Here is a list frequently asked questions I get about AutoFollow and the I give.

This is also my firs  t attempt as a blog so bare with me and feel free to leave comments and recommendations if you have any.

Q. What does AutoFollow do?

A. Basically, AutoFollow takes a key word pattern and submits a request to twitter to get a list of tweets containing those key words. AutoFollow will then extract a list of unique twitter users and follow those users, using the account you specify. AutoFollow will keep a database of when the users were followed and if the user has not reciprocated, AutoFollow will Un-follow that user after a specified time-span. usually 48 hours. That is an oversimplified version of how it works. There is a lot more that AutoFollow does internally but that is the basic idea.

Q. How can it follow if its not a website online service?

A. AutoFollow is a desktop application, it can only work if you are running the application on your computer. I have designed it so it can run discretely, minimized to a tiny tray icon. Although website browser applications have their advantages, they also have limitations. AutoFollow is yours, you run it on your computer. You can see everything it is doing and manage as many accounts as you need.

Q. Can using AutoFollow get my account suspended?

A. I have designed AutoFollow to behave as discretely as possible. Technically, Twitter say you cannot AutoFollow but in reallity. They have no way of knowing if you are actually pressing the follow button on some application to follow a single user in a manual way, or whether that action has initiated a series of follows. (Automated following I guess). I have Auto Followed with my socialEther account now for months and have only made friends. Not enemies. I guess it come down to how you use it.

There is no team of people at twitter sitting there suspending the accounts of those it thinks are spam. They do not have the resources. It is all automated, probably based on the number of complaints it gets about an account. If you auto follow someone and look like a genuine business trying to reach out and have something to say, and not put too many URLs in your tweets, then you will most likely be OK. Even if you follow manually, you can still get suspended if you look like you are spamming.

Q. I have followed 2000 people and now AutoFollow tells me I "can not follow more people at this time". What gives?

A. This is because you have reached the famous 2000 friends limit. Twitter lets you follow up to 2000 people without applying the 1.1 friends/followers ratio limit.

You just need to be patient and let AutoFollow unfollowed enough people as to re-balance the friends/followers ratio. You can see the in the Stats panel on the Advanced Settings tab.

Q. AutoFollow is unfollowing all of my users, so I just shut it down and stopped using it. What should I do?

A. Twitter is all about limits. They love them. 140 characters per tweet. 150 t  weets per hour 100 tweets per day, you cannot follow more that 10% more than the count of your followers. That is the biggie. For AutoFollow to maintain the best possible ratio of followers and friends, it is best to have Autofollow Unfollow all users that are not following you. These users effect the rate of new friends, thus followers you can churn out. In some older versions AutoFollow did this be default. Now it is optional and not on by default. But if you want to really maximize your followers. You should have this option turned on. "Un-follow all non-followers" in the Advanced Settings tab.