Web Business by Ken Burbary - Latest Comments in Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Twitter — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:39:28 -0000

great article.

The sting of an unfollow is never easy.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

rolemommy (Beth Feldman) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:20:12 -0000

Twitter Comment

RT @babysitterdirec: @rolemommy - great article on why Twitter followers "might" unfollow you - [link to post]

- Posted using Chat Catcher

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

babysitterdirec (Ann Nolan) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:50:33 -0000

Twitter Comment

@rolemommy - great article on why Twitter followers "might" unfollow you - [link to post]

- Posted using Chat Catcher

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

floreta — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:07:31 -0000

i really don't care. all the people on twitter i know are people i don't know in real life. why take it personal when you don't know them personally??

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

the ex — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:12:55 -0000

Honestly, I don't care if people unfollow me. I'm boring and I have no bad feelings about it.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Jesse Liebman — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 04:13:45 -0000

It's all about value. What value is the people your following provide you. With the recent attempts to clean house of spammers Twitter sees that users want to engage with quality not quantity.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Vanilla Cokehead — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 11:16:54 -0000

A cardinal "rule of engagement" with anyone's personal online presence, mine included, is that any decisions made are PERSONAL decisions and that anyone can follow or unfollow, block or unblock, comment or not comment, filter or unfilter as one sees fit: with or without explanation, with or without comment. I follow the old military adage, FIDO (F($@ it, drive on) when I see someone drop my off Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, MySpace, or any other friend list of mine. I notice it for about a second then move on. I have enough drama IRL that I don't need any more online.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Melissa — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:05:09 -0000

I was just writing a blog about de-friending today and ended up including a link to this post as well as a direct quote from your article. It's interesting to me how seriously people take Qwitter, or being de-friended on Facebook or Myspace. Such a game!

<abbr>Melissa’s last blog post..You Qwitter! Tales of De-Friending</abbr>

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Adam Cohen — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:34:02 -0000

A couple of additional thoughts:
I've had both Qwitter and Twitterless running for several weeks now. While they are consistent, the timing can greatly be off. Sometimes I get Qwitter updates more than 24 hours after Twitterless picked it up - which means to me the actual tweet Qwitter tells you someone stopped following you after may be inaccurate.
I also follow @jstorerj's lead on the curiosity factor. I tend to check if I am following that person and in the interest of karma make a decision point on whether "the feeling is mutual."
Last note - If a spammer is following you and their account is suspended or deleted, you still get an unfollow notice. This has made up about 2/3 of my unfollows to date - all spammers or folks with follower/following ratios greatly distorted who I hadn't followed in the first place.
Great post Ken, and what a great conversation in the comments here.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

trader — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:56:06 -0000

is there a parallel phenomenon on facebook? i don't think friends are notified of being unfriended. i noticed a former friend once missing from my friends list. maybe it happens all the time. i did at the time wonder, why accept my friend request and later unfriend me? did i do something? what changed in your life? ultimately, i had forgotten about it until now...

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

dan tynan — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 22:30:12 -0000

oh yeah: follow me at tynan_on_tech.

dt

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

dan tynan — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 22:29:49 -0000

hey, my wife stopped following me. what do you think that means?

(actually, she just stopped getting my updates on her phone. said I was annoying her. I said, isn't that my job?)

I have been thinking of paring my list lately. too many people with too little to say. and there are a few right wingers who got on there, god knows how. now I don't know if they're using qwitter and will know. damn. wish I'd thought of this sooner.

dt

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Laura "Pistachio" Fitton — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:29:29 -0000

Three important points that I didn't see in the post:

1. Twitter BREAKS follow links sometimes. I have had this happen dozens, if not hundreds, of times, from BOTH sides of the fence. It's a bug.

2. Qwitter's "___unfollowed you after _____ (your last tweet) structure is ludicrous and misleading, as the majority of unfollow decisions factor in MUCH more than your last tweet. I have seen people say "why did ____ unfollow me because I said _______?" I shake my head in disbelief that people buy into the idea that it is that simple.

3. There are MANY ways to follow someone's tweets: FriendFeed, RSS subscription, visiting their page, on their Facebook profile and more. Someone may have a specific reason to unfollow you (maybe you tweet as much as all their other followees combined; maybe they are piping their entire stream out on their blog and your style is not a good fit) on Twitter itself and yet remain totally engaged with your life and Tweets in other ways.

Overall I feel these unfollow notification tools are damaging and I recommend strongly against their use except in certain very specific situations (example: you are trying out TwitterFeed or an ad service and want to see if it turns readers off en masse).

