OK, OK. Everyone, it seems, is talking about the people who are unfollowing hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter and then following back 2-300 people. Chris Brogan did it first. Then Michael Hyatt, and now I guess other people are falling like a chain of dominoes.
I am not happy that people who have been role models in the online world are doing this all at once, all at the same time, and I have two reasons for that. First, whether it’s intended or not, I think it bespeaks a desire to close ranks, create cliques, or otherwise create a list of “who’s cool” and who ain’t. In addition, I worry about people who are just getting started. If these well-respected folks aren’t following anyone new back, it’s going to be thousands of times harder for those people to break through the granite ceiling that is success in this space.
At the same time, I look in wonder at the folks who are just so beyond flustered at this, to the point where they are badmouthing these people in the broad Twitter stream. Is it worth it? Do you want to look like a jerk just because Darren Rowse unfollowed you? I don’t really get that.
Above all else though, this whole chain of events – the initiation of the unfollowings, the reactions, the back-and-forth, the squabbling on Twitter and in blogs – it bespeaks a lack of health in the online world. It makes us all look really, really juvenile. Do your customers want to see you cursing the big names? If you’re here on behalf of a nonprofit, is it going to help a lot of people to lament that some people are unfollowing other people on Twitter?
I know there are some deep-seated feelings on all sides of this issue. I totally get it. I understand both sides, all sides, 100%. But seriously, people, after the last week, isn’t it clear that this is not worth our time? Isn’t it clear that there’s much more to life than who is following who on a website? Have we not graduated beyond this level of micro-analysis, pettiness, shallowness, and other nesses?
This is the last I’m going to say about this issue. I’ve voiced my opinions, I’ve tried to intercede where people were becoming unreasonable. If you want to juggle your professionalism with complaining about stuff like this, I guess that’s cool. By the same token, if you want to spend your time following and unfollowing and then refollowing people, that’s cool too. I’m on to other stuff though, okay? I hope you’ll join me.
Image by Ruth Livingstone. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Rbut
Twitter and its tweeps need a dose of reality – you tell them!
Doesn’t she? 😉 !!
I do what I can….:)
And you should be on to other stuff! Margie!
I haven’t heard much about this, other than Darren unfollowing people. I like your position on how it will make it a bit harder on newer people to this world. Conversely, however, a pretty helpful element of my ideology is the need to laterally think, and find creative ways of making cool stuff happen. The new folks will be fine, I think, [provided they can do that. THERE, I kind of disagreed with you finally! (remember that?)
I think having your own way of dealing with who you’re going to follow and unfollow from the start, is ultimately the best. For example, I follow people and give them a chance. If they’re posting too many links and not talking enough, AND THEIR CONTENT IS SUBPAR, why wouldn’t I unfollow them? I’d just be hurting myself having to look at their streams; streams I don’t care about, like or align with.
On the other hand, people like Julien Smith, who’s content lately (and in the past) really aligns with my ideology on life, will always have my follow. Unless of course they start sucking.
Na mean! ?
To your comment about “isn’t there more important things in life” – probably. 😉 But hey.. peeps choose the level of importance things hold.
Love your writing Margie. Hope you’re at some of the blog/web events in the coming years.
OH my God, we disagreed. I’m going to probably have to write a post calling you out and calling you a dirtbag now. *sigh* It’s tough being me…:)
I am sure new people will be fine if they can endure. I got a lot of help from some of these folks who are now unfollowing everyone though, and I’m still pretty small potatoes. If you have literally no prayer of ever getting on to a big person’s radar, it’s going to take a *lot* longer to make any sort of impact, unfortunately. Even though the benefits of getting promoted by a big name aren’t long-lasting, it can be enough to introduce you to a lot of great people. That’s part of the game, and it’s changing now.
I have only ever unfollowed one person. I thought their tweeting style was neat until I realized that all they were doing was tweeting lists of names all day long. That got really irritating. And I never heard anything when I unfollowed. Maybe they were a bot. I’ve gotten some grief when I haven’t followed people back, but that just sort of validates my decision. If you throw a fit because I don’t follow you back, we probably were not meant to be connected.
I’d love to meet ya. Thanks for your sweet comment 🙂
On the one hand I can see the point of those that did so – Twitter is a difficult beast to tame, look at all the third-party things you would be lost about.
On the other, you hit the nail on the head. Although we have previously discussed this when talking about “exclusive” forums. I absolutely hate the idea of them but as others have pointed out to me, those that are successful in social media have to employ staff and have to be unsocial as their business now is being them.
