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Feb 27 2010

Sacrificing Twitter for the Greater Good: Signal-to-Noise Improves (Update v1 3-1-10)

Category: community building,connections,how do i?,social media,speed the web,tech opinion,tech reviews,tools — jmacofearth @ 7:43 am

dropping followers like hot potatoes with managetwitter

managetwitter.com: we gain some we lose more.

Update 3-1-10: It appears I'm losing about 10 followers a day on average, as the tweeps catch up to the fact that they themselves have been unfollowed. (new chart at bottom of page)

I've done it again. Right here, just weeks before the announcement of the Texas Social Media Awards and the start of SXSW I've gone an unfollowed over 4k followees on Twitter. I am sure the affect on my followers will be quite dramatic as well. So here's why I did it.

1. Life is too short to be trying to read everything.
2. Everyone is so stoked about BUZZ because they get to be selective about who they choose to include. (Duh, how'd we get so over-followed in the first place.
3. Discovery is the biggest rush with social media, so if I unfollow a ton of folks I get to rediscover them again! wOOt!
4. I believe who you follow is as important as who follows you.
5. Good Twitter tools are hard to find.
6. All the folks I unfollowed were probably auto-dm bots anyway.
7. I probably do not deserve the number of followers I have. (Well, that one's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but…)
8. Take a bold action. None of this unfollowing by the 20-per-page, as Twitter.com (hell) would have it.

So what is going to happen from here? Oh my, all the people who are concerned about who's following and who's not following will start dropping me in huge waves. Thus my ranking, my status on the Twitterholic in Austin list is going to plummet like a rock. And I will drop back into the goop from whence I came.

Then something remarkable is going to happen. I am going to discover some new cool people to follow. Some of whom I have not followed in months. Some of whom I've never followed. And some of whom I've followed, unfollowed and followed again.

And that's the fun of it.

Here's a comparison of my followers vs. followees as reported by twittercounter.com.

All that said, I hope you stick around. I hope you tweet good stuff. And I hope we continue to enjoy the conversation.

But I will understand if you UFM. As a close friend said recently, "I tried to follow you, but you are insane. Half the time I have no idea what you are talking about. It just made me feel confused and dumb."

I hope that's not the affect my range of tweets has on you, but I do understand if it does. I do.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/sacrificing-twitter

I hope you can find a lot of great reasons to follow me, and my rants on Twitter and about Twitter. Here's my little collection called The Twitter Way.

And I'm also putting together a list of TwitterTools, the one's I know and love. I call this the TwitterMatrix.

This massively coordinated unfollowing was powered by ManageTwitter.com. Bless them for developing a new tool to manage our accounts at more than 20 peeps per page, like Twitter.com. Now we can get some unfollowing done, by golly!

+++

Here's the newest chart as of 3-1-10. I have changed the scale to be only 1 month, to show more clearly the pattern as my followers begin to drop off, primarily because I have unfollowed, not because I am tweeting differently, or doing anything spammy. It's just a fact, if you unfollow me I'm likely to unfollow you. If I'm paying attention, that is. And if I care.

My chart of follower loss since the purge.

Tags: 20-per-page, confused and dumb, discovery, follow me, good tweets, good twitter tools, google buzz, manage twitter, managetwitter.com, over-followed, over-tweeted, passionate unfollowing, range of tweets, rants on twitter, rediscover, signal-to-noise, sxsw, sxswi, Texas Social Media Awards, that's the fun of it, the twitter way, trending, twitter discovery, twitter fail, twitter hell, twitter.com, twitterfail, unfollowing, who follows you, who you follow

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Jul 12 2009

Guy Kawasaki Phone Home Your Integrity Is Calling < Ghost Tweeting Anyone?

Category: about me,lifestreaming,social media,teaming & leadership,tech opinion,tools,trust & reputation — jmacofearth @ 9:53 am

Dear Guy,

On the 4th of July you created a new How I Tweet post. Well done. I think the first one, Just the FAQs was better written, but that's just me.

You make one comment in your newest post that needs clarification. When asked why people attack you for using Ghostwriters for your tweeting you respond, "Answer: Most are angry, little “SEO experts” who cannot generate content, so they try to generate controversy in order to drive traffic to their blogs or get other angry, little people to follow them."

You know this is not true. I have been a vocal opponent of anyone using ghosttweeters, but I am not an angry SEO expert. I am someone who believes in honest communication and honest use of Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIN whatever. And your Ghost Tweets suck. No way to slice it otherwise. You can defend WHY you do it, but it does not validate the lie. If the post comes from @GuyKawasaki it should come from YOU! The other four people, no matter how interesting they are, cannot represent your mind or your filter. They can hit a few good ones, but mostly it's just MORE TWEETS.

Your answer about the value of Ghosttweeters is interesting as well, "My attitude is: “As long as the tweets are good, why does it matter who posted them?”

And that also is a lie. It DOES MATTER. The vocal opposition to YOUR ghosttweeting is specifically voiced to YOU the REAL GUY KAWASAKI and if you can't see that you have blinded yourself to the reality of the situation.

We the people who follow and love Guy K do not want tweets from others added in to the mix, "because they are good." I waste my time writing about the inane posts of your ghost tweeters, but they are not "good." Often they are irrelevant and my mind blips, WHY DO I CARE ABOUT POST MENOPAUSAL WOMEN'S SEXUAL APPETITES? And I notice that all FOUR of your Ghosts are women. (Hmmm.)

They are not you. And I am not an angry SEO expert. Nor am I merely hoping to attract new followers by voicing my dissent of your abuse of the public trust. You can not rationalize or answer away the fact that every Tweet with a ghost's initials at the end of it is NOT GUY KAWASAKI. So let your followers decide. Set up a @GUYGANG or @GUYSCREW (something about that one I like, sorry no apostrophes in user names) or @GUYANDCO and let us get back to the pure @GUYKAWASAKI.

You are using your brand as a marketing vehicle. For whatever, AllTop, Adjix… You are an important leader in technology and now social media. And now you are showing everyone that it's okay to use your name as a Twitter identity and the fill it with whatever you like, cause we'll follow anything. You have to proclaim and defend YOUR TRUTH over and over that this practice is okay. You even provide a nice search to allow people to filter the crap out of the GuyKawasaki stream. Well, thank you for that, but it should not be necessary if you Got Real again.

So as you renew your commitment to filling your tweetstream with bogus links and "good tweets" I will continue to tell you how disappointed I am that you continue to come up snake eyes!

Yes you can say UFM, but I want to Follow GK not GK+.

@jmacofearth (100% me 100% of the time, every single peep)
permalink: http://bit.ly/ghost-guykawasaki