Why users unfollow you on Twitter [kwiqq]

Posted on | March 5, 2009 | View Comments

Several companies are using Twitter for marketing purposes. Some examples in the automotive industry. We can still call them early adopters of the technology. Twitter is a fantastic place to meet new people and have one to one conversations, like you would do at a networking event. Several rules which apply to a networking event also apply to Twitter. For instance if a person is boring, annoying, loud or promoting their product / services the chances of you dumping and moving on to the next person are high!

Just to prove my point I conducted a quick research on why someone would dump a person on twitter i.e. unfollow them. 40 % unfollowed users if they were boring, 27% if they tweet or DM’ed (Direct Messaged) too much and 20% unfollowed if people were blatantly self promoting. I’m not very surprised with the above results although what really got me was that only 13% of users felt that engaging with users was important. I.E. several others were happy to be talked at. Another way to look at is that several users didn’t mind lurking on Twitter without contributing to a discussion ?

Results

Special thanks to all users for participating in my mini research

Irrelevant Tweets / Boring (40%)

Tattooed_Mummy: @rajanand I unfollow when someone tweets too much on a boring subject. or is obviously a weirdo! LOL

Tattooed_Mummy: @rajanand oh and if they have dodgy racist or other views

shefaly: @rajanand My criteria to follow (2 out of 4 must be met): interesting, informative, dialectic, original.

iVinay: @rajanand When they ONLY answer the question “what are you doing” in every single tweet! LOL.. I might be wrong but I find it annoying!

aacolman: @rajanand consistently irrelevent tweets.

Andrew_Taylor: @rajanand If they were boring.

Tweet / DM (Direct Message) too often (27%)

djuoh: @rajanand too many tweets at one time

timmisson: @rajanand Offensive remarks or simply too many posts (would have to be excessive though).

pinkfloyd: @rajanand People tweeting too much.

ndrewmccluskey: @rajanand inappropriate use of DM – auto Dm / spam DM

Self Promotion (20%)

leifkendall: @rajanand I unfollow people who tweet about things I’m not interested in. Or people who self-promote too much. And people who tweet too much

adamraoof: RT @rajanand: Quiz: Why unfollow a user on Twitter ? “If they bombarded you with unrelated links and sales junk!”

MonaWalsh: @rajanand Banality and blatant self promotion in a broadcast – but mainly banality.

Not helping / engaging (13%)

dubitinformer: @rajanand they constantly want/demand information/help but yet there is no give

iVinay: @rajanand I like the personal (what are you doing) stuff, but I also want a conversation, so I’m looking for some value in people I follow.

Category: Uncategorized

Comments

http://www.berkeleypr.co.uk @BeccaJW

Raj,
You might find this tool useful for running future pieces of mini research on Twitter – http://www.twtpoll.com.
@BeccaJW
http://www.kwiqq.com Raj Anand

Nice one ! Just bookmarked it @BeccaJW
http://twitter.com/iVinay Vinay

Intereting topic to discuss about Raj, previously the entire web had to go talking on “nofollow” or “dofollow” (in terms of Search/SEO) and now with tremndous success of @Twitter the talk is all about “follow” & “unfollow”.

Few of most common reasons why people unfollow someone twitter from what I have learnt are:

* Users who tweet a way too much or never
* Users post too many links (affiliate or self-promotion)
* Users who are spammy (often post dumb content)

& most people forget one thing “Twitter is not a chat”!

I thought OF sharing this beautiful wallpaper by El Ascensor, which means a lot about my last line! Flickr URL: http://flickr.com/photos/actiondatsun/2099869248/ (Twitter is not a chat)

Cheers,
@iVinay
http://bethgranter.com Beth Granter

This is interesting but some of those comments might be interpreted differently. E.g. @shefaly mentioned dialectic as a requirement could add a count to the need to engage, @leifkendall said tweeting too often and uninteresting (boring) tweets as well, @monawalsh said banality (boring). Good start to get the main reasons though, but not enough data obviously to compare their importance.

I just made this poll based on your results, maybe if we spread it through Twitter we can get more responses? (I never responded because I very rarely unfollow)

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cEtTdEFoUFE5bVlTMGRiclZINkhZTVE6MA..
http://www.kwiqq.com Raj Anand

Fantastic Idea Beth ! I have filled the form as a starting point. I’m going to tweet this now !
http://bethgranter.com Beth Granter

That’s my first Google Doc that I made and it’s putting all the answers in a spreadsheet not a nice chart, not sure if I did it right, or if other people can see the results? I just went and made the spreadsheet visible to the world so hopefully it is public now…
http://www.kwiqq.com Raj Anand

Can’t see the Google Doc can you please share it with me will DM you with my gmail email !
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