What’s sad is that rather than look elsewhere for the same advice, people sign up and pay. I rarely see exclusive content I need to pay for that cannot be found elsewhere for free. I do not feel the need to buy into the personality celebration economy.
Is it being a jerk to call out people who did the whole follow back thing to build a community only to then do a mass unfollow?
There are enough A-listers/internet celebs that provide content for free to keep the others honest. The concern is where the cliques go next.
The hilarious hypocrisy of preaching diversity, different viewpoints and engaging whilst simultaneously reducing their own personal options for them is not lost on some of us.
I think you pretty much covered all of the bases there, Nic. As I wrote on Chris’s site the other day, to me it seems like all of the superheroes are leaving Twitteropolis to go to their own super best friends fort. And that’s fine – it’s safe for them and stuff. But no one will be able to find them, especially not new people who could use some guidance and advice.
I dunno, we’ll see how it all shakes out. I just am hoping for s’more civility about the whole thing, from everyone.
I agree with everything you said here. I *sorta* understand why Chris did it….as for the copy cats, I just hope Chris doesn’t start wearing neon and parachute pants.
With that said I think about this guy I met a radio convention 2 months ago who bragged to me that Chris Brogan followed him. Having been on twitter for a few years, I remember kinda chuckling when I heard that cause I know Chris used to follow everybody back in the beginning. I thought it was cute. I just wonder when that same person realizes that Chris didn’t think he was/is important to follow them back that it will hurt their feelings. I don’t know what else to say about that.
I don’t think its any of our business who follows who or unfollows who but like you said, the new guy who doesn’t understand and is actually the only one who gets hurt here.
I am glad you wrote this cause EVERYONE has been thinking it.
Yeah, it’s really people who are new to the online world that I’m worried about. I’ve been here for about a year and kind of know the ebb and flow, but that’s in large part because I was able to connect with a lot of people who had been there before me. I always envisioned that that was how the online world worked. The people who had been around the longest and who had the most success reached out and brought new people up, till the pile of lasagna got bigger and bigger (and then what? Who knows?).
I hope that people don’t get hurt feelings. I’m sure the decisions made, for the most part, were not personal. But social media is a weird beast. Lots of things can seem personal that really aren’t. It’s that whole “I can’t really hear your voice thing,” I think.
Margie,
Yesterday I commented on Chris’ blog:
____________________________
Chris,
“Following is a potential onramp to attention”: Here is hoping that when I am going up the onramp, someone is not driving the wrong way and coming down the onramp. It is like the child that wants attention and is willing to accept any kind of attention…including abuse.
Imagine all of the energy expanded today on your two posts by your followers and readers. Imagine if all this energy could be put to good use. Myself included. Years ago I learned that if I don’t expect or anticipate “good” attention…disappointment will be lessened and unexpected surprises will be fabulous.
Gotta run…
Judy
__________________________
To tell you the truth, I know I follow Darren. Whether or not he follows me, I have no idea. But I do know this, I met him in the lobby of the Mandalay Bay last year at Blog World ’10. He was personable, talked awhile and his sessions were great. I don’t send a lot his way, but I do reply we he talks about his little boys. He is genuine.
Like you, I hope that we can all move forward and take a look around at the world and do more than argue.
Judy
In the end, I always return to Pete from Muppets Take Manhattan. “Peoples is peoples.” It doesn’t matter how many followers you have on Twitter. You’re still a peoples. I think we all lose track of that, no matter who we are. Peoples is just peoples.
I like your comment 🙂
Amen! What gets me in this dynamic is that those unfollowing have preached “relationship ” marketing
for years. But then suddenly they start to redefine the relationship on their terms exclusively. Then they get annoyed when questioned on this contradiction. It’s disingenuous at best. There are other ways to solve a spam issue. Throwing away all the people who believed in you, your message, and gave you real clout isn’t cool in my book. I’ve said nothing so far because it won’t change anything and their lack of respect for me and my contribution to their growth has been clearly communicated. I agree, let’s be done with it and build new communities that make a difference to people beyond the small world of social media marketing.
That is something I brought up in my comment on Chris’s site, Susan. It’s where being a personal brand really starts to become a sticky wicket. As a former 3rd Triber, I’ve been a customer for a lot of these folks. Not clicking a button to follow me back on a website might seem stupidly small, but then it’s a stupidly small thing to do to say, “Hey, you gave me money. Cool.”
