So, You've Been Unfollowed and/or Blocked

Update: April 14, 2012 - Blocking now blocks the RT's of the person you blocked, (but not of the person who blocked YOU) so some of this entry may no longer be correct. You can read it anyway if you want, everything else should be accurate.

We were gonna totally do a blog post about unfollowing...but, halfway into it we thought "who the fuck cares", then we wrote that sentence and started trying to do a condensed version of what we had already wrote...now who the fuck knows...

So, You've Been Unfollowed...

All you need to know is that there are lots of reasons people unfollow; suspended accounts, legitimate Twitter glitches** (yes, they exist...and Twitter has NOT fixed them despite what they say), accidentally (people are drinking and on drugs on Twitter!).

And sometimes people are just offended by something you said, sometimes your content is not what they are looking for. Sometime people are using some of those applications on the net that "help" you "clean" your following, find more followers, manage them, find who doesn't follow you back, who stops following...who is "spam", etc., some of those applications offer an automatic unfollow feature and sometimes regular people (not spam, sometimes your "friends"!) get caught in the swoop. (The only application we use for these purposed is 'Refollow' http://www.refollow.com/refollow/index.html - NOT A PLUG)

It's why we have a list to track "unfollowers" (Twitter Glitch List [revision: This list no longer exists])...because they are not all legitimate unfollowers....if we recognize an account who has unfollowed us "toss" them in our net (list). We've had people thank us for it.

You can also get unfollowed for not talking to a person, we have (sorry, but with as many followers as we have we can't talk to people every single time they @...but we try to at least acknowledge by starring [favorite-ing] the @). We've been unfollowed for offending people, we've been unfollowed, not surprisingly, for tweeting "too much", and sometimes it's a Twittercide*.

Oh, and the newest one, for those "Favstar whores" (which is an actual thing in Urban Dictionary...but what isn't), is to unfollow people who don't RT/star/favorite their Tweets in Favstar enough...we're planning on an entry to talk about Favstar.

Believe it or not we get DM's asking us questions about a lot of this stuff, and most recently some questions about Favstar.

Bottom line on the unfollowing? Take a deep breath. Relax. Unless it was someone you recognize and talk to (a friend) then it shouldn't be too big of a deal, right?

Oh, and if you unfollow someone you have never talked to...don't bother fucking sending the person a DM to let them know why because a) they can't respond to you unless you are still following them and b) they probably would rather you keep your yap shut and move on to finding someone who is as lame as you are.

But why care, you ask?

Well, most people don't and that's cool, because people are on Twitter for a variety of different reasons.

However, depending on what you are on Twitter for, sometimes you deal in high numbers of followers, and want to follow a lot of people who are not going to follow you back, such as publishing companies, celebrities, news accounts, magazines, and television shows, for example.
Twitter has a following/follow ratio (limit) that's we've written about before...we're not going to rehash it, we'll just show you the snip that is in the entry where we wrote about it:

So, to be able to follow the people who follow you PLUS follow people you want to follow, no matter if they follow you back, you have to be able to unfollow the unfollowers.

Also note, some accounts prey on the fact that people aren't paying attention and do not bother to find out who unfollowed them; they follow you, you follow them, and then within two days they unfollow you. You don't remember who they are so you are stuck following them. Bait and switch. They do it for whatever reason, we figure to make themselves look more important.

"I've Been Blocked!"

Now...here's some information about blocking people...because it's not really blocking much other than being THEM receiving YOUR @'s. (they can still talk @ you, you just won't "hear" it)

To illustrate...

We had a follower who loved our Tweets, then he unfollowed us and blocked us. When we used our choice application for such matters (finding unfollowers) and found out he unfollowed us, we went to his Timeline (we always check out what people have been saying, sometimes they say things to people they unfollow, sometimes they leave Twittercide* notes)...this person wrote an @ to us (stating in case we see this message, you know, in case we stopped by) saying he had blocked us because while he liked our Tweets, he had read our Timeline @'s and said they were "fucked up". Not sure what he meant, BUT he could write to us, have it in HIS timeline and we never would have known but for going to his profile.

Blocking someone does NOT...prevent the person you blocked from looking at YOUR tweets. Nor does it prevent that person from saying things @ you...it prevents You from seeing what THEY are saying about you. Like talking behind your back. (but you can probably find out if you search your name on Twitter, then the things recently said about you can be found, even if you are blocked by that person)

We're not really sure the point in this blocking thing, though we have blocked a couple people so we didn't have to be harassed by them. Generally if you want to block someone it would be because you don't want them to see you, or the things you are saying in addition to not wanting to see what they are saying.

Furthermore, blocking sometimes doesn't work because you can still get those annoying Tweets, that maybe you put the block on for in the first place, when people you mutually follow RT the asshole that you blocked (or blocked you, in some cases. We have a few who blocked us and it pisses us off every time they are RT'd into our timeline)...there they are...in all their douchebag glory.

Also, Twitter may state they do not notify you that you have been blocked, but let's say a random Tweeple blocked you, one you never followed them, who never followed you but for some reason they saw you and blocked you...if you try to follow them you'll get a popup saying you can't follow this person because they blocked you. (totally happened to us in the last week)

Unfollowing and blocking...they're just not that into you...but who the fuck cares...as long as you can unfollow them back if you didn't want to be following them in the first place. Or maybe it was an accident.

As with all our social media blog posts we hope this was helpful to someone.

Other Social Media Posts We've Done:

• Birds of A Feather, on Twitter, CAN Flock Together


• For Us, It's All About Team Awesome...and Twitter


• You're Doing Twitter Wrong


• We Talk About Listing People On Twitter


• Who Are The Twitter Elite...And Of Course We Ramble

*Twittercide is when someone closes their account...they're account remains a ghost for around 24 hours, all of the people they follow are automatically unfollowed, and all of their following and follower numbers go to zero. The person in question can elect to have all their tweets removed, or to leave them on the Timeline. There is also a period in which a Twittercided account can reclaim their account and "come back to life". People Twittercide for a variety of reasons.

**Twitter glitches are sometimes caused by using certain applications, but Twitter also has a glitch in their website/system whereby it unfollows accounts on your behalf...it's a real pisser.