Follow or Following? Following a user on twitter

May 9th, 2009 Posted by Missie at 1:40 pm

Following someone on twitter means getting their updates in your twitter feed. So if I follow Jack, I’ll get Jack’s updates in my feed and on my homepage when I log in. If you’re using a mobile application, you will also get the feed in the application.

How do I follow someone?

To start following someone and receive tweets from that person, you need to visit their profile page and click the ‘follow’ button under their profile picture. Their past tweets will automatically show up in your twitter feed with the other people you are following. The person you have chosen to follow will also show up in your list of followers.

If a users account is protected (shown with the padlocked symbol), the owner will have approve your follow request before you’ll receive their updates. You can also import your contacts from your address book to find friends already using Twitter or invite friends who aren’t on Twitter yet.

How to stop following someone

Un-following someone is just as easy as following. Sometimes your following list can become clogged up with spammers or people you don’t want to follow anymore. Removing someone from your following list means that you will no longer receive their updates.

You can stop following someone by visiting their profile page and clicking the ‘following’ button under their profile picture. A yellow drop down box will appear with a remove button. Once you have selected the remove button, all tweets will be removed in your twitter timeline.

Can I choose who follows me on twitter?

You can set you profile to private, which allows to use to chose who follows your tweets. By protecting your profile means everyone who wants to follow you has to submit a request for which you then have to approve. Only those approved follows can see your tweets and profile information.

Blocking people on twitter

Blocking someone on twitter instead of removing them allows you to have more control with people who have access to your twitter profile. Blocking a user mean that you do not want to follow them and you also want to deny them the rights to follow or reply to you.

Blocking someone means that your profile and picture will not appear on the persons blocked profile page, timeline, badge, or anywhere else in twitter. The blocked user will not know you have blocked them and they will not be able to follow you again. If your account is public, they will still be able to see your profile page, but won’t be able to get your tweets in their timeline. This also applies for twitter on your phone.

Blocking a user is done in two simple ways, blocking from your followers list or blocking from that users profile page.

To block a user from your followers list, simply;
1. Go to your follower’s page.
2. Find the person you want to block and select the ‘block’ button next to the ‘follow’ button.

Note: If you are following this person you wish to block, the blocked button will be replaced with ‘remove’. Select remove. Then refresh your follower’s page. You can now choose to remove the user by selecting the ‘block button’.

3. After selecting ‘block’ twitter will promote you with a page confirming your choice to block the user. If you have accidentally blocked this user, this is where you can choose to have them remain as a follower or block them for good.

To block a user from their twitter profile, simply;
1. Go to the profile page of the person you wish to block.
2. Click ‘block’ (under actions panel in the sidebar)
3. Click ‘okay’ to confirm the block