Now, Meg Fowler retorted that that expectation was baggage I brought, and I suppose that’s true to a certain extent. But when I first started in the online world, everybody was all about, “I’m the brand and I’m reaching out to you my customer on a very personal basis.” It’s a rough segue to something that’s 100% “not personal,” and I think a lot of folks are struggling with that transition, on both sides of the conversation.
I saw that thread, Margie, I still call it out as BS. I mean, the author of Trust Agents rips the rug out from under us and then calls us out for being confused? That isn’t a relationship -whether personal OR brand based. Would Starbucks do that? Coke? Nike? No way. They can cope and figure out spam, I think.
That said, I like Chris. He’s brilliant in many ways. And this isn’t jsut about him or his decision.
But I too, have spent lots of money with him, and the unfollowing crew. Will I do so anymore? I will not. I don’t care about cliques because the space is so big we can create wonderful communities without some celebrity leading us.
However, I do care about being respected as a client and customer. As a member of the tribe they created and sold as a “relationship-based” product, the move of unfollowing me, not following me back and then telling me indirectly that I have the problem for being confused and holding them accountable smells really bad.
If it’s business, it’s business, I don’t claim I need to be a BFF, but I don’t treat my customers this way, do you?
I’m not a bot or a spammer–they KNOW me. I”ve had lunch with them. I may not be a friend, but I’ve been a loyal customer (if they want to look at it from a purely business lens) and this is how we’re treated? Makes no sense, even from the business angle, does it?
I was good enough to take my money, but not worth a consideration when the burden of being a brand got to be too much? I need leaders who can stand the heat in the kitchen. We’re not doing combat in the mountains of Afghanistan here. If spam throws you for a loop, you have to reexamine your focus, priorities, and business chops.
Can’t really disagree with anything ya say there, sadly.
I’m glad you wrote this Margie. When I saw that Darren unfollowed me I checked his stream and saw that he was responding to others with a link to his post explaining his reasons; I didn’t like that Darren was unfollowing everyone but I now had a better understanding of why. Several comments down there was a cheer from Chris Brogan of “Hooray”, this bothered me…”Hooray”?! I liken it to celebrities who, once they have reached their pinnacle of fame, disavow all the fans who were so instrumental in getting them to where they are in their career. The arrogance is pervasive and very telling.
Some think it’s a waste of energy and futile to debate and even discuss follow/unfollow practices but I am finding it very useful in determining who the genuinely nice folks are out there. Just my two pennies 🙂 All my best, John
That’s sort of why I wrote this, John. The folks who are doing the unfollowing are getting a lot of pretty heated flack, so it’s sort of creating this catch-22. People are perceiving that a clique is closing ranks, so they throw crap at the clique, and then, guess what? The people being attacked move closer together to help each other out. It’s all very silly.
I just come back to the idea that I’m fairly certain we all have better ways to use technology and our time. You’re right though, for folks new to the online world, this is a great way to get a lot of different philosophies on following and unfollowing on Twitter 🙂
good point John. I work with a lot of celebs and high profile people. I drew the line in the sand when after these celebs did a lot of hyper following to get followers and then unfollowed after then got to their big following. I call BS on this tactic. It is tacky!
This is why I love you, Jessica! : )
Aint she great, Susan!
So timely too, Jess; you and I talked about this the other day and it is just down right embarrassing for some. Let’s remember what you said…”It’s all Good in the Hood” Heh, 🙂
Great points. I understand both sides 100 percent too, but I think it has the appearance of copycat on it. Yes, the spam is horrid and the “please RT this to your followers” gets a little much, but in a sense we did it to ourselves. When I started on Twitter back in 2008 people talked and you could add people or not. There were definitely not as many bots or spam accounts as now. I unfollowed everyone back in 2010 I think. No real flack, but a few who like to slap the “elite” title on people who do it. Odd thing is the people I follow now and ENGAGE with are not even the same ones from before. I am more generous in my follow backs than others, but still still strict about it.
As for the ones being unfollowed who somehow have their whole identity tied up in whose following and not following them, they need therapy not social media. I mean why whine or cuss out ONLINE someone who doesn’t give you the time a day? It makes them seem desperate for approval and validation, or dare I say it, popularity. One of the worst things to happen on Twitter was thinking that we needed to reciprocate a person following us. Heck, why should I follow them when I have zero clue how they even found me. It could be mutual people or it could be that I tweeted a keyword they autofollow people for.
