I had a great Twitter conversation with some very lovely and talented women (Hello, @lauriewrites @phdinparenting @suzieswapper @alotofnothing and @temptingsam!) about if you keep track of who unfollows you on Twitter.
I do.
I know, I know. It is one of those things where you go, “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO YOURSELF, YOU MASOCHIST?! IGNORANCE IS BLISS!”
And I agree, but I still do it on occasion.
I think of it as housekeeping.
(Thankfully I do my ACTUAL housekeeping more often than my social media housekeeping.)
(We won’t discuss by how large a ratio that number is, though. Heh.)
I like following people back. If someone is a real person and I can tell that they carry on conversations on Twitter vs. only pushing out information I almost always follow the account back. Granted, people fall through the cracks, but I always feel bad and rectify it if it’s pointed out to me. Also, I turned off notifictions to my email so sometimes it takes me awhile to follow back, but I try to keep up the best I can.
But I have a policy…if you don’t follow me, I don’t follow you.
Plain and simple.
The only exception to this is Nathan Fillion because, well…I loved Firefly and want to marry Castle.
Heck, I unfollowed a friend because he wasn’t following me. (Not that he noticed. He signed up, followed Snoop Dog and Tosh 2.0 and then promptly forgot Twitter existed.)
If people unfollow me, I don’t want to keep following them. It clutters up my stream and is annoying. Also, since I do follow most people back, I don’t want my follow ratio to be upside down. It looks bad. It used to be that you could mass unfollow everyone not following you with a click of a button, but Twitter decided that they wanted to plunge the knife in and twist it and they had their legal department contact all the mass unfollow tool sites with cease and desist orders.
Now you have to go through manually, one click at a time and unfollow people individually.
So, I occasionally gird up my loins and go to a site like Who Unfollowed Me to see who has clicked ‘unfollow’ to my account and dumped me.
People unfollow me often and 99% of the time it just doesn’t bother me.
People unfollow for tons of reasons and I am generally ok with that. I rarely unfollow but I have learned that isn’t the norm for many. I don’t let it bug me. My self-esteem is not tied up in my follow numbers. But there IS a situation I loathe and that hurts. I try not to look at the people I’m unfollowing but sometimes it happens and that is where the 1% of “YES IT BOTHERS ME” comes in…I see someone I REALLY admire or thought was a good friend has unfollowed me.
And then I go into the fetal position and throw chocolate at myself because dude, that shit STINGS.
The other complication is that crack whore we all love called Twitter. It has been notorious in the past for unfollowing people without permission. Some people will contact those that they know and that have unfollowed and inquire if it was a deliberate move or not.
I tried that once.
It unleashed such a psycho situation of hell that I vowed never, ever, EVER again would I inquire if someone deliberately unfollowed me. I just assume that they did it deliberately and try to get over it as best I can. Besides, I am not confident that people would actually be truthful in that situation. I truly think some people unfollow someone, hope they won’t notice and then pansy out and blame Twitter if they are confronted.
It’s a quandry and I haven’t really figured out a great method or way of handling it.
So, what about you? Do you pay attention to who follows you? Do you find out who unfollows you? Do you ask them why or just keep your mouth shut?
P.S. If you want to follow me, I’m here @looneytunes and I WILL follow you back. (And if I’m not? @ me and let me know. I’ll fix it.)
xo
P.P.S. Thank you for all the support and kind words regarding my sister and her medical situation. I went. It was really…tough. She is still in a pretty horrible state and has a VERY long road ahead, but we are hopeful it will be ok. My brother has been with her yesterday and today and they are looking at moving her into a long care facility soon to better manage her situation and so she is closer to her home and husband.
Filed under: 
I am religious and petty about unfollowing people who don’t follow me. Unless they are a celebrity, or the Detroit Red Wings, I just don’t keep them in my Twitter stream if they don’t care what I have to say.
I am perfectly fine with people unfollowing me because I don’t follow them back. I’m not great about follow-backs anymore, but if someone replies to me and I see I’m not following them, I’ll give it a click. But because I unfollow people who aren’t following me I don’t get upset if someone follows me one day, doesn’t get a follow in a day or a week, and then unfollows a little spitefully. I’m as spiteful as they are, and I can’t blame them for my inability to keep up with follows.
