Forums/General/General
Too many people are unfollowing me
Dave
posted this on July 06, 2010 15:29
The matter of unfollowing is a tricky one. We understand that there are people that abuse the system and we do our best to stop them from doing it. But we also recognize that there are legitimate reasons for unfollowing too. We have to keep the following things in mind when it comes to unfollowing:
1) We can't force anyone to follow anyone else. This would be unethical and would be against twitters terms of service.
2) We do not sell followers. This would also be unethical and against twitters terms of service.
3) When twitter does cleanup and suspends or deletes accounts this will reduce your followers.
4) People that followed you before you even joined twiends will unfollow you. If you've used other websites that have sold you followers then it is very likely that these people are unfollowing you or these accounts are being suspended by twitter.
All we can do at twiends is provide an introduction for people and offer others an incentive to check you out. We also try and add as much information to that process so that people can make an informed decision. And finally we continuously add features to try and cut down on system abuse.. We have found the credit mechanism the most effective way to do this so far.
We've done a lot of research into this and we've realized that the unfollow ratio on twiends is actually very low. What we see on twiends is about a 50% retention rate. This means that roughly 50% of people will unfollow you, but 50% will continue to follow you. Considering that we are not selling followers or creating fake accounts to follow you this is very good. We've been unable to find any other self-promotion service that is performing as well.
We'd be happy to hear from you if you have..?
Comments
Many people will unfollow someone if they don't follow them back..
I've come to realize over the last year that people have different principles when they use twitter, and that there are no right and wrong views when it comes to this. Well, maybe there are a few wrong views, such as using twitter only to spam others. I’ll summarize some of the broad categories people fall into:
1) Follow me I follow you
These users are looking to follow each other in a reciprocal fashion. The basic principle is that I’ll follow your updates if you follow mine. This strategy works well if you intend to only build a small following as it becomes really difficult to follow updates when you follow too many people. Twiends is very useful for this strategy as you can discover people with similar interests and in the same country as you, and then you unfollow the people who don’t follow you back.
2) Follow my broadcasts
These users are looking to build their own followings but are not looking to follow others. This principle works well if you have something interesting to say and of value to others. If your tweets aren’t interesting to others then you should expect to have a high drop rate. Also expect that some users observe the principle above and might only be looking for reciprocal following. Regardless of this twiends is still useful for these types of users as they can still find thousands of followers who are ok with not being followed back.
To be very honest I see both principles as being fair uses of the system. What I have a problem with are those users who follow others and then immediately unfollow them, either trying to trick them into following them or just get extra credits. This type of behavior has been on twitter long before twiends came along and is a problem the whole “twitter ecosystem” faces. Twitter also discourages this type of behavior and does suspend accounts for doing it.
At twiends we’ve introduced measures to try and cut down on this and we will continue to try and enhance our systems in this respect. We have a number features coming over the next few months which will do even more to protect good honest users.
Please note, you can now set drop filters on your twitter settings to try and filter out those who tend to drop a lot..