I wish more people understood that tremendous follower churn is normal on Twitter. If someone flips the dial away from your "radio station" for whatever reason, there is no reason to break your own heart over that. I have real world friends that don't happen to feel like reading my Twitter stream, or who use RSS or actually visiting my page to do so.

Keep on keepin' on. It's about love, not fear.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

amaaanda — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:43:33 -0000

I haven't had anyone that I interact with on a regular basis unfollow me, just a couple wallflower followers but it still gives me a jab.

I like that Qwitter tells you what the last thing you tweeted was. What I've gotten from my unfollowers is that one is a homophobic and the other doesn't like iPhones.

So I guess good riddance? ;)

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

@terrybean — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:25:47 -0000

Ken-

Great post. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

I have never looked at qwitter or twitterless. Why? Because people are people and they will do what they do. Do people unfollow because of something they read? Sure. Didn't they follow for the same reason? As far as I know.

I lose followers, I gain followers. I don't think either one can be 100% attributed to me. It's about them. People will resonate with you, but not nearly as often as they will resonate with what you say. Very few people I know (by choice) are so one dimensional that they have the same POV on all issues. As such, what they say varies ergo the level of resonance others have with those Points of View shall vary too.

Couple that with the immediacy of someone's ability to unfollow (or follow) and you have lots of opportunities for change. Imagine what would happen if Twitter put a 10 tweet delay on ones decision to follow or unfollow. What interesting system that would be.

Thanks again for sharing your insights Ken.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Kari — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:24:50 -0000

I use Qwitter, and I don't take it personally when someone unfollows me. I find it fascinating to see what tweet made them unfollow me (even though I know that may be irrelevant - I'll never know exactly why they stopped following me). What's even more interesting is if a few people quit following me after a certain tweet - then I start to wonder what about that tweet caused the mass exodus. :-)

I recently got a reply to an interesting blog post I re-tweeted, which was about marketing. The follower wanted to know if all the marketing stuff I posted was really of any interest to anyone but marketers. Well, I tweet mostly about marketing because 1) most of my followers are marketers, and 2) that's what I (mostly) read about all day. I do try to mix it up a bit; but if you don't like what I'm tweeting, then don't follow me.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Jane — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:21:33 -0000

Just a fantasy here:

Twitter can improve upon its service in this regard by adding a "reason why unfollowed" option during the unfollow click - can be a radio/drop down button with option for "other" or a simple text field, then send a weekly or monthly report in aggregate to the user.

I said it was a fantasy, didn't I?

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

acclimedia — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:17:20 -0000

Wow, Ken! This has sparked a great deal of discussion, and it's interesting to see the many reasons why people use services like Qwitter and Twitterless. My reasons echo many of the other commenters, but it's mostly out of curiousity. Like @thegirlriot, I used to waste valuable time trying to scan through my list to see who the missing follower was, but now I can just relax and wait for my Qwitter email!

Also, like other commenters, I've found that most of the unfollows are from those whom I wasn't following back, likely waiting for an auto-follow, and when it didn't come, decided to drop me. I've also noticed that when I am engaging in a debate with other Twitterers, I'll get an influx of new followers so that they can see the other side of the discussion, but as soon as the debate is over, most of them drop off. The ones that typically remain are those who may have agreed with my viewpoints, or found me through the debate and decided I was a good addition to their network.

In the slim cases where followers unfollow due to me not agreeing with their stance on a certain topic, or whom have opposing views, I think that's simply human nature at work. People are that fluid in life too but it's not quite as easy to 'drop' someone you know in the meatspace. This removes those societal layers and allows you to weed out the close-minded and fickle, who don't contribute to valuable discussions or enhance the quality of your network anyway.

I've always found that for every unfollow, two more like-minded replace them, with whom I can share substantive and interesting discussions.

Plus, as @redstarvip says, "twitter un-follows are like natural selection. those eliminated were not suited to the environment and further purify my twitter gene pool."

In any event, while it's easier said than done, you shouldn't take unfollows personally, and instead focus on those who stick with you through all of your tweets, and actually value what you bring to their network, and like who you really are. I think censoring as a result of an unfollow is in direct opposition to the real sharing that can take place -- especially because Qwitter is accurate about the unfollower but not about which tweet. So you may be censoring for no reason! It just extracts whichever tweet was the last one you sent when it pinged your followers and notated the missing one. I know for a fact that my followers have dropped off well before the tweet that Qwitter showed. So the only real value is just satisfying your natural curiousity as to who the unfollower was.

The moral of the story is don't sweat the small stuff, and focus on tweeting with a network of those who are interested in what you have to say.

Thanks for the great points, everyone!