I used to try to follow everyone back, because I thought it was bullshit that you could only get direct messages from people you were following, and half the point of Twitter for me was the off-stream interaction we could have. I DM’d to reply to comments as often as I publicly replied, sometimes more, and I didn’t want to be the asshole who sent a DM to someone who couldn’t DM back. I don’t send as many DM replies anymore though, so I have less internal pressure to keep up with follows just for that reason.
All of that being said, I test my Twitter followers pretty exhaustively and annoyingly with the crap I put out there. So even when I do discover someone I was following has unfollowed me, I can’t get angry about it. I’m petty, sure, but I never think the unfollow is a personal insult. I often tell jokes just for one person, myself, and not everyone shares my love of me.
Somehow, you are the least annoying while trying to annoy people, person that I know.
I do keep track of who unfollows me. I use a service called @unfollowr, which periodically sends me a DM with a link to a list of people who have unfollowed me. It sorts the list by those who I am following (“ex-friends” – YIKES!) and those I am not (“ex-followers”). I don’t even look at the “ex-followers”, but I do look at the “ex-friends”. I do it for several reasons:
1) I feel like I am following too many people already and I often miss the important stuff. So if someone unfollowed me, I use it as an opportunity to reevaluate if I want to be following them or not. It is general housecleaning.
2) It helps me catch the follow-unfollow people. That is people who follow you, initiate a conversation just long enough to get you to follow back, and then unfollow.
3) Twitter DOES unfollow people all the time (technical glitch of some sort) and people do unfollow others in the same way that they purse/back pocket dial. The number of times that I have shoved my phone into my purse only to re-open it and find that I have half-composed a tweet means that I understand people can be unfollowed by mistake. So, if someone I am friends with unfollows me, then I will often ask them if they meant to do it. Sometimes I ask outright. Sometimes I say, “hey, I’m trying to send you a DM and it isn’t working…”. In most cases it is a mistake. There has only been one case so far where someone unfollowed me on purpose (her therapist told her to!).
In any case, it does hurt when you are unfollowed, but I find the usefulness of knowing outweighs the “ouch” of it.
Case in point…I just almost unfollowed a friend while carrying some empty glasses to the kitchen (with the phone in my hand too). Looked down at the screen to see “unfollow username – YES / NO”.
No, I don’t keep track of everyone that unfollows me, it’s not really a big deal. Nor do I follow everyone back. Just because I’m interested in what someone has to say doesn’t mean they care for my tweets and vice versa.
I will always follow more people than will ever follow me or be my facebook friend or become a follower of my blog. Painful as it is, I know it is the truth and try to not get caught in the “I’ll follow yours if you follow mine” as I inevitably end up feeling hurt. Heck, my own mother doesn’t read my blog and is less than supportive of my life in a myriad of ways, so I guess I’ve come to expect that total strangers aren’t going to be too excited to follow me!
I never used to, and then people started talking about it, so I tried one of those “who unfollowed me?” thingies and it was mostly spambots or people I didn’t know unfollowing…then one time it was someone I really liked and I spent a whole day agonizing over whether to say anything but we’d been such good friends that I figured surely it was an accident and ASKED her (via FB)…and she said no, she thought there was too much drama in my life. I was like “uhhh so should I unfriend you on here? I’m not sure how this works?” and she was all “nono, that’s okay, it’s just that you ALSO tweet too much and it clutters up my stream.” Um…wow.
Since then I have stopped checking.
FTR, I never got the whole “follow everyone who follows you back” thing. If I follow someone it’s because I find them interesting/funny/compelling, not because they followed me. I don’t think it would be any fun if I had to scroll through a bunch of stuff that didn’t interest me (plus I could end up accidentally following some psychopath who was stalking a friend…LOL). But then I guess I’m not as nice a person as you are :)
I used to follow everyone (real people that is) who followed me, but then it just got to the point where there were too many and I couldn’t do it. So now I follow people I like or am familiar with. And I don’t keep track of follows/unfollows. I actually disabled the notifications that tell me when a new person follows me because I hated getting excited about new email and then it was just someone following me on Twitter. :-) So I try to sign in and check to see who my new followers are occasionally, but I’m bad about it.
