Why I Unfollowed 55,000 Twitter Users

I'm following people not because they follow me - this is ridiculous. Only if I really inerested in one's tweets. So I beleive that true fans will still follow John =)

This must have been a pretty cathartic experience. A nice cleansing. That is a ton of pruning, brings up a good point though. I know we have to have high numbers for marketing purposes, but I know too many people who just want facebook friends to inflate their number of friends, it's sad.

I unfollowed my whole list on @gerlainetalk on twitter. I wanted that following to be organic. I only follow who I want on a few other accounts and I have an autofollow unfollow on another account. I only tweet from one of these accounts regularly and love having the different account options for testing.

I follow you on my @twitgerlaine, because I want to see what you are saying. I find a lot of good info from you that way. :)

Hi John,
I totally understand your situation & can understand that it ain't worth to go through so much of spam. I would say when you are following 55K, it ain't a quality people you wanna associate with, anyways.
However it takes courage to go so 180 degrees opposite the norm, right?

Is there an easy way to unfollow that many people. I want to do the same.

glad you wrote this, i was actually wondering this myself. I figured people were using scripts to automatically follow people, so I tweeted, "make money online" and boom, you ended up following me, so I then followed you back.
I remember your twitter acct being 55k+ followers then all of a sudden it droped to 100 (or whatever it is). So I thought 1) how he do that? and 2) auto follow is a great way for building your profile.
Besides most of the 20k following and 20k follower accts are people using humming bird to inflate their following, you have enough of a web presence to not need a twitter tool.

I took your advice and unfollowed quite a few people. While I don't have a following compared to yours, or any other Internet Marketer's for that matter, I do like to receive relevant tweets so I went ahead and registered for HootSuite...which I might add is a pretty powerful tool.

Everything, including Twitter, has a learning curve. I'm interested in photography and travel, and how I can potentially work the two into a blog and make some money.
That's where I'm going with my Twitter followers.

Well ....... sanity reins once again ....... confidence is restored.
I never could wrap my mind around all the e-commerce people trying to sell me a 5 million person tweet following. Kinda defeats the purpose doesn't it ?

Jeffrey Morgan
Bloggers Market.com

John, I think you rock and I will continue to follow you.

Yeah I don't Blame ya 1 Darn bit fer Dumpin' all those Twitter LOSERS + Tire Kickers John!! Smart Move Dude!!
Pure2x2 Baby!! ;))

I have been thinking of nuking 4000 followers from around 5500 people that follow me (I follow them all back).

The truth is, people I used to speak to are no longer there and I don't get to connect with people I really like which is a huge shame. I am frightened if I mass un-follow that many people Twitter may suspect I am some big spammer and lock, freeze or even delete my account, which I wouldn't really be cool with!

I used to generate so much business just with the contacts I had on that site.

John I understand its hard for you to follow every one tweets...but thats why group feature is there..more over it was you who keep promoting follow every one back.... Now what we should do with those people we followd in the past?

Hey Chow,

My last comment was meant for your other blog post "The Winners of The Blog World Expo Passes".

I must have done something wrong for it to end here. I am sorry about that. Will be more careful next time.

"Hey Chow,

I must say these people are really really lucky that they have made it to the Blog world Expo passes. This is amazing and I am feeling very bad for me that I haven't made it this time. But I will win them next time for sure."

"Hey Chow,

This is a pretty smart move. I also drained my 28000 followers to 136 just yesterday. I also believed that you cannot follow such a huge number of people. The small size being small adds productivity to your website. This is what I learned very late.

Hootsuite is wonderful, but the tool that I have used to managing my twitter is tweetdeck that made my twitter account go smooth."

I believe that you did the right thing John. I am going to do the same with my 7,000 people...

Igor

Thats true. I have some problems with my iphone when i got 100+ tweets. So i decided to add another account for using on my iphone. Now it is getting better. Maybe one time the phone will do it without problem but now it can´t.

Best regards,
Volksphone!

I like your honesty. If someone follows me and I see that they have 15k, 20k, or 50k they're following I don't even bother because I know they're not really reading all of those. I use Twitter to connect with people. You are too I see, so I will be sure to follow. Good post.

