+1. Actually I don't automatically return follows on Twitter because Twitter's lack of specialized feeds like FriendFeed means my home page would rapidly turn into the noise nightmare that my FB home page currently is. Filtering is key to any such service being usable, and Twitter has no such native feature. Thus, returned follows on Twitter are reserved for people who *really* interest me - LANjackal

A friend of mine, serial entrepreneur, crack programmer, etc missed the Twitter boat until yesterday when he signed up. I immediately DM'd him to change his avatar away from the default for exactly the reason you stated. - Capn' One Eye - adrift

metagoeff - yeah I would def recommend anyone to do that before they follow anyone. :) - Mike Bracco

Also people who have no profile or one with no real information in it, don't get followed back by me. - Todd Brunner

I also go as far as blocking the obvious spammers too - Capn' One Eye - adrift

^ I used to block spammers, but don't bother any more since my Twitter updates are public and anyone can grab the RSS feed anyway - LANjackal

it just feels good to block them - Capn' One Eye - adrift

I always wonder why one eye is bigger than the other. - David Bennett

David, I always thought it was two birds on a wire or something, but I could be wrong of course. By now there are actually more actual newbies without an avatar/photo than spammers. The spammers are getting cleverer by the day in terms of creating semi-realistic profiles (including importing tweets from a number of other peeps). Some newbies can benefit from a friendly DM asking them to fill out their profile + photo for better results. - Alex Schleber