I have a Twitter account, but I don’t use it everyday. I have a problem, I get obsessed too easily, and I don’t have a phone that would be easy to use to keep an eye on it all the time, so I have had to be happy to tweet once in a while, and try to pull myself away from the computer once in a while. That being said, if someone follows me, I usually follow them back. Once in a while I get a follow that does not seem to be a real person, a company or something, and I don’t usually follow back.
And yes, I follow you! I have since I got a twitter account. In fact, I think you were why I got a twitter account! Wait – I got a twitter account to prove to my teenage daughters that I was cool, but twitter was not cool with the teen set yet. I started paying attention to twitter because of you, though :).
Thanks for dropping by my blog, it was sweet of you!
I actually found out that I wasn’t following a few people that I swear I followed – I can’t figure out what happened there
I have my moments where I worry about who’s not following, but most of the time I don’t really care. I only tweet a few days a week because, well, like I need another time sucking habit. So if people unfollow me, I assume it’s because they’re having one of those moments where the klout number becomes all important. I’ve had a few moments like that too. but they pass.
I actually pay more attention to who IS following me, and often get all fangirl swoony when I discover some of my hero bloggers like @looneytunes is following me – squeeee!
Nathan Fillion can unfollow me if he wants to. Of course he’d have to follow me first. Sigh.
He’s shiny.
Well, in all honesty, I don’t know what I’m doing on Twitter (as in: Too dumb to use). So I forget about it half the time. And it hates me with a purple passion. I can’t even get my picture to upload right. I’ve tried off and on for months. I do get excited when I’m notified of new followers, but I don’t post much on there, so poor people. :/
I used to care. But I’ve totally given up the numbers game and the caring about the numbers game. It is not a priority in my life. It only adds stress for me. I realize that I tweet too much for some people, especially those with very few people that they follow. People don’t always like that and they come and go. I’m okay with it.
The only time that I noticed/cared as of late was when a long time (Internet-made) friend decided to end our friendship without letting me know. And yes, I realized it when she unfollowed me on twitter (and Facebook). I’m okay with her needing to leave and take care of herself, but it was shocking to learn of it via social media.
I don’t keep track of who follows or unfollows me. I actually end up caring too much. I’m not sure why because I follow and unfollow others with no personal offense regularly, but for some reason I tend to take things personally when it comes to my own accounts. So, I just try to remain oblivious.
I follow a lot more people than I have followers, so it’s very easy for me to keep track. I report those spam bots shamelessly, too!
I felt kinda loved when you followed me for following you. Makes me feel like I have friends :)
I did keep track, then I didn’t, then I deleted my account and felt all superior, and now I want a new Twitter just to follow you. And maybe Charlie Sheen :) But yeah, when Qwitter would send me the list of people who unfollowed me I’d kinda get all ass hurt over it.
I do keep track of who unfollows me. I’ve never lost anyone *important*, but I guess I just like knowing.
I only ever follow people I’m interested in. Many of those people aren’t following me back, and that’s ok.
I had a hard time rading blogs that posted daily, now many people have moved over to Facebook and post hourly, I will not do Twitter, just to fast and too short. Come on, if you have something to say think about it for a while and give us the whole story.
I keep track via Qwitter and most of the time, it’s people I haven’t heard of or didn’t follow back. But recently someone unfollowed me who I know IRL and thought was a friend. I was too chicken to ask if it was purposeful. But I just checked whounfollowedme and that person doesn’t show up there. But someone else who I thought was a bloggy friend did show up there. :-(
I know there are differing opinions on this, but I hate it when you are a long time reader/commenter of someone, you interact with them on Twitter and they don’t follow you back.
Please tell me I’m following you back, Sue. Heh! :)
Yes! You do!
Nothing against you, my dear, but my lovely, lovely Nathan is the only thing I really miss since quitting the twitter!
I don’t check unfollowers but I will tell you something else that gets my panties in a bunch.
Not that you asked but I’m sharing it anyway. I’m a giver like that.
I completely HATE IT when I work up my very best witty comments for a blogger, over and over again, and they give me zilch back. Like, not even, “Thanks for stopping by!” or anything at all. I mean, does their shit not stink? Are they THAT full of themselves that they can’t politely respond, not even in comments???
