Last week Twitter removed its auto-follow feature, deeming it “disingenuous.” What’s that mean, exactly? And since Twitter is still allowing celebrities and high-profile users use the auto-follow feature (upon request), why can’t the rest of us?

Let’s take a quick step back and look at what the auto-follow feature is. As a Twitter user, you’re able to follow other users in order to receive their updates on your home page or your mobile phone, depending on your settings. If you follow another Twitter user, it’s most likely because you care about what they have to say and you’d like to keep up with their updates. But sometimes, you follow other Twitter users for reciprocity reasons. It’s the nice thing to do, to return-follow, when someone cares enough about what you have to say in order to follow you.

This reciprocity was one of the primary reasons behind adding an auto-follow option, which Twitter extended to a test group of users for a trial run. But the test run apparently didn’t go so well, as Twitter has decided to pull the auto-follow feature for all but high-profile users, stating the following, reports WebPro News:

“We’re going to discontinue autofollow because this behavior sends the wrong message. Namely, it is unlikely that anyone can actually read tweets from thousands of accounts which makes this activity disingenuous.”

When Twitter says that the auto-follow feature is being used for disingenuous reasons, it’s most likely saying that users are taking advantage of the auto-follow merely to follow more users and potentially get more followers. But unless you’re hoping that other users have added the auto-follow option, there’s no point in simply following a bunch of users in hopes of receiving a return auto-follow. Users already follow a bunch of others in hopes for a follow-back, and that’s irrevrant to the auto-follow feature. Twitter has also installed a follow limit depending on your follow/follower ratio in order to curb this particular behavior.

But is the noted disingenuous use of the auto-follow feature the real reason behind Twitter’s decision, and it it Twitter’s place to decide that a feature should be pulled just because some users are using that feature in a way that may be different from its intended function?

If Twitter is in fact taking away the auto-follow feature to discourage spammers, then Twitter should just say so and leave it at that. Removing the feature for beta testers and enabling it for celebrities and high profile users actually sends the wrong message. These celebrity and high profile users are most likely to be the most disingenuous users of all.

Even if its not intentional, high profile users have the most followers, and will therefore follow the most if thy enable the auto-follow features. This also means they’re highly unlikely to be able to engage the bulk of the users they’re following, as the sheer mass of them is overwhelming without hiring someone to help out (also disingenuous, eh?).

The silver lining in this all is the fact that third party applications still offer auto-follow capabilities, which run through Twitter’s API instead of directly from Twitter itself. Check out applications like Tweetlater in order to set up auto-follow features and more.

note: image credit nndb

by Brian Solis, via PR 2.0

Good friend and developer extraordinaire Christopher Peri and I proudly introduce FriendFilter in Beta. I’ve collaborated with Peri in the past to develop @microPR (along with Stowe Boyd), MicroJobs, and other apps soon to be released. His vision and technical prowess are ahead of many and I’m lucky to know him.

FriendFilter improves the signal to noise ratio on Twitter by providing you with the intelligence necessary to effectively curate the content and the people that appear in your Twitter timeline.

While there are many tools that facilitate the proactive discovery of individuals who share similar interests and passions such as Mr. Tweet, TweepSearch, Twellow, Twubble, and WhoShouldIFollow, none provide a matchmaking system at the point of follow. This is an important distinction as Twitter sends an auto-notifier every time someone follows you with nothing more than a link to the person’s page in the micro community.

Without meaningful guidance, you’re following people back as a generous act of reciprocity, which generates goodwill, but not necessarily because you believe their content or updates in the statusphere are relevant and worth following. It is this goodwill that is forcing many power users to create a secondary account simply to follow the voices whom they must follow to stay current and motivated.

FriendFilter complements your notification message from twitter via email with detailed information about each person following you so that you can make an informed decision on the spot as to whether or not to follow back.

The stats and data provided by FriendFilter include:
- Number of friends
- Number followers
- Average posts per day
- Friends we both follow
- Messages to tweets I know
- Average number of hours between posts
- Followers to Friends ratio
- Ranking (in Thousands)
- Average Follower growth
- Friends who follow both of you

If someone seems interesting, you can simply click on their user name to see their last 20 updates, a TweetCloud, as well as a direct link to friend that person.

You control the volume of emails you receive from FriendFilter by adjusting the threshold of inbound alerts. For example, I have set my minimum score to “3″ which qualifies followers based on a cumulative score that represents how close we align within the Twitterverse.

FriendFilter also provides you with an email update each time your username is mentioned on Twitter, which is helpful for personal and professional brand managers for up-to-the-minute online reputation management (ORM).

Of course there’s more to FriendFilter, but we’ll save those gems for later. Remember it’s a early Beta, so please be kind and let @pervision know if you have any issues or ideas.

In the meantime, please sign up for FriendFilter to increase the signal to noise ratio on Twitter and invest in a more meaningful and rewarding social graph.

For more about how Twitter is ushering in a new era of Social CRM, sCRM, please read this post…

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, or Facebook