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Web Business by Ken Burbary

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Twitter: Unfollow me, it’s not personal

November 6th, 2008 · View Comments · Social Media, Twitter

Fact: Twitter is growing fast……very fast!

Not only is Twitter growing, but the ecosystem of tools and services that are based on the popular micro-blogging service are springing up more rapidly that one can keep track of. Everything from tools that grade your Twitter usage like Twittergrader, to a group Tweeting service like Tweetworks, down to some new services that provide real time updates if you’ve been “unfollowed” by another Twitter user. Twitterless and Qwitter are the 2 services that can do this for you. This post isn’t about explaining the nuts-n-bolts details of how they work. For those details, go here and here. Instead I want to talk about the effect these tools are having on Twitter culture.

Twitter culture? Come on, you kidding me? Absolutely not. Twitter has culture. Lots of it. And the culture is being subtly influenced by these “unfollow” tools. It seems their usefulness doesn’t come without controversy. You see, in the old days on Twitter, it was easy to unfollow someone without any mental or emotional repercussions. It was a simple act, a single click that left no trace or sign to the individual that was unfollowed. Their ego remained intact, free from the unfollow sting that now accompanies a notification that is delivered PROMPTLY to you only moments after it has taken place.

I’ve noticed this conversation topic is being discussed more frequently on Twitter lately. And as you can see below, there are a number of varying opinions ranging from preferring never to know when someone unfollows you, to taking personal offense.

Why does someone unfollow in the first place? It can be any number of reasons. Some Twitter users stop following because of too much tweet noise, not enough relevant tweets, list paring (following too many, social media fatigue). Whatever the reason, it’s clear that this is a highly personal and subjective decison. What works for me may not work for you.

The real impact is on the receiving end. Why did someone stop following after that last tweet? Am I not providing value to him/her anymore? Did I offend them? The questions are infinite. And this is precisely why knowing is changing how some users behave. Sure, not everyone will be bothered by it. But some simple research suggests many ARE. Why not let it roll off your back and avoid taking it personally? Because it’s easier said than done. When taking to a someone face to face, no one likes the feelings that accompany signs someone is ignoring you, or doesn’t like what you have to say. This human behavior is weaving its way into our social interactions online, because the feedback loops provided by these tools that were once impossible to obtain, are now being provided, with ever more detail and immediacy.

I’ll be watching this trend closely as we continue to forge ahead in our digital relationships. Logically, I know I will never truly understand or know why someone stops following me, so I won’t take it personally. Then again, we’re all human and knowing the gory details makes the sting real. Go ahead, unfollow me, I don’t care….I think ;)

What is your opinion on being unfollowed? Do you want to know? Do you care? Do you ask why? Please share.

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  • Ken -- Like you, I've been giving this a lot of thought, but from the other side of the coin -- why do I find myself itching to unfollow people? I made a list of the top ten reasons: http://ericmiraglia.com/blog/?p=286 -Eric
  • I'm curious if your stance has changed in the past 12 months.
  • No, not much. In fact, I don't even bother with quitter type notification services anymore.
  • I do not think anyone should take it personal when they have been unfollowed, we should respect other people's freedom of choice. Some of us are compulsive spammers on Twitter and it can be distracting.

    So if you are being unfollowed I would advise that we accept it with an open mind. After all who needs hypocrites anyway. We should not expect people to stick with us if they are not interested in us.
  • great article.