I have this one person who used to be smallish blogger like me (back in the day – we both started around the same time). Then her blog exploded HUGE & mine, not so much. But that’s okay. I kept comin’ around, kept commenting. Still do. But she has completely dropped off the face of my blog. Don’t know if she subscribes anymore. We’re still connections on FB and twitter too. But I feel like she found more popular people to play with so she’s dumping me.
Now THAT shit hurts.
Oy.
This fills me with some shame. I have had people feel the same way about me.
And it’s tough.
I can’t answer for the person that you’re talking about, all I can do is answer for me. I don’t read and comment on blogs like I used to.
I don’t consider it ‘taking my toys to a more popular sandbox” though.
I had to cut something and after one day of spending 9 hours reading and commenting on blogs and opening my reader to 1200 unread posts the next day, that was it. I deleted my Google reader.
I regret it and I don’t.
Everyone’s time is valuable. I don’t put mine over others, I am just saying that I realized what was taking a HUUUUGE portion of my time and I had to stop. And I got some people hurt by it and that was awful.
But I try hard to keep up with people on Twitter and Facebook and use them as my reader because relationships *are* important to me.
All I can do is my best. I think most people are this way.
But getting hurt sucks.
Ugh.
I don’t put you in that category! You respond back to people in comments. Or you email or tweet back. I feel like there is a dialog. I don’t expect you to read my blog just because I comment here, but I feel like we have interaction. But there are some people I have read for YEARS and commented over and over again and have never interacted with. That does irritate me. (And yet, I continue to read?!)
I wanted to answer this one as well…just cause I was accused of well something not nice the other day.
I’ve been doing this a long time. Since 2005. I’m still a wee blogger and I’m 99.8 percent of the time okay with that. I remember when some big name bloggers started. A few are like that. The pretty shiny sandbox over there. You know the one with the secret handshake to enter? I know a few who will only DM me if I talk to them on Twitter. I suppose I’m not good enough for a Tweet on their stream. At least they follow me. Shrug.
However for most people? (Me included) The longer you do this, the more people you know and the harder it is to stay current. I have a reader and it’s always around 400. Right now it’s at 800. I can’t keep up with my own comments some days, much less comment elsewhere. I guess I think for most people it’s about lack of time and knowing too many people.
Not everyone I follow, follows me back. And that’s ok. But, if one of my favorites who are following me, unfollowed, I think it would crush me. So I get it when you say sometimes it stings. I don’t blame you at all for feeling like that. But whoever unfollows you is missing out on the awesomeness that is YOU. You rock!! :)
I pay attention to who follows me, because I generally try to follow back when I can tell that it’s a legit human.
I pay much LESS attention to who unfollows me, unless they like…ANNOUNCE it or something (has happened).
Ah, yes. Those you send you a disgruntled email about why they aren’t reading/following anymore. Those are special. xo
I just don’t check who follows or unfollows. I was in the same boat as you, BUT BUT BUT BUT not the extent as you are in, at all, for popularity.
But, still, on my small scale, it was taking too much time away from my family to visit and comment back.
I try to comment back, in the order of comments received, I used to try to carry over and begin again the next day, but one day…after 3 hrs straight on the computer, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I try to visit once a week, that’s all I can do.
I have been ignored , etc., with my tweets, on twitter. And I won’t say by whom, but I will say that I’m a big girl, and it’s my decision to keep following people or not.
If I get so much joy out of their tweets, then why unfollow just b/c they ignore me?
I still like them. They still make me laugh, so I’m going to keep following: It’s my decision to do that. If it hurts too much to be ignored, then I should unfollow.
But, I understand–and it’s worth it to me, the joy I get, to read what they tweet or post.
No one is making me follow them..it’s my decision.
I dont check to see who unfollows me. truth be told, I am not in a place emotionally where I can handle rejection right now. There are a lot of bloggers and friends from when I was on twitter in 09/10 at my other account who dont follow me now. I dont know if they dont realize it, but mostly Im too insecure to ask for a follow back if they used to but dont. If there’s someone new that doesnt follow back, I will ask them to follow without feeling intimidated. Similarly, I dont want to know who stopped subscribing to my blog, or defriended me on facebook. Its just where I am. Later, I may feel like you and want to make sure I unfollow people who “broke up with me”.
