Recently with the introduction of Qwitter, a twitter user is notified of any person who un-follows them. Normally I could care less but what I’ve noticed is that more and more people are following me one day and un-following the very next. I don’t really mind that they’re un-following me, but what I find ridiculous is the fact that they clicked “follow” without looking over what sort of information or conversation I provide in the first place. This is really the only legitimate reason that I can think of why anyone would follow and then un-follow within such a short time frame.
Maybe it’s just the way I use twitter, but I don’t follow anyone that I intend on un-following. I look over their blog, their previous tweets, and the conversations they contribute to.
I refer back to my original post on how I use twitter.
Looking up User rbbkkqukeuke
Another rather interesting folly is how the odd twitter user (rbbkkqukeuke to be exact) gets 63 followers. Obviously a bunch of these followers have no idea that they are following a bot or spammer — some users automatically follow anyone who follows them, while others don’t bother checking who it is that they are following. This just goes back to my original point that people don’t invest the time. This is time that ironically would serve themselves in the long-term. Of course … could it be that common mob sense dictates something else?
Do you check who is following you? Do you look up more information on who’s following you before following them back? How would you respond?
Keeping this idea in mind … does this carry any implications for the future? Does this mean that there are a growing number of people who use twitter that demand absolute relevancy from the people they follow? It’s difficult to gauge but I have a feeling this represents a certain kind of people who want to be provided with some form of instant context that reveals to them who’s worth following and who’s not.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
this is something that drives me crazy too! i always check to see who just followed me and if following them would be valuable or interesting to me. twittering is much more about networking, community building and idea sharing than popularity. it needs to be useful.
on a side note: i hate autoresponders and autofollowers. i’m finding it hard to resist immediately unfollowing those people.
Ehren — I have had people start following me and when I haven’t immediately followed them back, they unfollow. At first I thought these were folks trying to game the system, but I have noticed in some cases they are friends AND followers of people in my network. They put themselves out there and then pulled back likely because they felt they had overstepped some imaginary boundary. When I in turn follow them, they follow me back. Go figure.
Ah the politics of sm…
It may be just cynicism, but I had always assumed that the phenomena of following then un-following very quickly was an attempt to achive a high ratio of followers to following. i.e. that people would follow a whole bunch they weren’t very interested in hoping that they would get reciprocal follows & then unfollow soon after as a way of increasing the “magic followers number”.
fwiw I would never demand ‘absolute relevancy’ from anyone
Ehren – you nailed it with how you determine who to follow.
Most definitely I look at a person’s blog, their Twitter stream and how they interact to see what value they bring to my community and Twitter as a whole.
Overall though, I don’t mind one way or another if I’m unfollowed. I understand the value I bring to people and my network and if it doesn’t fit what they want or are looking for (or just want to pimp their own content all the time), then it’s all good in my book.
Thanks for commenting on this post guys
@Erin I completely agree with you on the aspect of usefulness to some degree. Mainly because usefulness is very subjective and unless people understand how this tool works, they are unlikely to be able to conceive how powerful twitter really is. I have only bumped into one autoresponder very recently — despite the fact that the person was joking through the direct message function, I thought it was rather in poor taste.
@Mark Thanks for adding the imaginary boundary — I had not thought of that at all! It is rather funny how people respond to you following them.
@davidmiller That’s a pretty good analysis of the penomena of following! Pretty cynical too haha
I think that’s a great point — people try and rapidly boost up their follower numbers by mass following and then focus on reducing the noise on their end once they have a greater ratio. I’m guessing though.
@Sonny I’m with you on unfollowing in general. I just thought that it was interesting how different people approach the whole idea of following
I agree Ehren – a lot of people are gaming services like Twitter. In addition to “collectors” (what I deem the persons you describe), there are a lot of frauds out there who are just looking for status and nothing else. They have no real interest in other people beyond what they can do for their ego. There are two types of Twitter creeps that really suck our collective resources:
1. Twitter histrionics (aka attention seekers)
Beware of the Twitter user who continuously tweets out attention seeking messages to high profile users “Hey there (key influencer), what’s new?” Or refers to others as ‘friend,’ ‘dear friend.’ This is the classic salute of all histrinics world wide (part of their pathology manifests itself as over familiarity and seeking intimacy and approval without properly earning it) …
2. Insecurity and “junk follows”
Seems to me, a lot more people are inclined to allow all follows out of the desire to appear popular via large numbers of junk follows. As a person with a private feed, I can tell you that those of us who are subscription only tend to be focused on quality – not quantity.
And this is precisely why I made my accounts subscription only. First of all, you have more control over who has access to your words, ideas and relationships. Secondly, you can say NO to weirdos and spammers as soon as they find you.
The solution: Don’t subscribe to energy creatures!
To really enjoy this tool, it’s better to subscribe to a small (whatever that number means to you) number of really high quality feeds. I realise others will disagree – and I appreciate their arguments (namely, that you get more variety by subscribing to a large number of people).
For me, the enjoyment of this tool isn’t so much variety (I can find that anywhere online – the internet IS variety) but keeping my interests, attention and relationships more focused on shared goals and relevant information (to me).