Alexis Martin Neely’s decision to stop following the 34,000 friends amassed during her 17 months on Twitter. Not, she posted, ”as a public relations stunt or to be bold. Did it for my own need for focus and desire to connect with those in my stream”
Just two months earlier, Joel Drapper similarly nixed all but 100 of his 13,000 friends and effectively laid out his reasoning in “Why I Unfollowed Everyone on Twitter and Why You Should Too.” [link no longer active] Twitter rockstar, Gerald Weber, with some 90,000 friends, challenged him in Why It’s a Terrible Idea to Unfollow Everyone on Twitter. The post and comments that ensued are an excellent insight into two very different schools of thought about how and why we use this medium.
Weber maintains that a mass unfollow renders a one-sided relationship and not a “fair exchange of information” and concludes “there are more ethical and less antisocial options than mass unfollowing thousands of people all in one swoop”. I’m not sure why “fair exchange of information” became an issue. And some of the alternatives proposed seemed less ethical and more antisocial.
Frankly, I’m more concerned about missing posts by people I value and trust than a serendipitous tweet from follower #81,233. And I’m probably more likely to discover that tweet in my own timeline via a re-tweet from someone I follow and certainly have access to it in the public timeline.
Drapper’s candid elucidation in his defense along with spot-on analysis from Bill Nickerson (LoneWolf) are compelling.
On Weber’s contention that applications such as Tweetdeck offers a solution, Nickerson responded with “I don’t see how it is any more one sided than it was before he unfollowed. If he uses TweetDeck to follow the 100 and ignores the rest it’s still one sided but the followers don’t know it.” A good point addressing multiple issues raised that never got traction.
I had subsequent conversations with Weber and while I don’t agree with much of his reasoning, he somehow managed to respond & thoughtfully engage, and did so, amidst the sometimes vitriolic chatter with grace. He may be the exception.
Neely is now “following peeps back slowly and based on connection”. Part of that process is engaging in a more effective version of #FollowFriday by sending out an individual tweet for each connection as she adds them, showing a public appreciation and at the same time, giving that person props and exposure.
I’m fascinated because these bold actions and thoughtful conversations serve as a tremendous educational tool in our engagement of emerging social media platforms. Fascinated to observe this medium evolve and the way we navigate it based on our own ideas and expectations about community and relationships.
A week later Neely is following 45 friends and the still faithful who follow her, not because she’s simply following them, but because they obviously value what she has to say is at 27,000! Seems to be working out.
Perhaps a new Twitter trend is emerging.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
So far, since unfollowing everyone, I’ve lost about 1/3 of the people who were following me before. But, you know what? That’s fine because they must have only been following me because I was following them and what’s the point of that?
Now, I’m following people I know, like and trust who have made an effort to interact with me (other than a few celebs I’m following like Larry King and John Stamos
)
My tweet stream is fun to look at because it’s all people I want to keep up with and my DM inbox is empty other than a few DMs from people i want to talk with.
I’m on Twitter to connect. If you want me to follow you, reach out, talk to me. Show me you have something interesting to say that I will want to keep up with.
Alexis
Alexis, thanks for your insight!
i’ve only been on Twitter for about four months and the reason I was late to the party is because I was unsure of how to navigate this medium. The Pros and Cons of Twitter, a 38 minute podcast featuring Kevin O’Keefe, Robert Ambrogi, Scott H. Greenfield (what an intro, eh?) did the trick for me.
Decisions like yours are so important to fledgling Twitterers, and it especially resonates with me since I hold similar values about engaging, communication and conversation.
I’ve unfollowed over 500 in four months, and like you, many subsequently unfollowed revealing their (mostly) “numbers only” goal. There are many that I follow, whose content and perspective I value and who don’t follow-back. If my twitter stream is not terribly useful to them, then I actually appreciate their integrity in not feeling obligated to return the follow. I am in no way offended. I’ve also blocked hundreds of spammers or spam-like Twitterers. Sure they add numbers but de-value the quality.
So, this is a very long thank-you for your bold decision and follow-up which serves as a useful guide (and affirmation) to me and, I’m sure many others.
Tim
Hey,
Sorry my blog is down. You can read my article linked from this one in google cache if you really want to.
I’ll try to get it back up as soon as possible.
Regards,
Joel Drapper
Hey Joel, thanks for the update. I appreciate your engagement of the Twitter-sphere about the decision to mass unfollow and agree with many of the points you made.
Good luck with getting your blog back online – I know how tedious that process can be.
Tim
I think it’s great. While I certainly didn’t do it on as large a scale, I had hundreds of followers whom I followed initially out of reciprocation, yet those whom I truly cared for on a human level due to our relationship were often lost somewhere in my stream. I’m still able to interact with those who post to me and my experience is now back to being enjoyable instead of pointless. I do not currently have a business I am marketing but I know that personal relationships would fuel it far more than automatic reciprocation and pretend relationships.
Mindy, thanks so much for sharing your experience and thoughts. I agree with you and certainly relate to your description of the pleasure of interacting on a more personal level.
By the way, enjoyed checking out your blog. What a thoughtful and uniquely interesting experience and writing! Keep on posting.
Hi Tim
I think this phenomenon is a natural evolution as people figure out how to use tools like Twitter. There will be some who can do the mass following and manage to stay engaged (like Gerald seems to do well at). Most of us can’t function that way and need to keep a smaller circle.
I agree with you that Gerald and Joel both were quite thoughtful and I enjoyed watching and contributing to the conversation. I believe that it was a fantastic example of dialogue in social media. Ideas were expressed in a meaningful way. And while I don’t agree 100% with Gerald, he did make some excellent points and explained them well.
I hope that the web continues to provide us with meaningful exchanges of ideas. We don’t have to agree with each other all the time but we can still learn and grow from the dialogue that ensues.
LoneWolf, thanks for your very thoughtful comment.
I agree with you about the natural evolution — I’m just grateful to observe and learn from these nuanced veterans, and that they graciously allow me to contribute and voice an opinion.
I, too, really enjoyed the conversation around Gerald’s article, which is where, of course, I found your comment. I do look forward to continued meaningful and challenging conversations as we peer over the horizon of tech’s always new and exciting journey
Thanks for the insight Tim! I don’t follow a zillion people on Twitter for some of the reasons articulated above. The tweeple I follow are people who I’m genuinely interested in and would love to engage with. I started off auto-following everyone who followed me, but changed that very quickly! I’m not into amassing numbers for numbers sake. At the end of my day, it’s all about making connections and building relationships with my tweeps!
Thanks so much for your comment, Loi-Natalie! This wonderful platform, Twitter, which facilitates real time exchanges and relationship building with an unimaginable variety of people is still evolving and I’m excited to be a part of it — forever learning and modifying my own rules of engagement.
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