Tech-Ed Collisions

As an occasional user of Twitter every now and then I get a message in my email letting me know that someone is following me. If it’s someone I know (ie have an existing relationship) I will generally follow them with out much further thought - after all it is someone that I already know either personally or via some social network. If I don’t know them however, its interesting to look at how I seem to be deciding whether to follow them or not. The message from Twitter provides me with a link to their profile and also a little information about them - their Twitter name, a thumbnail of their picture, the number of followers they have, the number that follow them and also the number of tweets they have posted.
Without going to their profile, this little amount of information seems to be a big factor on whether I follow them or not.
Firstly, their name - if it is known by me eg a person, brand or company name then I can make an immediate decision on whether I am interested or not. Their picture also has an impact. Unless their name is known by me, I find myself unlikely to follow a picture of some obscure symbol/brand or other inanimate object. Twitter is a social tool and I am interested in people so a human face is likely to hold my interest for maybe a few more nanoseconds.
Onto the statistics. Really if they are following over a thousand Twitterers and not many are following them, I am probably not even going to bother. The most I will do is just delete the message that they are following me.
If they have thousands of followers you know that there is going to be very little personal communication however if they are a person who has a lot of credibility and who I am interested in, then they may be very worthwhile following - after all, they (or someone working on behalf of them) have started following me.
If almost no-one is following them and they are following a very small number of people, I will check their profile out and give some serious consideration to following them. You never know, they may have some really interesting things to say and could just be getting started.
The number of Tweets statistic seems to be less important to me at the moment. If there is hardly any then maybe they are just getting started. If there are thousands of them though, that is a bit of a warning to me.
Which brings me to the sweet spot. I seem to be drawn to those who have up to a few hundred followers and who may be following a similar number of people.
As an aside, I am also interested in the ratio between following and followers. Extremes in either direction don’t seem right to me. The exception may be some sort of information/news feed that pushes out information that is really useful to me, which brings me onto news/information services. I still find it quite amusing how old-world media and journalists have joined the bandwagon - especially those that lambasted the social web not too long ago.
Of course anything at all that identifies them as Web 2.0 marketing experts or anything similar just tells me to completely disregard them. Get rid of these and Twitter will be a better place.
So… do Twitter statistics influence your decision making at all on who to follow in Twitter?