    The sting of an unfollow is never easy.
  • Twitter Comment






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

    - Posted using Chat Catcher
  • Twitter Comment






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

    - Posted using Chat Catcher
  • 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??
  • Honestly, I don't care if people unfollow me. I'm boring and I have no bad feelings about it.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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>
  • Guest
    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.
  • trader
    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...
  • oh yeah: follow me at tynan_on_tech.

    dt
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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? ;)
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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?
  • acclimedia
    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!
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • JoshSternberg
    So people really care that much if a random stranger stops following them on a web site? what happened to our country? are we that insecure?

    and while there is a 'twitter' culture, my question is: who defines this culture?

    in reality, there has been, for a long, long time, clear definitions of who defines a particular culture (i.e., old, white men in the u.s.)...and yes, it has been changing, but culture is created by people and in the case of twitter, who are these people? are these the people that participate in the dialogue the most or are they the people who pay attention to petty things like qwitter? are they the ones who follow the most people or have the most followers? and if they have the most followers, does this make twitter a popularity contest...or worse, like high school? :)

    you raise some interesting questions and am curious to how this social media experiment will continue to evolve.

    @josh_sternberg
  • I had to quit Qwitter because I did exactly what you did. In many cases, I decided to follow the people who had unfollowed me.

    Like Steve Woodruff, see comment above, I don't follow everyone who follows me, especially those who don't speak languages I speak.

    Finding out what I'd said that pissed off followerers enough for them to quit became an obsession.

    Some of it was about me. Yes, a political comment they didn't like or a snide comment that backfired lost people. And rightly so.

    But sometimes we weren't a great fit, just like life.

    It was driving me too crazy so I gave up Qwitter, preferring to track global stats instead of angsting over individual unfollows.
  • I use Qwitter out of curiosity. Most of the unfollows seem to be folks who were fringe followers - maybe they were hoping I'd auto-follow (I don't - I check out EACH follower to see if I think there is value and a workable signal/noise ratio for me) and then they drop me when it doesn't happen. Sometimes, it's because of something controversial or snarky I've said, but again, these are generally not my devoted subscribers. The sting is minor, but I do use it as an advance warning signal - if there is a trend of unfollows due to a specific tweet or theme, am I being unnecessarily abrasive?
  • Ken:

    Personally, I've never taken much offense to anyone choosing not to follow me any longer, leaving a mean or poor comment on my blogs or sites. I believe the ebb and flow of followers and visitors more often than not always revolves around content that you happen to be tweeting or blogging about.

    It has been my experience that Twitter users don't do a very good job of sticking to one topic. Where a blogger tends to stay in their own little topical realm, the true essence of Microblogging allows for a lot of personal thoughts and statements to find their way into the conversation just by the nature of the limitations of 140 characters. I might tweet a lot about SEO, Social Media or digital tools and goodies, but I also gripe about my day, the state of the auto industry, etc. I tend to believe that a lot of twitter users (and users of the Internet in general for that matter) are just plain narrow casting their channels, which is really too bad, because we all have so much to learn from one another via Tweets.

    Great post.
  • I tried Twitterless out of curiosity, but it was difficult not to take personally. I'd rather not know. I pare my following list every once in a while for various reasons, and so does everyone else. I guess it's a bit of a double standard... so in this case, ignorance is bliss. :)
  • Leah McChesney
    qwitter...lol that is one i haven't heard before. I do wonder why people un-follow but it certainly doesn't make me think twice.

    Great post Ken!
  • Ken, to answer your question, no I'm not really interested in using those tools. I don't think it would change the content that I'm posting to Twitter. I'm still humbled that more than 10 people chose to follow me, so as long as I keep posting the stuff that interests me, I know some other people will be interested as well.
  • I'm mostly kidding when I say that I take Qwitter personally. With my number of followers and their various, unknown objectives, it's obviously impossible to think that it was (literally!) something I said.

    I'm actually more like Jim Storer -- I do see who is unfollowing me because I'm curious. I'm less offended than interested. Very often, I notice that my Qwitter unfollows don't use Twitter the way I do: they usually follow/are followed by very few people... or they have tons of people following them but only follow a handful.

    I'm always curious about the various ways people use Twitter, or Facebook, or any other social platform. So in a way, Qwitter offers another window thru which to view behavior.

    (Providing, of course, you have healthy self-esteem. (ha!))
  • @jeffcutler I share your approach (I think). Don't take it too seriously, really. That said, easier said than done for most people.