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Chris Moritz — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:08:24 -0000

Since I'm only a light user of Twitter, I'm not put out by any UNFOLLOWS that come my way. Were I to use Twitter as a serious publishing or personal brand vehicle (not saying that I shouldn't) then I might take interest, if only to gauge why a particular individual might not find my tweets germane any longer.

I don't post with enough frequency to be annoying (this is my primary reason for choosing to unfollow people) so I would assume my tweets would be too low-value for continued consumption.

Now, if a mass unfollow happened after an unfair disparagement by someone in the blogosphere, that'd be cause for alarm and retaliation (if you're the type). But people tend to be addicted to drama.

UNFOLLOW ≠ BOYCOTT
UNFOLLOW == Lack of continued relevance

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

The Lovable Rogue — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:48:55 -0000

To be honest, I really cant see the value of something like Qwitter. Alright, it allows you to attach a name to a missing digit, but what else beyond that? Unless you decide to specifically contact the individual following the identification of the unfollower, the information holds very little value.

Granted, you may decide to use their reasons to amend your tweeting, but then why would you want to do that? Platforms like Twitter should represent an expression of self, not a dialogue controlled by one's detractors.

I like to think that I get value from those people that I follow on Twitter. I have a carefully selected group of people that offer such value to me. These people highlight articles of interest, raise points of consideration, and develop my understanding of subjects which I may have a limited knowledge of. Hopefully the people that follow me achieve similar value through my tweets. If they do decide that I no longer offer value to them, then they are entirely within their right to take the decision to unfollow my tweets.

Those that are likely to turn away followers are the individuals that fail to actively converse and offer value; these most notably being the users that solely tweet about the number of followers they have. Such tweets offer little to no value to anyone If you do actively participate in the conversation though, then you really have nothing to worry about.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Tom Cummings — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:26:01 -0000

I said it in a tweet yesterday, but I wish Twitter had an option to write a quick line about why you are starting to follow someone or not following them anymore.

In other words, I'd love to get a message that said "BobJoe is now following you because he is also a fan of the red sox". Or conversely, "BobJoe stopped following you because he can't stand that you make 10 tweets every 20 minutes that are just links" (a reason i qwit someone recently).

That one extra line of dialogue would provide a lot of really interesting info.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Hubert / gamalam — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:17:13 -0000

I don't particularly care about who unfollows me. I do use Qwitter, because I am trying to network with certain individuals and I'm testing if my tweets are counter-productive. At the same time, I don't really take it personal.
I considered following a ton of people to attract new followers, but I have taken a stance that I would rather it happen organically. I am running into plenty of decent Tweeters on happenstance, just like I ran into this blog.

Don't worry about your followers, you do good work Mr. Burbary.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Robert Hallock — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:11:45 -0000

Ken,

Just wanted to say again that you wrote a great and especially relevant post here. Thanks to a discussion started by Terry Bean, this was yesterday's topic du jour for a few hours.

As I told Terry, I was once pretty miffed by people unfollowing me. I don't censor myself, but I try hard not to be excessively polarizing. I assumed, then, that a user who chose to unfollow me did so because he or she was offended in spite of my best efforts.

Maybe that is the case, but I can only speculate. As I struggled to reconcile what was really going on, I turned to a great deal of reflection that has suggested to me that I'm a pretty damn great guy! That is to say, I don't do much that would offend your average person.

Based on that reflection, I like to think that the few users who have made that choice to unfollow me were simply not made for me, nor I them. A simple incompatibility in humanity; it happens.

I find proof of this in the Qwitter messages I have received ever since my first unfollow. All the tweets that have preceded an unfollow email have been benign and conversational with others. I stepped back and objectively analyzed what I had to say, but could not find anything offensive.

With all of that said, I still continue to believe that a lost user is an offended user. I am not hurt by this, but I believe the worst so I'm not offended by lesser reasons. It may not be the healthiest approach, but it works for me.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

Ben Nesvig — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:09:35 -0000

I've noticed that if someone unfollows me, 99% of the time I haven't been following them. They most likely used one of the twitter tools to see who wasn't following them and they trimmed down their list. It's understandable.

Re: Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

the girl Riot — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:58:48 -0000

i like Qwitter for the reasons @swoodruff mentions above. it's a lot about curiosity. before, when i lost a follower, it took me 20 mins to look at my lists and try to guess at who was missing. now that work is taken out for me.

i don't take it personally. mostly, like Steve said, the people who unfollow were people i didn't follow back for one reason or another. likewise, it's nice to see if there's a large-scale trend. but i don't sweat the small stuff.

i think i've only had 1 "authentic" unfollow, where i know the girl chose to stop following because she didn't like what i was saying. doesn't bother me. & cheers to @swhitley & @JPmicek's statements above.

xxo
@thegirlriot