I follow a lot of people on Twitter.
It seems only fair to me that if I follow you and you follow me back, I’ll continue to follow you. There are some exceptions, however, that I think are fair and ought to be adopted by most people.
I thought I’d share them here; let me know what you think.
Here’s how to get unfollowed on Twitter:
1. If you’re rude to me…
Common courtesy means a lot to me, so if you’re rude and abusive, you’ll get unfollowed. I want to be an agent of change in people’s lives, but like a bully on the playground, I don’t have to put up with you calling my family names and telling me I’m stupid.
2. If you DM me with a sexual offer…
I recognize that part of what marketers of sexual sites do is create accounts and DM other users with offers from those sites. I’m not going to put up with is, so I’ll just unfollow you.
3. If we don’t speak the same language…
This is a result of my own short-comings. I only speak English, a little French, and read a little Biblical Greek. If we can’t communicate, I don’t see the purpose for us to talk to each other. I love other cultures, but I can’t listen to talk radio in other languages either, there’s no context for me to figure out what’s being said, so I just move on.
4. If you are only hocking your wares…
I occasionally talk about my books and other stuff I’ve made, but I also talk about tons of other things. I expect you to do so as well. An occasional commercial is fine, but the ratio has to be mostly other stuff with al little advertising, not the other way around.
5. If your tweets make no sense to me…
I’m not saying you tweet nonsensical stuff. I’m saying if you tweet things that contradict themselves, like a profanity filled tweet about how great Church was today. Yep, it’s happened and yep, I unfollowed.
6. If you have more than an occasional bad word…
I can tolerate a lot, but your ratio of profanity to other words should be more like at least 100:1, not 2:1.
7. If your picture is pornographic…
I just can’t have it in my stream. It’s not because I think I’m better than you. It’s because I know how broken I am and susceptible to those images that I can’t have them around me.
8. If you haven’t tweeted in over a month…
I want to follow active users, not people who once were. I might make an exception for my college roommate, but unless I know you personally, don’t be surprised if you come back after a couple of months and find that I’ve unfollowed you.
9. If you DM me telling me that I have to go to a third-party site to prove I’m a real person…
There’s a site that does this and it bugs me. I asked them if I could be put on a white-list of real people, have an account that didn’t spam people who followed me, or could do something else other than paying them to leave me alone. They said I couldn’t, so now I just unfollow anyone who uses this service.
I love connecting with people on Twitter, but it’s just sometimes the case that I have to unfollow people that I’d otherwise like to follow.
What about you, who will you unfollow on Twitter every time?
Jeremy Smith says
I add the “egg avatar” or no bio prevents me from adding you.
Paul Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
When I’m adding followers, I look for recent tweeters (within the last couple of days). I don’t worry so much about the description or egg avatar b/c I have good followers that have both problems, but it’s easier to unfollow people who don’t have avatars or descriptions if they don’t follow back, or have some other issue.
Paul
Rachel Blom says
OK, I’ll try tweeting in Biblical Greek…see how many followers I gain/lose 🙂
Eric Dye says
THIS.