My thing is, let social media work for you.
I like that. If social media was a brand or a country, that should be its motto!
I don’t really understand the “calling out” thing either. I guess you could argue this post “calls out” to a certain extent, but I try to even things out and give consideration to what everyone says. I try to be reasonable and open-minded. Saying that someone is “ticking you off” or that you hate someone is not really working the problem, and as I’ve said so often, it just makes YOU look bad.
Thanks for the comment!
Margie, great post, could not agree more with you. Lately i am seeing more drama on twitter then in real life. People spending time on things that don’t really matter. Social media should be based on engagement and lately is more based on bashing of people instead of socializing. I think someone just need to say enough is enough and lets move forward. I am more worried if new people might run away before they even get chance to discover us. If i would be new to twitter i would say my god this is not twitter this is drama queen club. All this great “experts” were teaching us, online or in their books how you need to follow everyone back and engage but look at them, they are breaking their own rule. Well where is their credibility now ? Got lost in fame i think.
I know exactly what you mean. This really came to my mind when people were fighting with each other in a thread that Trey Pennington’s brother was reading just days after his brother’s untimely passing. Never have I been so ashamed to be a part of the online world.
We all make the world very small by living in this online version of the world, but it’s important to remember that the stuff that really matters is much much bigger 🙂
Hi Margie,
The “Great Unfollowing of 2011” was very interesting to me. The reason given was the amount of DM spam received, specifically the “is this you in this pic” messages. Those messages were all generated by someone hacking an account. There are three issues I see with the unfollow and its aftermath. First, knowing that the spam was generated by a hacker, why kick out the entire community? The management of every social media community includes maintenance. Part of the maintenance is deleting spammy messages. Part of the management is notifying the people who have been hacked that they have a problem. (Yes, I do that. It has lead to some interesting conversations and connections.) This is the behavior I would expect from a real leader. Unfortunately, it is not the behavior I expect from the people recognized as the Twitter elite. I learned a long time ago that there was a huge discrepancy between their message and actions.
Second, they used a script to do the unfollowing. Automated unfollowing is against the Twitter rules. People do it, but the process is usually discrete and limited. Manually unfollowing inactive accounts is part of the maintenance I do on my account. Every time I do it, a small percentage of the people unfollow me. They apparently set up an automated unfollow script that was activated by my action. When Twitter allows people to automate unfollowing en mass, it sends the message that the rules don’t apply to everyone.
Third, the lack of integrity in the information shared. When Brogan was near the end of his community exile, a follower (@husseymichael) tweeted “@chrisbrogan how many “followers” have you lost since deleting everyone? Are you tracking this?” Brogan responded “I’ve gained a few hundred.” (https://twitter.com/#!/chrisbrogan/statuses/109319372144771072) I looked at twitterstats.com to see how many he had gained and found that he had actually lost a few hundred. When I asked Brogan if the stats at Twitterstats was wrong, he didn’t respond. Is this transparency? Trustworthy behavior? Does it provide credibility? Social media already has a credibility issue. Stunts like this hurt the channel. It’s disappointing.
That’s interesting, Debra. You’re the second person to reference an unfortunate exchange witnessed on Twitter. I can’t really try to defend or understand that kind of stuff. Nobody is perfect. I think a lot of people are learning a lot of lessons as a result of this mess, however, and not all of those lessons are happy.
Margie
I have given this a lot of thought and seem to be moving all over the place on this. Then I really thought about it and tightened it up a bit. It is about relationship marketing; which entails targeting. We target for different reasons however, there is more to relationship marketing than targeting. There is the being human factor that tells us that people matter. If I read correctly this great twitter unfollow was prompted by dm spammers and where some folks accidentally clicked a link and it gave one of those ridiculous ha ha you look so great in these photos spams. While I find them quite annoying and I am sure that on a large scale, there are hundreds of them however, isn’t unfollowing everyone rewarding the bad and punishing the good?
I recognize that us users do not make money on reporting or working with twitter to reduce spam however, don’t we all want a clean workspace, park to walk around in and playground to play in? If we have a voice, one that would be heard by the “officials” ie twitter folks, should we do what we can to help clean it up instead of turning our backs and telling the spammers “hey you matter, you matter so much that I am unfollowing everyone.” And all the while telling the good folks, “sorry, it is me, not you; I know I matter to you but I do not trust you enough not to spam me nor am I committed enough to take a chance.”
