Why I Unfollowed 180 People On Twitter
By LindaJM
Twitter friends?
Twitter is used to keep friends and business acquaintances notified of new projects and whatever else we might find worth sharing.
The micro blogging community can be a lot of fun.
What isn't fun is finding out that some people who you thought were your friends on Twitter are no longer following you back. That's what happened to me today when someone told me about Who Unfollowed Me? (see links below)
I discovered that a lot of people who I liked, respected, and followed, had unfollowed me. In other words, they didn't care enough about communicating with me to keep me on their follow list at Twitter.
Oh my goodness! Live and learn! I do understand that people get busy and want to cut back on followers at Twitter now and then, but I felt used... here I'd been following their tweets, looking at their links, and thinking we were "online friends" and it was only one-sided!
So, you know what I did? I started unfollowing all those disloyal people and I'm glad to say I'll have a lot fewer tweets to read in the future.
Twitter!
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Simple tools to unfollow people on Twitter
- Twitter Unfollower Tracker :: Twitter App :: Who Unfollowed Me?
who.unfollowed.me is a simple twitter app based around tracking the people that unfollow you - JustUnfollow - Unfollow Twitter users who do not follow you!
Using this site, unfollowing Twitter non-friends was easy!
Real friends v. real non-friends
Real friends won't unfollow you when you're following them on Twitter... so you know if they did that - they're not real friends! You won't miss them when you unfollow them back.
Personally, I like knowing who my friends are... and aren't.
Twitter!
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What I'd consider a good online friend...
A real friend won't desert you, will support you, will even RT and tweet your hubs and other pages. What does it cost to tweet someone else's stuff? Nothing! So that's a friendly gesture anyone would appreciate, right? If I like a page I'm on, I'll tweet it... whether I wrote the page or not!
Good online friends also respond to other people's tweets. I realize we'll never see all of them; I don't spend 24/7 tied to Twitter - I have too many other things to do even when I'm online! or... ESPECIALLY when I'm online. I'm here to work more than socialize! But if I see someone tweet about something important to them, I try to tweet back, take time to visit pages, and interact.
These things say, "YOU are important to me," and everyone I know wants to feel appreciated!
Twitter!
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Mutual support on Twitter and Hubpages
Basically what I'm saying here - is that if you support my efforts as a content writer online, I'll support yours.
I'm here to find ways to provide an income for myself. I'm not sure if you have the same financial need for money that I do, but I am definitely here to try to help others in need, as well as help myself so I can pay my bills.
Helping other content writers
- Content Writers Forum
A helpful place where content writers from many sites can help one another succeed.
This page made by Linda Martin of LJ Martin Web
- LJ Martin Web - Help for Internet-Based Small Business Startups
Start an internet based small business! Learn about marketing plans, internet marketing, and online entrepreneurship.
Your comments are welcome
I like how you think. Happy to be your follower. Rated up and shared.
Great thoughts and very useful. Have to admit I don't use Twitter as I should...there is only so much time in a day. One gripe I have is the folks who follow me that I don't have a clue who they are and for that matter WHY they would want to follow me...we don't seem to have anything in common...seems it is more for their own promotion somehow...so I don't always follow someone just because they follow me. I have "unfollowed" some who seem to think that tweeting every few seconds is a good idea but it just floods my inbox with more info than I want to read. Being courteous with our tweets seems a good practice to follow.
I do follow you dear lady and it is my pleasure to read your tweets.
Teh big problem with Twitter is trying to follow too many and then not even being able to find the tweets of your real friends, such as you, among the tweets of those I don't know. If it appears I have nothing in common with someone who has chosen to follow me, I don't follow back. But I don't unfollow people I "know" or those I've chosen to follow whether they follow me back or not. Among those I often don't follow back are those who have thousands of followers and I can't envision them ever really reading anything I tweet. Same thing goes for those who tweet a full screen in a matter of minutes and block out my real friends. I suspect a lot of unknowns follow me just so I'll follow back, and I don't know if they continue to follow after that or not. Time to weed again, so I'll try using one of your suggestions. Thanks.
LindaJM, I love your ideas in this Hub (I have a feeling your other hubs might be good as well). I hate it when I follow an ordinary person and they don't follow me back. Ordinary meaning, not celebrity like Oprah Winfrey, or someone like her. You can't possibly expect celebrities with millions of followers, follow their followers.
@LisaAuch - this incident definitely brought the idea of reciprocal friendship to my consciousness... and for that, I'm grateful.
@MyWebs - I followed you back on Twitter and here on HubPages, and will enjoy reading your articles - especially those on webdesign. I used to own a webdesign business and still maintain a blog about it.
@BevsPaper - I too don't use Twitter as much as some others.. but recently switched to Google Chrome where there's a great Twitter addon that's helping me stay in touch. I too unfollow people who tweet too much, or those who are using it to spam people. After unfollowing everyone who wasn't following me back I found I have at least twenty more followers than people I'm following. I need to go back and analyze why I'm not following them.
@Barbara - that second site link I posted above is a big time saver in case you need to delete a lot of people who aren't following you back. Like you, I've unfollowed people with 1000's of followers as I know they're not going to be able to follow my tweets or care about me as an online friend.
@RosaryB - Agreed, you can't expect celebrities and other well-known people to follow back or read your tweets. I deleted all of them too. I was tired of having a home page so filled with tweets that I couldn't connect well with people I care about, including family members and online friends and co-workers.
LisaAuch 19 months ago
I have found it hard online to understand and be aware that not everyone thinks as I do, or will 'pay it forwad' it is nice to know there are others without motive out there, thanks for this Linda!