I occasionally check friend or follow to see who isn’t following me back, but not very often because it DOES hurt. I used to joke “I ain’t no follow back girl” when a guy in our local tweetup group teased me about not following him back right away. I just don’t feel comfortable following people i don’t know (especially men). But I do try to pay attention who is engaging with me on twitter and try to follow back then.
I have major blog commenting guilt- I used to be so good at replying to every comment or visiting every blog that stopped by mine, but then I had another baby and then took on another job (and also in came facebook and twitter) and I just didn’t have the time. I find that my google reader is a burden. But I still wish I could reply like I used to.
Steph
Is it bad that I don’t keep track followers or unfollowers? I used to keep up on both, meticulously. But now my twitter mailbox goes to a backup email address and I haven’t looked up unfollowers in months.
That said, I almost always follow anyone who @replies me and most people that I have met in person get a permanent spot on the followed list.
I think lots of people get overwhelmed thinking that they have to read/respond/follow/comment on/to every single tweet/post/update whatever. It’s too much for any human :)
I look at Twitter like a big river of stuff from people who I like or find interesting. I would never try to drink all of it at once but I do get in and swim around every now and then.
So, I never check, and now I wish I hadn’t. People who I KNOW were following me at one point are now on my people who don’t follow you back list.
My brother is one of them. Jerk. I am going to call him out on Twitter now. ;)
xoxo
If I unfollow someone on twitter, it is quite simply because we don’t use twitter in the same way. It doesn’t mean I don’t like them, it doesn’t mean they did something to piss me off, it just means we aren’t twitter-compatible in my head. I assume the same of anyone who unfollows me. So, while I do run friend or follow from time-to-time just to clean things up a bit, I make it a point not to get my panties in a wad over anything that I may find. Life’s too short to worry about that one person who stopped following, especially when you consider that there are 2,000,000+ people following Charlie Sheen and NOT ME. What’s THAT all about?
How is your sister today? Just wondering if she is better, or if you are still having her be in the hospital.
Just a note of encouragement, or whatever…
We have noticed through the years, that this stuff goes in fits and spurts. We had a few really bad years. So many family members died, other years people were so sick, and then, life smooths back out again, and gets more “normal”. Hopefully, you guys are in for some normal.
Oh on this one I want to read what everyone else said. ha.
I follow 400 people. I have nearly 900 followers. However, I know probably 300 of them are fake people/companies that I don’t care about/people who have tweeted once. If someone makes a point of talking to me, even twice, I follow back.
I don’t really care who unfollows me. I’m sure people do, just because I talk too much.
I don’t do the twitter thing. I have a hard enough time on facebook.
The manager of my department unfriended me a few weeks ago. I have no idea why, and I could be all butt hurt about it, but really, he saved me the trouble of deleting him. Now he can’t check up on me and what I’m doing, and I don’t have to worry that he’s gonna try to write me up for some dumb thing like posting a friend on my lunch break. (it’s been done).
i unfollowed you from twitter. my reasoning was simple: i stop following people if i don’t communicate with them much or if they dont respond to my “@” mentions, etc. you have a kajillion more followers than i so i assume you were busy. no hard feelings. :) i still adore you and read your blog, comment, etc. twitter always gets my goat because it will say someone wants to follow me and when i click “accept” it blocks them. lol, twitter hates me.
I guess I’m in the huge minority.
I don’t do auto-follow-back. I would also hate to think that someone was following me ONLY because I follow them. I think some of the more “famous” people I follow are in that boat, and it is convenient when I want to DM them something I think is exceedingly relevant to their interests (because I try to keep that to a minimum). Plus for that 10 seconds of shouting in the other room to my husband “Joe Famous is following ME on TWITTER WOO!”, it’s fun to pretend they’re following me because they actually think I’m cool.
