I’ve been on twitter for a while, two years as a regular user, almost six since I first created my account.
I think I tend to be a typical user as far as who I follow and what I tweet. Some are very topical, they may be tech celebs, so they only tweet tech-related stuff, just as an example.
I have two main subjects I tweet on: faith and politics. When it comes to politics, I have found no better way to keep up with state and local stuff than twitter. I just don’t have the time with three kids to follow the blogs or local media to keep up. Outside of faith and politics, I’m not afraid to tweet on whatever subject is on my mind, but other topics are less commonly found in my stream.
As for who I follow, as with most people, I follow those whom I find interesting. I also do follow-backs, but not automatically. Twitter can be a cesspool of attention-seeking glory-hounds and wanna-be self-made millionaires that will follow people by the thousands just to get follow-backs. That defeats the purpose of twitter as I see it; a community of people who have similar interests. Thus, if you follow me, and show me that you actually read my tweets (like a simple reply that is relevant to what I’ve tweeted), I’ll most likely follow you back.
However, my feed sometimes gets a little out of control, and it gets hard for me to keep up, so I sometimes feel the need to trim the list of people I follow. Usually first on the list is those who I don’t know that don’t follow me back. It’s usually an indication that someone met the criteria I illustrated above to get a follow-back, and then unfollowed me.