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Sometimes it can be a little confusing with all the 3rd. party Twitter app sites offering to help you maintain your Twitter lists or perform some other Twitter-based service. It appears a while back, Twitter had put restrictions on what these sites can and can’t do. Many blog articles written between 2007 – 2009 about sites that support Twitter users, list sites that have disappeared or fell completely out of favor with Twitter over time.
Like most online services, people will eventually find a way to exploit and abuse their Twitter lists.
You’d probably prefer to have more followers by e-mail or RSS, but as Bloggers, if we can walk away from your visit with a “follow”, there is a potential for someone to become more involved with our site’s community down the road.
But, what about the followers that do not follow you? Can we discuss this? I will share with you a site I discovered that is practical, easy to use, and allows you to unfollow the Twitter followers that do not follow you pretty efficiently…if this is your thing?!
Should I Unfollow Those Not Following Me?
Twitter users, as a blogger, I can tell you that the two easiest ways to get my attention is to leave a comment on my blog, or to begin following me on Twitter. I have been fortunate to have been exposed to many blogs/bloggers this way.
I’ll admit, my stance on unfollowing Twitter users who do not follow me has changed…particularly if we blog in the same niche/category. Why wouldn’t you follow a fellow blogger in the same industry?
Running an small business, offline, with two Fortune 500 companies as clients, can be a complete drain on time. So, when I log into Twitter and look over the Twitter timeline, I want to quickly identify dynamic content that directly pertains to my interests. Therefore, I’m pretty selective of who I follow. Aren’t you?
Yet, I see Bloggers that feel compelled to reciprocate a follow with everyone and anyone who follows them — even the spammers! It is solely up to you to make the call of returning the follow of someone outside your blog’s general category. But also note that it does impact the quality of your Twitter experience.
JustUnfollow
If you happen to be one of those people who feels offended by someone not following you back on Twitter, you can easily recognize and unfollow them using JustUnfollow. It is a Twitter-based app that displays your Twitter contacts that do not follow you back followed by the option to unfollow them with one click.
To use JustUnfollow, simply go to the site, login with Twitter, then authorize the app to access your account. You can now see those people who do not follow back. This app also displays the number of friends and followers of the users that it displays.
If you presently have a few hundred or even a few thousand followers and are committed to now unfollowing those not following you on Twitter, you will have to exercise great patience, since there is a daily limit of 50.
JustUnFollow. That’ll fix ‘em!
11 Comments
Hi Jeffrey
How on topic this post is! Over the weekend I unfollowed over 100 people. As I only have about 500 followers that was a lot of people. However, I had noticed that I was suddenly getting lots of totally irrelevant tweets on my site. As I am no techie and do so much manually I have enough to do with scanning tweets to sort the fluff from quality posts on blogs I want to visit. I put it down to bots and spammers.
Also, since I started blogging I have realised that some I followed and who followed me in the early day do not add anything to the conversation and in fact some only tweet every few months so definitely aren’t part of the community I want to connect with.
I don’t unfollow someone who doesn’t follow me as I don’t follow them so they will follow me back. I usually follow those who provide quality content that is going to help my blogging journey, those who I interact with on my own blog and others in the blogging community I am actively a part of. There are a couple of bloggers who have never visited my site and left a comment but I still visit their sites, comment and continue to learn heaps from them. Most are active and I know we all do it differently so it’s whatever fits for each of us I’d say. Thanks for sharing Jeffrey.
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia recently posted..So Little Time- So Much To Do
Since i do not use Twitter so much, i pretty much do not care who my followers are and if i need to unfollow people who do not follow me.
Sometimes i checked my account, and i follow only some special people that are worthy to follow.
My followers, are some spammers some are genuine followers LOL.
Kimi recently posted..Remove wordpress footer links — How To
I have a number of people who don’t follow me but I will continue to follow them because I find the info that they share to be of help to me.
I use lists a lot on Twitter and find them very helpful. Couldn’t imagine running Twitter without using lists.
Dawn recently posted..Nov 10- The Best Probiotic
I use a similar site (friendorfollow.com) but if someone has something interesting to say I don’t mind if they’re not following me back
I’m more likely to unfollow someone for tweeting too much junk!
John recently posted..Loch Lomond
I’ve been using who.unfollowed.me and most of the time I notice that a lot of those that do unfollow are those that follow me and give it an hour or two before unfollowing again, maybe it’s in the hope that I’ll follow back, but I do utilize Twitter lists a lot and this has helped me keep my twitter streams quite uncluttered.
I also have a habit of unfollowing those that haven’t tweeted in over a month, not much point following someone if they never say anything!
Karen recently posted..Five Pound Jobs- Fiverr But For The UK!
This is exactly what I was wondering. I’ve just started using Nutshell Mail to tell me who has unfollowed me and when and it does tend to be people who only just started following me that day or the day before (and who often don’t seem to have anything to do with my line of work) who then unfollow me.
It’s a sneaky tactic I reckon to get you to follow them back so that they can increase their number of followers (and status) without looking like they’re following tons of people to achieve it.
i follow people i personally know, news folk, those i “meet” in directories i signed up for, parenting advocates, people with information on topics i am basically interested in.
i unfollow those who have not tweeted for a year or more, and even those who tweet toooo much and non-stop, or tweeting stuff i cannot relate to.
Mama Mia recently posted..Mommy and Maias Mommy Academy Day-Out
I follow people because I want to hear what they have to say, not necessarily because I want them to follow me.
But I could be in the minority.
I guess I equate this with sub4sub on YouTube. If you are on YT and you practice sub4sub, then you really are not getting quality subscriptions, i.e. people who actually watch your videos. Sub4sub is purely about numbers.
That is how I see this whole Twitter thing too. I like to follow people in my niche, but if it’s not valuable to me or becomes spammy, I unfollow. I don’t expect people to follow me back who I follow. I hope that they do, but I can’t demand it. If someone has 20,000 followers, what percent of that following is actually engaing in what they do or offer?
just my 2 cents!
Thanks so much for this!
This is a zillion times better than “Friend Or Follow” which does not pull up your entire list of non-followers and is often inaccurate…just bookmarked this and used this!
Thanks!!
caren gittleman recently posted..Happy Thanksgiving! Video
Thanks for mentioning justunfollow.com
I made the tool because a lot of times people follow you and then when you follow them back out of courtesy they unfollow you. Apart from that, I also needed a way to see new followers.
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