But in reality, if they don’t care about me otherwise, if I’m not interesting enough for them to have followed on their own (based on a random tweet of mine that’s been passed along, or a direct @ tweet to them)… honestly, I think it’s like inviting all the kids in your class to your birthday party, even the ones you can’t stand. Or giving valentines to every one, instead of just the people you care about. Yeah, fewer kids get their feelings hurt with that method, but it completely negates what’s special about getting a valentine.
Sometimes I send tweets to people I’m not following. If they decide to follow me because I’m interesting, cool. If they decide to unfollow me because I didn’t follow them back… Based on their assumption that I don’t like them, they don’t like me.
Honestly? Twitter is one place where frankly, my dears, I just don’t give a damn. I know where to find the people I’m interested in, even if I’m not actually following them (in the technical sense, although checking in periodically is following too, isn’t it, sort of?), and unlike in real life, I just don’t feel any pressure to be popular.
Just to clarify, for people who are bigger bloggers, like you Loralee, especially if you’re upward-oriented, trying to grow your reader base or whatever, my attitude just isn’t feasible. To grow on twitter, you have to engage more people. But since my goal is to have a feed of what is relevant to me RIGHT NOW and to be able to connect with people that interest me… none of that matters. I know where to find you, even if you don’t see me there watching. :)
well, in one line – awesome post.
I like how you hit these issues and the emotions surrounding them head on. It’s funny, when I first joined twitter (almost three years ago!), I followed you because I liked your blog. (I always read, I’m a sucky commenter.) Then, you did a big “clean my stream” unfollow a few days later. I was all, “oh my god, twitter kind of sucks, that hurt a little.” But then we met at BlogHer and followed each other again and by then I’d realized how hard it is. How social media sucks you in and chews you up and can take up 27 hours a day if you let it. Every one has to limit in their own way. My way is that I try to interact with everyone I can in the times that I give myself to be on line, but outside of that, I just can’t keep up. I know it means I miss out on awesome people because we aren’t on at the same time or whatever, but that happens. I was an awesome commenter once upon a time and I always visited blogs and tried to make connections. These days, my reader and I have a bit of a love/hate relationship.
Wait, what was the original question? No. I don’t keep track of how unfollows me on twitter – and I’ve unfollowed on purpose maybe one time.
You know what? I love Twitter. I got my account in 2007 when they showed at the interactive portion of SXSW. But none of my friends are on it. It’s like I am in a black hole. Sometimes I tweet just to see if anyone is listening.. and I get nothing back. oh well. I am not deleting my account! I’ve had it since 2007! One day my twitter following will come. (right now it’s mostly advertisers and such.)
When I am on there I am a surfing fool. I follow a lot of news and special interest type accounts.
i unfollowed you. i am sorry. guilty even i still love you and will send you a diet coke if you need proof. i became too addicted to twitter and was spending hours upon hours a day reading, so i purged. i got rid of everyone who only posts their daily horoscope, only retweets things that don’t interest me and people i already get my fix of elsewhere. bloggers, soccer writers and the like. i come here all the time so i still get to enjoy your writing.
still friends?
bonnie aka @bonuela
I don’t always follow people on Twitter. Sometimes I just check in on them now again, because they have some habit or another that’s perfectly fine but I don’t personally want to spend my time on. Like tweeting about a lot of TV shows I don’t watch, for instance, or that person who has to tell the Internet every single time they’re drunk. It doesn’t interest me, so what’s the point? I find that I can often think someone is just great in real life but just not enjoy their tweets for whatever reason, and Twitter sort of takes the cake in the “When it’s annoying, it’s REAAAALLY annoying” department.
I also like to feel connected to the people I follow. You follow thousands upon thousands of people–a truly mindboggling number by my Amish standards. I’d continually feel as if I were missing everything if I did that. I read my complete Twitter stream, from start to finish, every day. I know that’s not how some people do it, but I prefer it that way.
I get why you might take it personally, but … I don’t think someone’s Twitter stream is them as a person, nor is someone rejecting you as a person if they don’t follow you. I can like the person just fine and not find some aspects of their online presence very interesting or relatable for whatever reason, and there are only so many hours in the day. I’ll just ask them to coffee instead or catch up with them the next time I see them. More to talk about! I have friends I don’t follow because all they do is complain online, and it’s tiresome, but they’re always great fun to actually go out with. Shrug.