The most important element on any Twitter profile is the person’s bio, then the URL, which I control-click and open in a new tab. Yes I visit every blog for every follower that has ever followed me. In fact, that is how I find out about so many great blogs.
I find a person’s blog to be the determining factor for a follow, not the number of followers someone has. The bio and the linked website are the 2 elements that are the most relevant rich – maybe the photo as a distant 3rd option – which is why I am surprised to see that the follow notification e-mails still don’t include the profile information.
@xrisfg on TwitterI am assuming that most people don’t comb through the follow notification e-mails as often as I do, but I am quite convinced that if Twitter would include the user’s profile information in them, they would find that the notification e-mail would be a richer means of following more users.
Jeremy Zilar is the Blog Specialist at The New York Times and an avid creator and collaborator across the spectrum of media.
I, too, research each follow though not being heavily followed makes that easier. I would love if this information were provided in the email notification. It would make it much easier to spot the SPAMmer porn follows as well!
+1
When the new email style came out I was so excited that I briefly missed the fact that they hadn’t integrated the two most important bits of information and was dismayed to realize that all that flashiness didn’t actually add anything but avatars.
I don’t read each profile as carefully as you but URL and bio are the most important info for any investigation. In my case I usually just want to know if they are spam, and the URL is often a giveaway (without it you only have the followers count which is biased against real people who are just new).
It’s so strange that Twitter acts this way. It’s like they want visits to the site for ad impressions similar to facebook and it’s notifications. Maybe it was a long term strategy for their new ad system…