Relationship marketing is based up on trust which leads to commitment to the brand. Commitment comes from creating purpose and meaning for the buyers (in this case a follow)and it is the commitment ignites an action. Can we go so far and say that service industry marketing is the ultimate trust as we have to buy before experiencing? If so, then the relationship with the people supersedes all.
I am not here to criticize the choices of others as people are going to do what they are going to do and we can offer all the guidance and advice however, we know they are just going to do what they want to do. Unfollowing had to have a purpose and if that works, then great. The “me too-ers” may have some copycat remorse as there are many I know that are unfollowing them after being unfollowed. Maybe they do not care which then tells us that we did not matter before and if possible matter less now.
IDK, I guess I am looking at the drama on twitter and how things unfold and stare blindly wondering what happened to the core of what we are here for? Twitter is a tool that is available for use on how we want to use it but, it is an engagement tool and when engaging relationships matter, and the people engaging matter.
That’s an interesting point, Suzanne. If we wanted to, we could probably put our voices together and say, “Hey Twitter – Facebook doesn’t have nearly as much spam as you. What can we do about this? Maybe the answer is that nobody can DM you unless there’s a mutual follow. I don’t know.
I was getting a lot of those spam emails a couple of weeks ago and now they seem to have stopped, and I didn’t do anything. *shrug* I don’t know. It was irritating but didn’t make me throw myself onto my bed crying and screaming 🙂
You are right too. It’s a people-powered world, this online space. That’s how I was taught when I was first tweeting and blogging. If you limit the number of people you’re engaging with, it seems like the game may have changed in that case. I don’t really get it either.
Margie
I think we are looking at this from a brand standpoint and wonder why would a brand do this? Could you imagine if a retailer said, we are unfollowing everyone? There would be 10,000 blogs written on how this was so wrong. Here these instances it is people, who are brands, however, they are the actual people. Then again there are people behind the major brands who are tweeting. Ok so that is weak but there is some legs to it as we separate people who are brands from brands that are brands. They are selling themselves through some product and services. A retailer is selling a tangible product that you can also go into the store and buy. But shouldn’t both be talking to the people/customers and not the sale? This move seemed so more on the end of talking to the sale as opposed to the people who are the sale.
Not being in their shoes with a gazillion people wanting to pick my brain and sending many DM’s but so it is hard for me to visualize or experience what they are going through. In time we will see if this move for all of them paid off.
Darren Rowse unfollowed me? Sumbich, wait ’til I see him……..
I don’t know if this qualifies along the same lines but my last post was about the changes I have seen over the summer and there seems to be more lament, woe, angst, bitterness, desperation in a subtle way and I questioned whether it was just me feeling it.
Personally, I’m doing what I want to do and hopefully beyond listening to the noise and just taking care of my own stuff in my own way and whatever will be, will be.
As you might surmise, that is my story for today and I’m sticking with it.
Ok, I admit, I did the mass (if I can even call my numbers a ‘mass’) unfollowing in August. But, in my defense, it was definitely not because Chris Brogan did it. Or anyone else, for that matter. I had my reasons and I learned what I needed to during that month. Now I can move forward with social media the way I believe it works. I didn’t even know he was doing that until after I had. And Darren’s thing I found on accident. But, I like him, so I kept following.
A lemming is not something I strive to be, but sometimes you have to try something out and see how or why it works. Crunching down to a handful of followings what not all it’s cracked up to be, so I found. I had the same issues as when I was following most back. And I saw the ripples. Pretty much what I expected to see. What I didn’t expect what the number of people who didn’t unfollow back. That was pretty cool.
So, long story short, I went back to doing what I did before and am leaving it alone. It’s easier on my time schedule and quite honestly, it’s really not worth my time to scrutinize and stress over my numbers. It’s a tool, just like many other tools. I just had to see it.
Sucks being so curious sometimes. 🙂
Well Margie I seemed to have missed this whole bruhaha. I don’t think either Darren or Chris was ever following me. My Twitter stream is mainly people who are interactive, often I’ve met in some other way.
My personal philosophy is that I make a choice up front to follow someone – because I love their content, because I hope to start a dialogue, or simply because they followed me and *appear* to be interested in a genuine discussion. There would be no reason to do a mass unfollowing unless half of them are secretly well disguised spam bots!
While I can see a large following begins to get a bit unwieldy, these are people who promote being social media gurus. As someone on the outside looking in, and who has never met them, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.