Yesterday, on Twitter, Loic Le Meur decided to unfollow everyone he was following. Interestingly, he kept all his followers though.
Then today, Jason Calacanis has done the same thing – kept all his followers, but unfollowed them all!
This has to be seen as a crazy business move for Loic, as the producer of twhirl – a tool for managing your twitter account! Surely, having to dump those he followed because he could not keep up is hardly an endorsement of his software?
Jason Calacanis making this move is far less surprising. He has a hardcore of followers, who will follow him regardless of what he does.
Twitter unfollow trend
I might be wrong, but I think more highly-followed Twitter users will copy what Loic and Jason have done. Loic seems to have set a trend and made it OK for “Twitter celebrities” to delete all those they follow, whilst holding onto their ‘followers’ so they can broadcast to them.
What do you think?
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I hit the 2000 following mark and was unable to follow any more people. Twitter blocks you until your followers catch up with your follows once you hit 2000. In order to follow some people that I want to follow I had to unfollow others who I was following, but whose tweets weren’t particularly interesting to me or who haven’t been on for awhile.
Frankly, I am following / have about 400ish people and I can’t stand to log on to Twitter anymore because I can’t follow it all! I don’t know how these people do it like some of my friends who are/have THOUSANDS of people! Reading the home screen tweets right now with only 400 or so, is like listening to half of a phone conversation and you don’t even know who the party on the other end is. Ack! It’s electronic ADD at its worst and makes my eyes bug out even to try it.
TweetDeck is great for seeing specific friends, but only up to a point — plus it slows my laptop down somethin’ awful. Right now I’m just using Twitter to remotely update my Facebook status and occasionally I’ll Tweet a Five-Minute Organizing Tip just to give something of value. Besides that, I’m at a loss.
I do check my @MonicaRicci messages and direct messages every day so I don’t ignore someone who is speaking directly to me, but that’s about it anymore. I really have been wishing that I could really use Twitter to benefit my business, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to do it.
~Monica
I don’t think it makes sense to follow everyone who follows you and then only watch certain people in TweetDeck. I’d rather you not follow me at all than do a fake follow to be polite. But, the nice thing about Twitter is that we each have control of our own feed. There is no right answer. I personally feel that following NO ONE on Twitter is a bit self-important, but I can completely understand following just a 100 or so people. In the end, I don’t know why we continue to debate the correct way to use Twitter. SImply vote with your follow button.
What happens is, when celebs follow just a few people, their followers will go ahead and follow all of them, thinking they are important. I know myself, if I get followers I won’t necessarily follow them all back simply because i dont know these people and i’m not hugely interested in their tweets. But when I see celebs who aren’t following a single person, I wonder why they bother using Twitter at all.
I think ultimately we succeed most when we give most – EVEN and ESPECIALLY in business (just look at Zappos example and their commitment to outrageous customer service).
Unfollowing because you won’t suffer the consequences and you don’t care to manage the stream (when there are ways and systems to handle it all) to me is bold uncaring and not a real exchange of the energy of core business of give and take.
To me, it will illustrate who the REAL people are at their core as to who keeps their followings and who drops them.
Thanks for posting this Christian Fea
OH, yeah – follow me on Twitter at: http://www.twitter .com/lynnrose
and guess what? I’ll follow you back! (just give me a few days to manage it, k? thanks – lol)
Lynn
Twitter is what you make of it. There is no right or wrong method on how to use this platform. Some follow everyone. Others follow only a few. Given their “followership,” I am sure Loic and Jason get more DMs in a day than I have followers. That must be difficult to manage!
Don’t be bothered what others are doing with Twitter. Leverage it for your own personal and business needs.
I agree that Twitter is supposed to be a conversation and a way to share information with others. I don’t plan to “unfollow” other Tweeps, because I carefully choose who I follow to begin with. When someone follows me, I always check out their profile, their Tweets, and their website (Obviously, I am not a celebrity who gets 100’s of follows per day) to decide if I want to follow them. If the person seems like someone I’d like to be friends with in my personal or business life, then I follow. If not, I don’t.
Very interesting article – thanks for sharing,
Lisa :-)
http://twitter.com/LisaCapehart
When I first started with Twitter, I didn’t really know anyone, so I was following a lot of people I didn’t know. Now when I think about it, Do I really want to know what’s going on with a stranger? Maybe if it has to do with something I’m interested in, sure, but not just because they followed me.
I’ve also noticed a small handful of people unfollowing me – which is strange since they are the ones who followed me in the first place.. Oh well.. we’ll see how it goes. I’m still in the virginal stages of Twitter.. under 100 followers. Woo hoo!
http://twitter.com/workasateam2day