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6 reasons why i’m just not into you (on twitter)

by Phil Barrett

Over the last few months the number of people I’m following and in return are following me has more than doubled.

Managing my following / follower ratio has become part of my weekly routine in order to keep my tweet streams more interesting and relevant for me.

With that in mind, I’ve come up with 6 reasons why i won’t follow you back, or why I may unfollow you on twitter:

  1. You have no avatar / picture uploaded of yourself. Unless I’m self-subscribing to a news feed (like the NY Times), I have no interest in following people back who can’t make the effort to personalize their space
  2. You’re wearing a suit with a tie in your avatar picture. Since i’ve turned off email notifications for new followers (it was getting too many to manage!), I now rely on tweepular to help me figure out who I should follow back. 9 times out of 10, those with suits and ties are spammers, liars, or just really boring
  3. Your bio includes some reference to making money, affiliate marketing and being a life coach of some sort
  4. Your profile name is not really a name. If i can’t identify you as a brand or person, chances are you are a spammer, liar, or somebody that won’t be adding much to the conversation. There are exceptions to this rule – but i follow it 8 times out of 10.
  5. You haven’t posted a tweet in over a week. Chances are if you haven’t posted in over a week you have either given up on twitter, haven’t figured twitter out, or you are just not interesting enough to have something to say
  6. Your follower / following ratio is way out of wack. If you are following 10,000 people but only 32 are following you back, that’s a major flag that you are a spammer, liar, or somebody who just doesn’t get it yet

Was that too harsh?

What are some of the reasons why you won’t return any follow love on twitter?

  • Pretty elaborate list. I just checked out the tweet stream to decide if I want to follow someone back or not, bu then again, I'm not getting overwhelmed by notification mails :)
  • Yuri
    In my little tweeter experience, I find that 9 out of 10 people that tweet often, i.e. many tweets a day, are usually spammers or want to get noticed or dont have anything better to say. Exact opposite of item #5.
  • David
    i have found that most of those people you wouldn't start to follow rarely post anyway.

    i admit that i go weeks without filtering and adding new people that are follow me... then outta guilt i just add everybody (except people wearing bikinis). then i let tweetdeck columns sort it out. of course i have a 10th of the followers :)
  • Good post Phil. One additional reason could be those people who lock their profile. I always block those who follow me, but do not allow me to see their full profile.
  • I unfollow people that tweet too often. I don't want my whole page loaded with one tweeters updates.
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