I totaly agree with you . I would do the same if I have this number . It would be nice if you dont have to download all twitter posts or to customize it according to your need.

Funny thing is, John, you were one of the few that told everyone to enable the auto-follow and recommended it too.

-Mike

Haha, that's some brave move there John. But I do agree that nobody can follow 55k and be able to cope up with all those tweets, thats just insane.

John, I follow you because of the value I get from your expertise. I seriously do not expect you to follow me back! You are an internet rockstar, and deserve a celebrity type twitter follower profile as such. I can not imagine trying to differentiate between 55,000 followers worth of drivel. Good choice, and I expect to see many more people using this approach in future. One should only follow people that can add value, period! The twitter honeymoon is over now, let's get down to business!

I think this was a great post john.

as i know people join to twitter to get more traffic
how come they become spams

Seth Simonds wrote on this exact topic a few months ago: http://sethsimonds.com/why-i-unfollowed-everybody-...

It seems to be a common occurance these days. I wrote about this as well - http://underthebigtopics.com/web/gear-up-were-hunt...

My point was that there are too many people using twitter to speak and not listen. As you stated having 10's of thousands of tweeps to follow is unmanageable, not to mention just pointless.

Great Post, glad to see the change.

John, let us know how numbers change in the future so we can draw a conclusion on this topic.

Ya, once you start to follow even a few thousand, especially in the IM niche, all you ever get is spam. It makes the whole thing pointless, as I no longer even login to mine, I started a new account with all of about 6 people who I actually want to follow.

I see there are some people that are kind of upset by this move, some call it hypocritical but think about it, is it realistic to actually follow 55,000 people? As John has stated, he never was really following you. And twitterfollower.com is not part of this blog, it really is a separate entity and I think it is part of a marketing strategy.

Really shows how observant I am.I didn't even notice you unfollowed me.But I can understand why and it's no big deal to me.I don't follow back every person who follows me.

You're right. We are getting ready to have to do the same thing on our Twitter page. There is just no way that you can actually keep up with the people or companies that you want if you are following so many.

Twitter is nothing but trendy CRAP. Something people do because everybody is doing it. It makes no sense, it's a waste of time and everybody auto following everybody who's auto following everybody else is mindless and redundant. If twitter was how one gets rich, I'd rather be poor.

Still dont know, why did you 'previously' follow those people if you are using HootSuite? and please don`t tell me that you did to get followed back "beside you don`t need that, You may make alot of people hate you.

It is very Hard to digest the fact that you are not following me. But as You said we are not unduly worried. We followed you to know what you are up to. It is not important to let you know what we think because you are a serious person. It is very important to learn from you so.. I will follow you.

I was actually thinking about doing the same thing. Great post explaining why indeed, no hard feelings :)

You have stopped following all the people you were following back, however, majority of the people who are following you will not even know that John Chow who once told them follow me and i will follow back is no longer following them.

What it will make you look like? a celebrity who is following very few people but about 50k people are following him. Well done!

Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. - Anonymous

Sorry, John, this doesn't look very impressive as an explanation.

You've spent months arguing that "marketing" is a reasonable justification for having a mass audience, while the only way to build that in the absence of a celebrity profile is follow-back.

And you setup a follow-back service because "social validation" is important.

Then you suddenly switch emphasis just as switching emphasis will give you a further jump up the rankings.

If I had to judge I'd say it's stage 2 in a strategy to get into the Top 100 or so.

As to whether it was the plan from the start - I have no information to determine that, though I think you're good enough to lay out that strategy from day 1.

But - you're account to do with as you will.

Stage 3 will be interesting.

I

Fair enough. There's really no point in following thousands and thousands of people..

You're right, but getting 55,000 followers take long time...
i think twiiter will really usefull for our private friend only..

Spam is a growing problem in twitter, it’s regrettable.
you've made the right decision

Seems sort of hypocritical seeing as you also own a site called "Twitter Follower" which you can supposedly only be a part of if you promise to follow anyone that follows you...