2 days ago I made a big change in the way I use Twitter and unfollowed everyone but the people I actually interact with through Twitter (I unfollowed close to 1,000 users). It was a drastic step but it was something I needed to do after following anyone and everyone blindlessly for a few months. Many of the people I followed were simply people who followed me.
The number of people who follow me is not something I’m overly concerned about. I knew that by unfollowing so many people the number of people who followed me would drastically drop.
I reviewed my follower count yesterday a few times to see how it was being effected. Whilst I knew that it would drop, I was surprised at how quick it was dropping. In less than 24 hours I had lost over 350 of the 1370 people who were following me, a drop of 25%.
This illustrates two things :
- My Twitter follower count was inflated. These people had no interest whatsoever in who I am, what I do or what I had to say. I think it’s safe to that a large percentage of everyones users aren’t ‘really following’ them.
- Many users use Twitter applications to either check who is not following them back or to do it automatically via a script. I know this because I do this myself with my ‘newsbot’ accounts.
It’s hard for me to criticize anyone who unfollowed me because I wasn’t doing it back because I have done it myself in the past. I used to be of the opinion that it was rude if someone I followed didn’t follow me back.
Which leads me to my point : Most Twitter Users Don’t Care Who They Follow, They Only Care Who Follows Them
I know this because I used to think that way too. For some people this won’t be a problem. If you tweet away every day abd only check @replies then it doesn’t matter how many people you follow as you’re not paying attention to your dashboard anyways.
But for those of us who want to make contacts through Twitter, who you decide to follow is incredibly important and it will be a major factor on your whole Twitter experience.
If you find Twitter becoming less useful because you are getting lots of updates from people you don’t know that well, unfollowing could be an option. Remember, you have the power to decide who you follow on Twitter 
You are right about – Most Twitter Users Don’t Care Who They Follow, They Only Care Who Follows Them.
I’m guilthy of doing just that although now I manually check and follows back “real” users. I don’t mind following back everybody as long they are not BOTs and not using any script for this account.
I guess I’ll stop following when I reach a certain figure…lol
Anyway, I’m surprised at how fast those followers of yours unfollow you. This just show that a lot of twitter users uses scripts and softwares to do the unfollowing and for following people. At least I’m not guilthy of this..
I’m pretty picky about who I follow, most of the time. I admit to blindly following some people, but in the end that doesn’t matter much because they (more often than not) don’t Tweet much.
That said, you’re right that a lot of people on Twitter just want you to follow them so they can broadcast to you. You’re being marketed to on Twitter constantly, even if you don’t realize it. That’s a goal for a lot of people on Twitter, so if you’re not following them anymore, why should they follow you?
It’s quite a step to unfollow that many people. Brave!
Social media has and always will be a numbers game. It’s built into and is part of our internet addiction. Personally, if someone follows me then I’ll return the favour.
I say “you don’t know what you like until you try it.” I apply this to Twitter.
You may of however inspired me to do a little more preening a little more often! I’m glad I made the cut Kevin
Roseli – I was a little surprised too but they must have been mostly from users who were using scripts. I’m still losing followers but at a slower rate.
Jeremiah – You’re 100% correct. And I have no problem with people marketing to me, as long as it’s not constantly and as long as they are not blasting me with affilliate links etc. I agree that I can’t expect them to follow me, and I don’t.
Gary – I wouldn’t say brave
But yeah, it was a big step. The thing is, obviously I would like to have more followers for some things, like marketing myself. But I’f rather it was targeted. What’s the point of having 10,000 followers if most of them are bots or people who never use Twitter. I’d rather have 50 followers who were all big players in their niche 
I am a relatively new twitter user. Scratch that, I am a newbie when it comes to twitter. But in the first couple of weeks a couple of things leapt out at me.
1) Most of the people that I’ve encountered so far, that have several thousand followers are also following several thousand people. Some people tweet a few times daily, others tweet hundreds of times daily. Its hard enough to keep up with the passing thoughts of 3 or 5 people that tweet 250 times daily, let alone thousands.
2) If you follow several thousand people, how is it possible to pay attention to any one individual? By following several thousand, or even several hundred, you’re telling the people that you follow that you’re not really interested in their tweets, because its unlikely that you’ll actually see very many of them.
Ultimately, the only number that means anything in twitter or anywhere else, is how many people care about what you have to say? If you stop following them and they stop following you, then they didn’t care about what you had to say. Be-gone with them. You haven’t really lost anything, just the perception of something. You lost the illusion and clarified reality.
I am also a new twitter user. And my aproach to Twitter is, since the beggining, to follow people who seem to have the same interests, that share interesting links and info, and with whom I may establish a conversation once in a while. In other words, I chose to follow few people in order to really be able to READ what they have to say, and to really TALK to them. Paul, your words could be mine.
That sounds so ridiculous to me those softwares, devices and books on “how to gain 10,000 followers in one week”… is this a competition to see who has more followers? why should I bother to build an artificial followers list?? I do prefer, as Kevin said, to interact with few real people that is interested, like me, in learning from each other, not to sell anything. Twitter is now the new spam tool… it´a a pity. We have to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I ‘protect’ my updates because I’m not interested in gaining ‘followers’. I only want people to see my personal tweets who I know.
On the other hand, I follow lots of people (friends, politicians, celebrities), news entities, etc., because I’m interested in what they have to say. Twitter is a great aggregator for this! If anyone tweets too much (many times/day) or does aggressive marketing I may unfollow them.
Strangely, I get several ‘requests’ per week from people or entities to follow me, even though they don’t know me (or know *anything* about me) and I don’t know them or have any interest in them! It seems desperate for them to go after people they don’t know and request to follow me anyway, even though there are millions of others they can directly follow.
For regular Twitter accounts I see no obligation to follow someone just because they follow you. If you have something valuable to say, others will follow you. If you have something valuable to say that interests me, I will follow.
I understand Twitter puts a limit on the number of accounts you can follow in one day. That’s a good thing, to discourage spammers.