Anonymous Following

Much is written about unfollowing. Most recently, the splendid The Unfollower from Matt Gemmell. It's not particularly relevant to me. I have much more modest following made up of friends, some reciprocal followers, some strangers, some passive robots.

Active robots get reported for spam.

I'm not a superstar famous, like a Stephen Fry. I'm no national treasure, like a Clare Balding. I'm not popular, like a Caitlin Moran. I'm not well-known in a particular niche, like a Matt Gemmell.

Reciprocal followers are people who have followed me as a result of me following them. I find that slightly puzzling.

Of the strangers than aren't passive robots.  I don't know why most of the strangers than aren't passive robots are following me, but I'd quite like to. In some cases that I'd otherwise ignore, I'd probably want to reciprocate.

The information I'd like is "@daycoder Hi I've just followed you because you're in lots of conversations with @friend_a and @friend_b." or "@daycoder Hi! I saw you were friends with @friend_c and remembered you from school".

People with thousands of followers probably wouldn't want this information. It'd just add to the noise. This is just a nice-to-have for us mortals.