13 Twitterers Confess Why They Unfollow

Nice tweet bait... but I never said why I unfollow anyone;). I asked a question and made an observation.

I don't talk about why I follow or unfollow on Twitter because I think people make far too big a deal of it.

Feels like the best policy:).

You're right Meg- I messed up my twitter about the post- I was trying to alert everyone who was mentioned in the post without having to tweet more than once about it. Didn't achieve that, and as you point out, made it sound like you put your two cents in. An inaccuracy, I apologize. :-) Brian

So I run a movie website... and was thinking about hooking Twitter up to my "Updates" page... so every time an update is done on my website, it gets broadcasted out, such as "New cast added to Indiana Jones". I would mix this in with my regular Twitter posts.

However, I'm guessing this will come off as spammy, right, since several of the tweets won't be personal.

Either they never respond to my direct message or tweet to them, OR their tweets are rarely if ever "interesting" (within my definition), OR I never see any tweets from them.

I'm surprised that people unfollow when someone they follow does not follow them back. Goes to show why that person followed in the first place.

Erik, update away. Plenty of sites do just that. The people who are interested will follow; the people who don't follow wouldn't be interested anyway.

Following and unfollowing is pretty clearly a very personal event; I'm not sure 13 Twitterers constitute a representative sample.

Erik, some people will definitely not like it.

Chris has good points. I think there are different views of what twitter's for. Chris's point that people can unfollow if they like is right- they get to shape their own channel, basically.

So in this case, Erik, I'd suggest having one twitter account for the blog updates and one for your more personal networking etc.

Zak, I agree, I don't think that's reason enough to unfollow somebody. If someone's not following you, we shouldn't take it personally- if they should be following you, maybe you're not interesting enough? Who knows. It's about relationships, too, and that takes time. I don't expect people with 10,000 followers to follow me right back- if they're that worth following, they're probably busy... patience.

Zak, its so funny that you said that! I had just tweeted Brian with MY reasons for unfollowing (before I read your comment)
"i unfollow defenders of selfishness, obvious liars, those who never talk to me but send links & those who dont return follow"

Nice Brian. ;-)

Really enjoyed reading. All the comments above were relevant to me and I agree. I follow or unfollow purely intuitively if something or someone 'feels right' or not-for me.

Sometimes I can decide to follow again even after I unfollow. One reason I unfollow is that I can't keep up with all the tweets and decide I have to infollow some. Sometimes someone that I DM or @ doesn't answer. Of course I don't feel good about that but I don't unfollow if I'm interested in following that person.

Brian, I'm going to follow you because I really liked your comments but don't take it personally if I unfollow someday...:)

My, you really ARE a smrt *ss! haha..I didn't mean 'lie covertly'!! I meant, if I find they are outright liars, I will unfollow. You can't always prove it though, which sux..so I follow until proven differently. ;-)

Brian, you condensed my comment nicely - people do use Twitter for different reasons and do get to define their own channels.

Here's why the idea of "they didn't return my follow, so I'm unfollowing them" bothers me: that attitude is All About Me. The implication is that you're following people /in order/ to get them to follow you, and that's absurd. Twitter isn't Facebook; just because you decide you're someone's friend doesn't require that they decide they're your friend too, at least not immediately. Hell, I have follower notifications turned off; most of the time I don't even /notice/ when someone follows me. But to someone who lists "follows back" as a criterion, that's unacceptable; if I don't follow them back, I'm not worth their time.

The key is to build the relationship. Set up Twitter so that you see all @replies from your followees, not just the ones to people you know; then participate in the conversation, even if the people you're conversing with don't follow you. Your @replies to a person show up in their timeline even if they're not following you. Make sure they know who you are; if they think you're as valuable to them as you think they are to you, they'll eventually follow you in return. If not, you can still focus on just making their lives better, one @reply at a time.

I hope that's coherent; it's been a long day. :)

Just treat it like a micro-blog and you won't go far wrong. Content is the most important thing.

Make it worth reading. Every now and again post a useful link or something personal but that shouldn't be the main focus.

I agree with most of the things that have been sais above. If someone does not follow me, what is the point in following them? We will never have a conversation...

And too much chat (like "good morning", "good night", etc.) is another reason to unfollow.

damn, i wish i had seen this a month ago when it went hot! probably the most useful post about twitter to date.