    @jwphillips Does that mean you're not interested in using Qwitter/Twitterless?

    @coreyobrien In my simple research, I found many people shared your opinion on knowing, and were not users of Qwitter/Twitterless. They prefer to not know. I suspect this may be the majority

    @warrenss You're the perfect example of my point. The new tools are changing user behavior. Some ways are subtle, some more obvious. It's an interesting social phenomenon, no?

    @jstorej I've experienced the same result when live-tweeting a conference. It's too much for some people and they unfollow. hilarious re: unfollow @warrenss
  • p.s. I'm going to unfollow @warrenss right now just to see what he does. ;-)
  • I've only been receiving Qwitter alerts for about a week, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

    So far, I treat them with the same curiosity I have for the new follower notices. I click through to see who the person is, take a look at their stream to see what they're all about and see the size of their follower base. Call it an ongoing anthropological study... I'm not hurt or offended, just interested.

    I realize the volume of my tweets may be too much for some people and the content (especially all the #redsox talk) might turn them off too. Life's too short to get hung up of why people stopped following me on Twitter. I'm amazed they were following me in the first place.

    Jim | @jstorerj
  • To date, I haven't been bothered by the sting of an unfollow, but it is probably because as Jeff points out, just about all of my unfollows have been people that I don't follow. However, the sensitive guy that I am, I am sure that it will catch up to me at some point. Even though the information has been available via other tools like Twitter Karma or FriendorFollow, the immediacy of Qwitter tied to the last tweet can increase the insecurity. Since I am often paring my list, I hope that I am not inflicting pain on anyone else unnecessarily. I think Qwitter will cause me to have second thoughts about pressing that unfollow button.
  • I quit Qwitter for the exact reasons you outline above. I started to think about why people were unfollowing, and I was worried that it was going to change the way that I use the service.

    What I realized is that people are going to unfollow for a variety of reasons, but most of those are unrelated to anything that I can change (the were just trying to do link building, they got soc. media fatigue, etc.) so I shouldn't worry about it.

    In addition, if someone quits just because of something that I said, then they weren't really following to begin with, so it's no big loss. (Assuming that the something I said wasn't offensive.)

    For now, I'm a Qwitter quitter, and I hope to stay that way, because it doesn't matter why people unfollow you. What really matters is the reasons someone would want to follow you in the first place. Focus on those, and provide value to the people that choose to follow, and you'll be a happier Twitter user.
  • Very nice insight on the unfollowing, and the topic is also something I've noticed popping up lately too. My personal opinion is that I don't mind if people unfollow me, however, I rather not know about it either (like blog subscribers). I assume that if someone unfollows me, then my content is no infer relevant to them anymore, and I'm ok with that.

    I don't think I'd question why though, because I assume that it's for the same reasons that Ive unfollowed people....their content became irrelevant to my interests.
  • UNFOLLOW.

    Just kidding. But I track down the people who unfollow me - at least to see why or even if I was following them. In many cases these days - for people who have been on Twitter for almost two years - the base you've developed as a twitterer isn't going to vary that much.

    I've found lately that most of the people leaving my tweet stream are ones I'm not following. They're the real estate marketer in California that followed 2000 people and has 14 following her. It's the SEO pro who has the same sort of ratio. Or more increasingly, it's the PR pro who isn't very professional about what she sends out as tweets. I mean, cut the crap with the constant pimping of stuff. Participate a little and when you do pimp something it will have more value.

    And isn't that the reason we're spending time on Twitter anyway? If the conversation here starts to lose its value, I'll bring it somewhere else and have it. IM, blogs, forums, even cell phone.

    Yes, the tools are myriad but the purpose remains the same. At least for me. To chat with some smart people. To share my life a little. To learn stuff. To have fun.

    Seriously. Twitter. No, not that seriously.

    Hmmm, is that a haiku?

    Good blog post!
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