Recently I had a great discussion on Twitter about Unfollowing…a much discussed topic of etiquette amongst the Twitterati.
One school of thought is that when someone follows you on Twitter, it’s proper for you to follow them back.
That’s not my belief though. If that were the case, then it would be impossible for me to derive any real value from Twitter (the tool) or the people I follow (their content). The Twitter stream moves too fast.
As many of you who’ve read my past posts know, I tend to tweet a lot. I tweet about things I find of interest, and that I think my followers also find interesting. Follow me to see if my twitter stream appeals to you 
If they’re not interested, then I have no problem with them unfollowing…I don’t want to waste their time.
I just realized that I cut and pasted out this section…doh! So, why do I unfollow? If you’re not interesting to me, if you spam me, if you try and get me interested in YOUR make money fast scheme, if you don’t tweet in 300 days, or if, after I search your tweet history, I find you’re mostly talking about things I’m not interested in.…if you fit into any of those categories, odds are I’ll not be following you for very long. Sorry, it’s nothing personal, I just don’t have the time or bandwidth to follow you in a meaningful way.
To assist me in managing who I follow, I’ve used the following tools:
- Friend or Follow (thanks @frostedbetty!) — a simple way to check out the status of folk you follow
- Twitter Twerp Scan — applies analysis and ranking to people you follow to derive a ‘value’
- Twitter Karma - a great interface to ‘batch’ manage who you’re following
- Twitoria — checks the last tweet age of folks you’re following
And finally, your opportunity to let me know why you’re unfollowing people..in a funky new poll format via PollDaddy…back in the upper right corner of this blog post. Or let me know via the comments below.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter Comment
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I completely agree with your philosophy of Tweeting things you find interesting and things you think your followers will also find interesting. I am always happy to hear someone actually admit that it’s okay if people unfollow (or not follow in the first place). If you follow too many people it is indeed difficult to derrive the value that can be had from Twitter.
Do you have any philosophies on Tweeting personal stuff or even the ratio of personal to other stuff. That seems to be the place where people start to have really strong opinions. I won’t follow someone who’s ratio of personal to other stuff is too high. I just don’t have the time or the inclination to follow the personal lives of that many strangers. It doesn’t make me popular, but it does keep my Twitter experience more valuable.
@trixielatour (and yes, I follow you so thanks for the content each day : – )
Hi Patty, thanks for the kind words, and for following
Re: Tweeting personal stuff: Twitter is a public channel. Very public. Google crawls Twitter and archives content for searching. Things last forever in Google, and I’m not sure if personal things need to be public forever.
I guess it all depends on ‘how personal’. Do I care that someone I’m following broke up with their boyfriend? Not really, unless they’re a close personal friend in real life…etc. Even so, I’m not convinced that Twitter is the appropriate conduit for that content. Maybe a more private Facebook status update would be a better channel.
If I felt they were tweeting content that was inappropriate, then I’d simply stop following them. I have the control who I follow or don’t, whose content I see or not.
And I’m the best judge of what’s appropriate content for ME. It may be entirely appropriate for someone to tweet about their award-winning hamster food recipe all day, their followers may appreciate it, but since it’s not my thing, I’d stop following.
Twitter following should be extremely subjective. What is interesting to you may not be interesting to me. I tend to avoid the Twitterati types with thousands of followers because I’m not one for idolatry. I like connecting with like-minded cyclists and bikers or tech folks. If someone has never posted a tweet then what’s the point of following them? If all they post are links to their blog then wouldn’t I be better served by reading their blog and determing if it was of interest.
One thing I hate are the “marketing gurus” who follow anyone and everyone and amass this insane numbers. How can you interact in a meaningful way with 25000 people?
Hi Erik, thanks for that. Good points, esp. when it comes to people who _only_ pimp their own blog, agenda, marketing initiative, whatever.
And I completely agree with the subjective nature of the ‘follow’ which is why I don’t automagically follow everyone that follows me. I have to get something out of the relationship, or it’s not worth them taking up bandwidth in my twitter stream, and pushing other valued ‘twits’ further down the pipe.
It seems that some people are ‘getting’ Twitter, but sadly, many still aren’t.
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