The significance of being unfollowed by me

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I got an interesting question from Ethan Griffin via Twitter yesterday:

@cspenn Quick question… Did you unfollow me on purpose? or is it one of those new fangled tools you have?

The short answer: ascribe absolutely no significance to being followed or unfollowed by me. As I joked in response, if Jason Falls is the Social Media Explorer, I’m the Social Media Mad Scientist with beakers and test tubes filled with APIs, data files, SQL statements, and PHP scripts. That’s what I do, experiment with stuff until it blows up – thus, the significance of being followed or unfollowed by me is roughly zero, since I’m not explicitly assigning any value to who I follow or unfollow beyond whatever I’m working on at the time.

The original question does raise a followup question though: how much weight do YOU assign to someone following you? Given that the level of commitment is near zero, does someone following you have any material significance? Why would you value that in any way, given that following isn’t required in order to have conversation or create a valuable relationship?

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Comments

11 responses to “The significance of being unfollowed by me”

April 14, 2010

danieljohnsonjr

The only thing following someone on Twitter does is give them the permission to send you a direct message. I think people tend to get too wrapped up emotionally around this idea of whether someone is following them or not.

I'm constantly evaluating the benefit I get from assigning attention to different Twitter accounts, because I strive to make the tool useful to me.

Reply
April 14, 2010

danieljohnsonjr

The only thing following someone on Twitter does is give them the permission to send you a direct message. I think people tend to get too wrapped up emotionally around this idea of whether someone is following them or not.

I’m constantly evaluating the benefit I get from assigning attention to different Twitter accounts, because I strive to make the tool useful to me.

Reply
April 17, 2010

Jess

I think it totally has to do with ego: someone you felt was a connection unfollows and then you feel, well, dissed. Even though people have variable ways to follow your information, still that first connection being unraveled may leave you feeling like the last kid picked in gym. Really, it is a blow to the ego at first, but then, as we realize how much our data streams and the ability to follow them is changing, we'll all see that follow or unfollow its just noise unless we can manage it effectively.

@jesskry

Reply
April 17, 2010

Lois Ardito

Timely! I'm a Rookie for sure. Trying to figure out where the value is for our small business in using social media tools and enjoying it, sometimes more than the actual business. In the beginning I followed just about everyone that followed me, except for the x-rated lovelies, but just this morning I started looking at things differently. I think I do have to unfollow some folks mainly because their multiple tweets clutter the feed and the really interesting ( to me) tweets get buried in the mess.
So at some point soon, I will take the plunge to “unfollow” some. Who am I to do such a thing? And yet, as you stated, I think I feel like this because I did believe that someone following me added value to me, so to unfolIow some seems like a horrible thing to do. Getting it now.
Thank you for a great post,
Lois Ardito

Reply
April 17, 2010

Jess

I think it totally has to do with ego: someone you felt was a connection unfollows and then you feel, well, dissed. Even though people have variable ways to follow your information, still that first connection being unraveled may leave you feeling like the last kid picked in gym. Really, it is a blow to the ego at first, but then, as we realize how much our data streams and the ability to follow them is changing, we'll all see that follow or unfollow its just noise unless we can manage it effectively.

@jesskry

Reply
April 17, 2010

Lois Ardito

Timely! I'm a Rookie for sure. Trying to figure out where the value is for our small business in using social media tools and enjoying it, sometimes more than the actual business. In the beginning I followed just about everyone that followed me, except for the x-rated lovelies, but just this morning I started looking at things differently. I think I do have to unfollow some folks mainly because their multiple tweets clutter the feed and the really interesting ( to me) tweets get buried in the mess.
So at some point soon, I will take the plunge to “unfollow” some. Who am I to do such a thing? And yet, as you stated, I think I feel like this because I did believe that someone following me added value to me, so to unfolIow some seems like a horrible thing to do. Getting it now.
Thank you for a great post,
Lois Ardito

Reply
April 20, 2010

Del Putnam

The value of following someone really depends on how you use Twitter. I constantly read the twitter stream of everyone I follow, so I prefer a high signal to noise ratio in that stream.

I follow people because I have found many of the things they say to be entertaining or valuable to me. I usually find the people I follow through a personal relationship or through someone retweeting or mentioning them. If the RT is interesting or the mention somehow intrigues me, I'll look at that person's twitter stream. If there appears to be a relatively high percentage of things that might be interesting to me, I follow that person. If I later find a low signal to noise ration, I'll unfollow that person.

So, you're right that you don't have to follow someone to have a conversation with them, but you have to make more “clicks” to get to their content. I'm lazy and prefer fewer clicks. …but that's just me.

Reply
April 21, 2010

Del Putnam

The value of following someone really depends on how you use Twitter. I constantly read the twitter stream of everyone I follow, so I prefer a high signal to noise ratio in that stream.

I follow people because I have found many of the things they say to be entertaining or valuable to me. I usually find the people I follow through a personal relationship or through someone retweeting or mentioning them. If the RT is interesting or the mention somehow intrigues me, I’ll look at that person’s twitter stream. If there appears to be a relatively high percentage of things that might be interesting to me, I follow that person. If I later find a low signal to noise ration, I’ll unfollow that person.

So, you’re right that you don’t have to follow someone to have a conversation with them, but you have to make more “clicks” to get to their content. I’m lazy and prefer fewer clicks. …but that’s just me.

Reply
May 13, 2010

Ric Dragon

1. I can't ascribe any importance to whether someone follows me or not. Too many motivations.
2. IF I'm following someone, it is significant. Everyone I'm following right now is interesting. I love going into my Twitter stream now – because I've cut out anyone who just isn't interesting or otherwise engaged in intereseting dialogue.
3. IF I'm NOT following someone, you can't ascribe ANY importance to it – for there are just too many interesting people out there, and the circumstances under which I've follow someone are too complex.

So, to sum it: If someone doesn't follow me; no big deal. If I follow someone, its a big deal. If I don't follow someone, its not a big deal.

Reply
May 13, 2010

Ric Dragon

1. I can’t ascribe any importance to whether someone follows me or not. Too many motivations.
2. IF I’m following someone, it is significant. Everyone I’m following right now is interesting. I love going into my Twitter stream now – because I’ve cut out anyone who just isn’t interesting or otherwise engaged in intereseting dialogue.
3. IF I’m NOT following someone, you can’t ascribe ANY importance to it – for there are just too many interesting people out there, and the circumstances under which I’ve follow someone are too complex.

So, to sum it: If someone doesn’t follow me; no big deal. If I follow someone, its a big deal. If I don’t follow someone, its not a big deal.

Reply
May 13, 2010

Ric Dragon

1. I can't ascribe any importance to whether someone follows me or not. Too many motivations.
2. IF I'm following someone, it is significant. Everyone I'm following right now is interesting. I love going into my Twitter stream now – because I've cut out anyone who just isn't interesting or otherwise engaged in intereseting dialogue.
3. IF I'm NOT following someone, you can't ascribe ANY importance to it – for there are just too many interesting people out there, and the circumstances under which I've follow someone are too complex.

So, to sum it: If someone doesn't follow me; no big deal. If I follow someone, its a big deal. If I don't follow someone, its not a big deal.

Reply