louisgray.com - Latest Comments in http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

drache — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:25:57 -0000

thank you

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Chris Clayton — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:52:02 -0000

i know!
what im trying to say, is that peaple shouldnt go and do something just because you (or someone else well known) do it.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Scobleizer — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:24:27 -0000

True organic growth in followers happens slowly. The only way to get faster than that is to either be Oprah or some other celebrity, or to talk Twitter into putting you on the suggested user list. By the way, the other day someone linked to something I did who was on the suggested user list. Do you know how many hits I got? (This person had hundreds of thousands of followers). 23. So, having a huge following number does NOT mean you have real followers. Louis has real followers. I get lots more hits from him everytime he links to something I do.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Scobleizer — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:22:24 -0000

It is impossible to see everything that more than 2,000 people Tweet about. It is possible to see RANDOMLY what more people Tweet about. Believe me, I've tried this experiment. :-)

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

KarenSwim — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:24:11 -0000

Well put Louis! I too have had the urge to cleanse and admittedly the auto DMs get the best of me on some days but the value I gain from this network far outweighs the annoyances. I have found that some of the "standards" we arbitrarily assign such as "no avatar, no follow" unfairly eliminate people who are new to Twitter and learning to use it. Yes, it's getting more popular but that's a great thing allowing us all to connect with an even larger network of people.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Paul Papadimitriou — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 05:12:06 -0000

Thank you for sharing this view Louis. I admit that I'm more on Scoble's "side" on this one. Then again, there are no rules or policies about one's Twitter use. I've tried it all, in the various accounts I update for me and clients alike, from auto-follow and auto-dm (yikes ^^), to more restraint. I've never use any of the massive follow "services" out there as I wanted to built an engaged audience.

Many people mention the follow back as a twittetiquette, which explains the relative success of unfollow-those-who-dont-follow-back tools.
Admittedly, I understand the merit of a follow back as courtesy. However, people unfollowing you because of no follow back are, almost by definition, not really be interested in your voice and wouldn't have followed you in the first place if not for the increased number of the Twitter.com right hand pane.

I think that Twitter is becoming more and more content-centric and less people centric (I remember Twitter being criticized for that, compared to Plurk when were still comparable in numbers).
The search tool, RTs (and trends to a lesser extent) is what makes it one of my favorite discovery tool. The graph expands by itself without the need of following every interesting bit of discussion.

But, again, big thanks for sharing your view on that one. I'm happy to follow you ;-)

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Scott Pantall — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:05:54 -0000

I think everyone is missing the best part of this post...My new favorite tech-term is now "hashtaggery". Ha!

I judge who I follow by looking at their tweet-stream. I like people who are somewhat personal on Twitter. Go ahead and promote your business, your blog, your sewing club. Just, every once in a while, post something from you.

I also won't follow those who post a LOT. Example: I used to follow @zaibatsu, but had to stop. I liked a lot of the stuff he posted, but since he posted stuff every 3 minutes I couldn't see anything from the other 100 or so people I was following.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Michael Q Todd — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:02:03 -0000

Exactly Lance.
I have built my 8 accounts up follower by follower and am pretty sure all the people who follow me know who I am and what I do.Same for the large percentage of those that I follow.
I think it is strange if things are any other way! What is the point otherwise.
There is so much crazy emphasis on follower numbers.
"Whales" and "twitterscore" etc
I have never tweeted from anything but the web and am opposed to direct messages,autofollowing and especially "feeds" of regurgitated links.I am sure that this is not what the founders of twitter envisaged
I believe that if they do not crack down on spamming etc then someone will jump in and create a site like Twitter but with stricter rules that create a much better networking environment.
Hey did I just come up with a business opportunity??!!??

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Lance Brown — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:04:54 -0000

In my early quest for Twitter growth, I thought it was pretty cool that you could just follow these 10K+ auto-followers in order to gain new followers. (And I enjoyed the phenomenon of them spontaneously following me (in order to hopefully gain a follower themselves).)
With a few months under my belt, my view has flipped somewhat on that front. Now I understand that most of those auto-followers aren't reading my tweets at all. And they likely never checked out my bio or profile page, or even know I exist for that matter, except in that their giant number grew by one increment. I felt kinda insulted actually, when that first dawned on me.
And when it comes to people who follow me, now I cast a semi-suspicious eye at them, due to the same phenomenon. (Especially if they are already following thousands.) Are they just trolling for new followers to add to their tally, or did they follow me for a real reason of some sort? Will they disappear if I don't follow them back, or if I follow and later unfollow?
It might be radical, but I want people to follow me because they like my tweets, and I think they should unfollow me if they aren't getting benefit from doing so. I don't know if it's a sign of ego or the opposite, but I want to get thousands of followers based on my merit, not by manipulating a modern form of social etiquette. I'm not crazy about the other method of growth that's in vogue, and I suspect that mass-following-inflation will ultimately be a passing phase in the evolution of the twitter community. Maybe at some point down the road, we'll be able to tell who's actually reading who, rather than these mind-boggling quasi-followings.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Guest — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:35:17 -0000

Thank you for posting this! What these mass unfollowers fail to take into account is the emotional carnage they leave in their wake. Alot of decent people, myself included, have been left scratching their heads and wondering what they may have done wrong.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Michael Q Todd — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:13:07 -0000

This is an extremely interesting discussion.So many self professed experts using opposite strategies on the same website!And many using inbetween strategies as well!
There is no way I would defollow any of the people following me.I have around 5000 but they are all connnected to my niche and am friends on Facebook with nearly all of them.I see Twitter as a place to have live conversation and share informtion with all those people I have built relationships with on other platforms or in real life and to gradually meet people in their networks who are drawn into our conversations.Isn`t this what Twitter is meant to be about?
@michaelqtodd

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Marco Castellani — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:04:00 -0000

agree. More than reasonable post, Luis..

