SocialToo, a useful management tool for your social media accounts, has just announced on its blog that Twitter has requested they take away the auto-unfollowing feature.
Up until now, SocialToo subscribers could set their Twitter account to automatically unfollow people when they unfollowed you. Sounds like an efficient way of managing an account, doesn’t it?
On the SocialToo blog they say they added this feature because “when I auto-follow, some times later on those people unfollow you again”. The point being that as Twitter has set out a ratio to ensure you are only follow people in proportion to the number of people who follow you back, it allows you, the Twitter user, to keep adding more followers who keep following you, and dump the ones who don’t.
Doesn’t that mean that you are only in Twitter for the follower numbers?
My take on follower numbers is that they are nothing more than Emporer’s Clothing if you are using Twitter to help promote your brand online.
Yes, the number of followers is a useful indicator of how “popular” you may be and give you one measurement of how “popular” you may become over time, but just because someone follows you, doesn’t mean that they read or act on your tweets.
Tools like auto-unfollow are incredibly useful for those of you who just want to focus on numbers but for most of you reading this, I assume you like to use Twitter like I do – follow people who interest you, engage with you and you learn from. And not follow people just because they are following you or you want them to follow you back.
Noise is not helpful in your day-to-day lives. But conversation and engagement is.
Which is why I think it is very interesting that Twitter itself has taken a stand against auto-unfollows and asked third party applications, like SocialToo, to remove it.
What do you think?
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Interesting, and a good move I think, – I get about 3-5 new followers a day, but my follower numbers only creep up by about 2-3 a week, – that means that most of those that follow me, unfollow me when they find that I only follow gardeners and others that engage me & interest me, and won’t follow back anyone that a) professes to be a “media guru” b) only has links and no conversation c) follows me to persuade me to buy there product. – Let hope that this cuts out those who have 1 tweet, following 863 and have 54 followers!
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Karen Skidmore Reply:
January 16th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
I like your “who to follow” policy Claire. Makes a lot of sense and I am sure you find Twitter gives you a lot more value because of it.
BTW if anyone is after some great practical gardening advice as well as some friendly banter, I recommend you check out Claire on Twitter – you can find her at http://www.Twitter.com/plantpassion
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I find that so strange! In fact, this is one of the things that I particularly like about Twitter, compared to other social media platforms, e.g. LinkedIn or Facebook, the fact that following does not have to be mutual. You are free to follow people that you think have interesting, funny or inspiring things to say. To me, it is completely irrelevant whether they follow me back or not.
Equally, whenever I get a new follower I check them out – mainly to see if I even want them as followers – if they look dodgy or just have one weird, cryptic tweet, I usually block them straightaway. I only follow new followers back if there is something about their tweets that really speaks to me – or if I know them personally, of course. In most cases, however, I think, yes, you’re very welcome to follow my tweets, but please don’t be offended if I don’t follow yours. It’s this freedom that makes Twitter special, as far as I’m concerned.
So, why on earth would I want to automatically follow or unfollow people that follow or unfollow me? It completely defeats the object as far as I’m concerned…
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Karen Skidmore Reply:
January 16th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Hi Betti – I see you are a twit after my own heart
I absolutely agree with your idea that you don’t have to follow someone back just because they follow you. And pleased you take the time to block unwanted followers. It’s what I do every time and I’ve noticed I hardly get any spam or bot accounts compared with this time last year when it seemed to be dozens every day!!
BTW – if you would like to share your twitter id please do.
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Good reflection on the SocialToo notice.
I’m in the middle of reassessing my twitter practices.
On my personal twitter account @cheekturner, I’ve been autofollowing people who follow me. My niave thinking was that if they are interested in my thoughts, then I want to check out theirs. The downside is that many people don’t follow me because they are interested in my tweets, they follow me because they want to sell me something. If they post a series of self promoting tweets, or a continual stream of quotes or a high number of ‘money making/list building tips… I unfollow.
On my business twitter account @bftrainer, I have no auto-actions and it feels much more natural. I follow people when they catch my eye in a RT from an existing follower or if they comment on the blog. I can’t help feeling that I’m missing out on a relationship though…
Not sure which method I prefer but they both work, especially as I manage twitter on my ohne where both accounts appear as one anyway
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Karen Skidmore Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Ally. And interesting that you run both your twitter accounts differently, so it’s great that you can compare the auto-or-not-to-auto approaches.
I can’t help think that your business account is a lot more productive though when it comes to building relationships. For every relationship you may feel you are missing out on, I’m sure it makes room for building stronger ones with your current ones.
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This is an interesting post. I have noticed people doing this. Why is it usually the ‘Media Guru’s’ who do this? One might hope that with all their media knowledge, they’d know how embarrassingly transparent it is. I follow those who interest me and have something of value to share; it is not conditional that they follow me back. Hopefully I’m interesting enough for them to want to, and that is the key, I think. Twitter encourages you to post only the good stuff so that we earn our audience.
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Karen Skidmore Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Great point, Heather, about it not being conditional for others to follow back. It’s one of the things I like about Twitter is that you don’t have to be “friends” or be “connected” to each other to get access to someone’s tweets and learn from them.
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