Comments on: Twitter unfollows: too much information?

By: Christian

Christian — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:12:15 +0000

When someone follows me, I don't automatically follow them back, but I do almost always make sure I'm following someone when I'm getting replies from them. That is enough to keep the spammers out in my experience.

If I'm following someone and responding to them and they don't ever follow me back, I don't take it personally, but I will often unfollow them at some point, because the whole point is to make a connection and share ideas…and if communication is not 2-way, it's not communication. It's stalking. I do admit to stalking a handful of people, but I try to keep it to a minimum

By: Stut

Stut — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:27:20 +0000

@Tyler: Nice idea. Unfortunately Twitter doesn’t give you access to who’s blocked you. TwitApps Follows will notify you about the user, but only because they’ll disappear from your followers list.

On the other hand if people are actually blocking me I’m clearly doing something wrong. You following someone does them no harm and gives you no additional access to them or ways to spam them so there’s little reason for them to block you. I view the blocking ability on Twitter as more of a “report this user” function.

By: Tyler Havener

Tyler Havener — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:10:13 +0000

The “who” of users who unfollow is really unimportant unless your followers are close friends. These are people you can poll to get honest and insightful information about their unfollowing habits, and perhaps learn why you got unfollowed.

Unless you’re a marketer or business, with whom you have a commercial relationship, you probably shouldn’t waste your time with ‘unfollow’ customer service surveys.

What WOULD BE useful–and I haven’t checked out Follows or Qwitter yet–is knowing why people YOU follow BLOCK you. I notice following list attrition, and these people have to go out of their way to get YOU to not follow them, aka BLOCK you. These are the people I want to know something about, or attempt to ask questions.

Of course, once they unfollow you, you probably have no real means to privately question their motivations.

By: Danny Staple

Danny Staple — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:51:43 +0000

I would only be interested in finding those cheeky SEO pimp types that follow on the chance that you will follow too, and then immediately unfollow. Famoustwits is an example, but at least their profile is honest about such actions.
I really could not care too much about my ego being bruised by people unfollowing, I just also want to avoid being a sucker to the spammers that there are on twitter.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:36:06 +0000

Perhaps it is a result of studying server and other usage logs for too many years, but like you I also value being able to see both sides of the equation. I also agree that you need to be dispassionate about the process, in order to try and learn why people follow/unfollow. If someone (un)follows me it does not guarantee an automatic (un)follow back, each case is judged on its merits.