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Rex Hammock — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:23:00 -0000

@Spencer - I know my unfollowing thing was nothing but a PR stunt. As is my commenting here.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Kathy Fitch — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:22:00 -0000

Spencer--well, of course this thing does have PR implications. After all, the big wigs are all talking about it non-stop, and then those on the next few tiers down from there are talking about the talking. Still, having PR implications and being a stunt aren't exactly the same thing. Many of these big name folks *are* established brands, which isn't something most of us can claim. There's a PR aspect to all that they do, including the mistakes. I'm guessing that's not always fun. Certain advantages to being a little fish in this pond.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Name — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:08:56 -0000

The thing about your point of view on this is that you're using Twitter as a marketing tool, whereas other (like me) chose to use it as a communication tool, and in my opinion, this is how Twitter was designed and what it was intended for. For example, you would probably want to tweet every time you write a blog post, where I would rather just check your blog for updates. If I'm not actively conversing (two-way) with someone on Twitter, then they're gone.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

webaddict — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:38:15 -0000

Nice job Louis. I agree whole heartedly and I'm glad to see your post on this issue. I had a discussion with Robert a couple days ago on FriendFeed. I was told by Robert that he never got into using TweetDeck to filter all of the people he was following into groups. I'm confused because he used to share videos and tout TweetDeck as the next coming of God. Anyway, I think this unfollowing trend is self centered, a big mistake & also magnifies gaming the Twitter system.

Autofollow 100k people, then unfollow all of them & see what shit sticks to the wall? Lame.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Spencer — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:53:00 -0000

Lets be honest, this unfollowing thing by "certain" people is nothing but a PR stunt

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

jcunwired — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:48:00 -0000

I'm going to mass unfollow everyone who ignores me :)

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Rex Hammock — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:47:00 -0000

@Louis - I think you are right. Doing something because it's a "trend" is dumb. Can you tell me what the metric is you use to measure when something breaks through to "trend" status? When "unfollow" hits Trending Topics, maybe? I didn't reboot my following list to join a trend. I did it because I really like following the people I follow...and they were getting drowned out by the people I was politely following. By the way, I have other accounts that are "branded" and used for marketing purposes that I'd never reboot.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

@JoeHobot — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:46:36 -0000

I just had to respond to this Louis!

Well someone like Robert can afford doing all-unfollow after all he just lost people like myself and probably 50% of spammers who follow auto-followers. By count of 20.000 followers I have I must say my followers have been pretty decent real people...yeah some get spammy but not much...

Here is the thing,

You will see lots of more people start unfollowing everyone as soon as they hit the mark of let's say 50-60K because right now avrg auto-followers are at about 20-25K (Check Wefollow.com)

So basically what I am saying is that if you hit 100K followers and lose 12K followers that's really nothing but then you have to remember who to follow back that is important to you, who you spoke before on daily/weekly basis and continue that relationship...

Robert unfortunately un-followed me or forgot that I changed my username from LiveCrunch to @JoeHobot (bastard hahaha)

Louis must say great post, keep up the good work...Oh and you know what? I sold Livecrunch! Yep I did! off to new venture of blogging at mwd :)

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

michael silverton — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:46:00 -0000

Somewhat parenthetically, like the 19th century theoretical "corporate shield" that was supposed to shield individuals from liability, artificial demarcations between "my personal site" and "my business site" are increasingly obsolete. We are all complex, intertwined, interdependent, human-computer, systemic hybrid participants in an increasingly systematized hybrid world. The old silos just don't apply any more. Instead, HOW and WHY you do your own twitter reboot matters more than doing the deed itself. http://u.nu/6xrr or http://u.nu/52sr for example. There may be a million ways to go about this, it's not a question of good/bad, right/wrong. It's a question of what we're trying to accomplish and why. IMHO. ;-)

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Jorge Escobar — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:11:00 -0000

@Lew funny you call this "business". I call it "racket"

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Lew Newmark — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:06:00 -0000

Louis, I only read part of your post, but I agree as far as the types of people that are following others. Twitter has become a place more for business than meaningful conversations. Best thing to do is look at who is following you and purging those who just seem to market links to " Ways To Generate Massive Cash " through whatever they might be involved in hawking.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Alex Schleber — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:53:00 -0000

Also see "My comment on: 'Why You Should Start Over On Twitter With A BRAND NEW Account - Twitip' Hint: I disagree" http://post.ly/1owO This about sums it up: "..the solution to overwhelm by technology is better technology, not retrenchment..".

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/to-jump-on-massive-unfollowing-trend.html

Alex Schleber — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:50:00 -0000

(cont'd) For this reason, I will openly admit to trying to get as many of my Twitter peeps registered into FriendFeed as possible, & I won't even care if they sub to me there or not (not required for conversation on FF anyway). It's to get them into the stream that I can then search over, and further add people into separate Friend Lists from there. Currently I'm at about 1k of 3k "following". When I search that stream for say "wordpress", I know I am getting stuff from people that I have vetted to some extent, and in this case that have further self-selected by being savvy enough to be on FF.