Three years later a lot has changed but there are still many ways to find some good people follow.

Find Tweeps You Know In Real Life

The first thing you should do is follow people you are already friends with. Twitter makes it easy by allowing you to import from Gmail, LinkedIn and a few other services. Learn more here.

Find Local Tweeps

Using Twitter Search to find local Twitter users is easy. You just use the near and within search operators. So to find all Twitter users tweeting within 5 miles of Boston you would just search for near:Boston, MA within:5mi.

A few other services that make it easy to find local Tweeps:

• http://nearbytweets.com
• http://www.twellow.com
• http://tweet.grader.com/index.php?Action=TwitterUsersByLocation

Here’s a great article written for businesses looking for local tweeps but it’s certainly relevant for us normal tweeters too.

Find Tweeps With Similar Interests

Anther useful feature Twitter provides is the ability to find popular users by interest.

Some services that help find like minded Tweeps include:

• http://justtweetit.com/
• http://wefollow.com/

Finding Tweeps in Lists

One of my favorite additions to Twitter during it’s rise to popularity was Twitter Lists. What I was most interested in at first was how other people classified me. Beyond being a good measurement of how others perceive you it’s a great tool to find others just like you. For example I’m listed in several WordPress Twitter lists so there’s a good chance the other people in that lists would be good candidates for me to follow.

If finding new lists becomes a challenge you should sign up and check out Listorious, a directory for Twitter lists.

Quality Quality Quality

You can follow people for days until you reach your Twitter limits but what’s the point if no one is talking to you. A few things I look at before following are the basics; a profile pic, a bio and a link to their website. Then I go on to see if they are only talking about themselves or if they actually retweet and communicate with others. Spam and bots are pretty easy to spot once you start recognizing the patterns.

Follow Us and Say Hi/Welcome

Finally be sure to follow myself (@JonDBishop) and my girlfriend Kelley (@monkelley) to say hi. We try to be friendly and talk/help others the best we can. Kelley will especially appreciate your follows and tweets as a distraction from her most recent adventure that is grad school.

First you should know I am a very active follower. I take recommendations very seriously as well as any incoming replies.

Then there is my ‘social media’ inbox. I’ve basically just set my GMail to move all Twitter follow requests to a separate folder for easy sorting and general management. Then I begin the daunting task of opening each new followers Twitter page to scrutinize their stream.

One time I went a week without checking my ‘social media’ box and then spent the next 2 hours checking 350 Twitter profiles. It’s not so bad once you get in the groove. I try to keep each profile view down to a couple seconds looking for a couple key points:

The user’s bio/website/profile pic

I like to know I am following a real person and this could be the first giveaway. I also personally stay away from people pushing MLMs, porn and press release feeds.

The user’s conversation quotient

Your conversation quotient is simply the ratio of total tweets to total replies. The average is said to be around 25% so that’s more or less my bearing for success. The higher your conversation quotient, the more likely I am going to follow you back.

You can learn more about the conversation quotient as well as view in depth statistics at twitter-friends.com.

Any signs of robots

I don’t get along with robots for some reason so I just avoid them. This includes follow schemes and auto replies.

And that’s about it. It all boils down to following real people talking to other real people. It’s becoming easier and easier to see through the bullshit, so don’t kid yourself.