Tweet, Follow, Repeat

Sean McDonald from the Communities and Conversations team at Dell, a/k/a @smcdonaldatdell, asked about choosing Twitter followers today: How do you decide who to follow? Do you follow everyone that follows you? What are your criteria?

Finding myself unable to sufficiently answer this in 140 characters or less, I figured I'd just post my reply here:

How do you decide who to follow? What are your criteria?
1) Networks, both real-life and online: I work for Telligent, a company that makes social networking [note: this is the 140-character mark; read on at your own peril] software, so I'm plugged into a lively community by default. While most of us are in Dallas, there are quite a few Telligenti scattered around the country, so it's a good way to keep in touch and share information with each other. Aside from the professional network, there's family and friends - including friends whom I've never met, but that I've known for years from other online communities.
2) Extended network: I've found a lot of great content by following the followed and the followers of the people who fit into category #1. Scott Henderson (@scottyhendo) at MediaSauce in Indianapolis is one of my favorite such discoveries. I think I connected with him through fellow Telligenti George Dearing or Lawrence Liu. If you're not already following these three, you should be.
3) Search: I keep an eye on who's writing what about Telligent through a simple Yahoo! Pipe that I created a while back. I also use it to keep tabs on our clients and products, or any other subject that interests me. Twitter Search is one of the sources feeding the pipe, along with Google News and Technorati tags, so I've found several new follows via Pipes.
4) Services: All you have to do is follow MrTweet and it (he?) will provide you with a detailed report and recommendations on people to follow. Twitter Grader also provides recommendations along with the ego-boosting or -deflating valuation of your Twitter worth. (I'm closing in on 90, btw!)
5) News services: I've found that @nytimes and @theeconomist are both really good at quickly providing breaking news. Definitely worth following.

Do you follow everyone that follows you?
Not automatically, no. Using an app like TweetDeck is helpful to manage the flow of information, but I still want to make sure it doesn't become overwhelming, so I take a look at recent tweets of new followers to make sure that they're providing interesting, relevant content before becoming a follower. Also, I have a policy against user names like "bigpzvmpzvm". No offense if it someone's family name or something, but really spammers, shouldn't you be trying a little harder?