still pondering whether or not this is the best way to grow your network. I know that there will be many that love this idea and just as many that will hate it. The beauty is that there’s a choice and it’s free to use (for now anyway). No matter what you decide, I think the manual method of finding valuable and interesting people to follow makes this service worth a shot anyway.
What do you think? Thumbs up or will it be some other finger?