Thursday

No One Cares who Unfollowed you on Twitter

Does anyone else find these 
Tweets  ---> 
as  pointless as I do?  Ok, maybe your ego makes you curious, but does anyone else care?  Do you think your followers read this Tweet, click on all of the links thinking "wow, I can't believe this jerk unfollowed @insertwhinytweeterhere
I'm going to show them by unfollowing them too!"

Consider:

1.  Twitter has limits and faults.  While I've used apps to whitelist people I never want to unfollow even if they never follow me back, I have found myself able to follow them again.  (seriously, I would never intentionally unfollow @CarolJSRoth or @ChrisBrogan)

2.  Most power users are using some sort of automation tool that unfollows people who do not reciprocate in 'N' days, or who appear to fit the profile of a spammer.  Perhaps you fall into one of those categories.

3.  There are an infinite number of third party software applications out there supporting Twitter growth.  These may be developed by a highly VC funded software company with a QA team, or it may have been created, and solely supported, by your 12 year old neighbor with great coding skills. Often you cannot distinguish between the two.  Again, faults exist, they are mostly free, deal with it.

4.  Maybe the person is using Twitter for a particular business purpose, and you do not fit this profile.  This isn't a personal attack, this is strategic efficiency.

5.  And finally, social media is about creating a community.  When you post this sort of nonsense you look like the kid on the playground who kicks first and then cries and tattles when the kick is reciprocated.  If you stop posting negative Tweets trying to make others look bad, maybe people would stop unfollowing you...



3 comments:

  1. What a common sense article and how true. I do not use any automatic Twitter follow tools and I personally accept or decline all based upon my marketing plan and target audience.

    If people do not follow me, that suggests they are not my target audience and through self removal have saved me a lot of time.

    Leanne Hoaglnd-Smith
    Author of Be the Red jacket

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  2. I have been tweeting about this for awhile now- ridiculous! People should not take unfollowing personally. Perhaps, we just don't have anything in common,or this isn't who a brand is trying to target. Either way, let it be and stop being a Twitter bully;) Thanks for posting, Sue.

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  3. Thanks for posting this, Sue! BetterFacebook.net (now SocialFixer.com) has a similar option for FB, which I had no interest in at all. I've counseled friends and writers that a nice thing about FB (and pretty much applies to Twitter) is that you can decide which friend requests you want to accept or not (and/or set individual privacy settings). And that you can quietly unfriend if you decide you don't want to follow that person anymore. Why make it so public? You wouldn't do that in a face-to-face social networking setting--declare that you have no desire to meet up with a person again! :) I guess I could see possibly wanting that info from a business standpoint, but there's no need to announce it.

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