The Secret to Fewer Followers
Another great Guest Post from Honorary Fail Bird Handler @jackassletters, who, when he’s not writing funny letters to companies who deserve a nudge in the ribs, torments “social media experts” on twitter as @smmonkey.
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When someone comes along and says “you’re using twitter wrong” it generally means they don’t get the medium. If they think you’re doing a shitty job of putting yourself out there, they have some options: they can not follow you, they can block you, they can report your ass (the efficacy of this is questionable, but it’s an option). So it’s pretty unproductive to point out to people when they are fucking up on twitter. In fact I’d say it’s pretty much pointless.
Oh, crap. What’s the focus of Twitter Fail Blog again? Sorry. I forgot. Like I said, people who tell other people how they should be using twitter generally don’t get twitter. That’s fine. I’m the first to admit I don’t get it, which is why I feel free to tell people when they are doing it wrong. I’m guessing this is also why @tweet_fail has a site dedicated to telling people about twitter failures (no one tell her she’s tilting at windmills).
Nothing is going to change anything here. No one will modify their behavior off of what’s been written. So why bother?
Well, because you’re doing it wrong, and we have fun mocking you for it.
Today I am here to laugh at follower counts.
I’ve done it! I’ve finally managed to get my followers below 4,000!
I know what you’re thinking, “But Mr. Assletters, people want more followers, not less! Also, what do you care who follows you? You don’t have to follow them back.“
And I have answers to these questions.
First off, the follower game is rigged. It’s a masturbatory experience that feels good while your numbers are climbing, but eventually it gets boring. Yeah, I know, this is a poor analogy, since I’m mostly 40 and I’m not sure masturbation ever ceases to be fun (I’ll ask the next old dude I see and get back to you!). Regardless, in the end, number count isn’t satisfying to any but those new to twitter and the superficial.
Some might accuse me of being envious here, since I don’t even have 4,000 followers. Others might wish they had half as many followers as me. I honestly have gotten to a point where I want fewer followers. Sure, I want people to follow, but I care more about whether the person actually engages, is funny, entertaining, thoughtful, caring, interesting, etc., than I do about that one extra number.
I’ve written previously about how easy it is to amass followers. I think I may have also mentioned that it was a bad idea. I’d easily have over 10,000 followers on this account if I allowed it. According to twitblock.org I’ve blocked 6,402 people. According to twitterholic.com I once had 5,500+ followers. It’s a pretty safe assumption that if I let every pornbot, spammer, and Social Media Expert follow me I’d have well above 10,000 followers (especially since these accounts attract more of the same). But to what end? Not one will read anything I write.
There’s a fairly consistent breakdown of new accounts that follow me. I ignore half, block a quarter, and follow a quarter (this discounts the obvious spammer accounts that get reported). Of the 25% I follow I end up unfollowing about half of these. This formula has served me well.
Recently I decided I was going to focus on getting the number of accounts I follow down as well, so that I could engage with more people on a deeper level. I fired up Twitter Karma to see how many accounts weren’t updating. I was able to bail on about a thousand people that haven’t updated in 100 days or more! I then used The Twit Cleaner to find the people who only post links or engage in “other dodgy behavior.”
I was shocked that about one in five of the people following me hadn’t updated in over 100 days. That’s pretty staggering if you think about it. I’m guessing this might be a universal truth. Check it out yourself, let me know if I am wrong. But if I am correct this means Ashton Kutcher has 900,000 inactive accounts following him. What’s the point of this? It’s pretty likely if a person hasn’t updated in 100 days they never will again. So unfollowing is obvious.
But why boot someone? Why not just let them hang on like one of those lampreys on the side of a shark? Well, the only answer I have is that I’d rather have 3,000 real followers than 4,500 with 1,500 being inactive. When I look at that number I know it’s curated. I know the majority of those people are real. I also know there are damn few questionable accounts. A follow by me really is an endorsement of sorts, and someone in my following list is probably safe (at worst just uninteresting) since I get rid of obvious asshats.
Once I unfollowed all the inactive accounts my counts seemed a bit dishonest to me. I’d look at the number of people following me and know that many were now just ghosts. My follow/follower ratio was such that I looked like I was an aspiring celebrity. So I forced them to unfollow.
How do you do this? It’s fairly easy. You block them, then unblock them. Don’t just “undo” the block, since this makes it as though it never happened. Fully block, then unblock. In the unlikely event this person decides their twitter absence was a mistake, and you’re truly missed, you can be followed again later (of the 1,500 people I’ve done this to exactly 1 has refollowed).
I like having fewer followers. The only thing that sucks about this is I haven’t figured out a way to charge for my Get Fewer Followers system. Seriously, I know that for the most part that anyone in my following column is actually amused by the stupid crap I spout and is there because they want to read what I have to say and engage me on it.
My challenge to you: Give the stale accounts the boot. Twitter should be doing this for you anyway. Pick a timeline. Three months, six months, whatever you like and start blocking and unblocking. You won’t get anything from it other than the satisfaction of knowing you’re not playing the numbers game.
Check in with me again in a year. I really doubt I’ll ever climb above 5,000 again.
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Take a chance; see if @jackassletters will let you follow him on twitter. Then, blow off work for the rest of the day and read his blog.
If you’re aching for more from @jackassletters, see his guest post “Art for Art’s Sake” on @stinginthetail’s blog.
© of this post belongs to @jackassletters, a.k.a. Christopher L. Jorgensen
17 Responses to “The Secret to Fewer Followers”
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by jackassletters: “The Secret to Fewer Followers” http://bit.ly/9POLx0...
i was already doing most of this, but still learned some more tricks
cheers Christopher – quality followers (and followings) are what’s important.
[...] contest is easy. Just go to the post, “The Secret to Fewer Followers,” a guest post by Christopher on twitter-fail.com. Leave a comment by March 4th 2010 (Des Moines time), saying whether you agree with that post, for [...]
An interesting read. Thanks as always
Just finished writing my comments and I missed the catcha – d’oh.
Great post by the way and I agree with most of your points.
I don’t follow bots and am using truetwit validation to weed them out for the next week or so. Basically it allows me to automatically follow people who are REAL, although I have since unfollowed spammy type accounts.
Secondly I wanted to experiment with reducing the time it takes to check out a new followers twitter stream and also to see how people viewed this programme. Interesting comments have been made on this option. I’ll check accounts if they don’t validate (just in case they don’t like validating) which I guess kind of defeats the purpose!
I follow people based on #FF and shoutouts by those that I communicate with and those I trust which is why I read your post through @stingingthetail.
PS I followed you ’cause you…
I think your concept is a good one, however as with anything twitter related, my use is different to your use and different to Jo Blow’s use!
For me, twitter is about the interaction. If you follow me, I would expect to visit your timeline and find you interacting with people I interact with, or at least engaging in discourse with me. I don’t go out looking for people to follow, but find some nevertheless- friends of friends, people who have been retweeted and occasionally through a search for a hashtag or term I will come across someone I want to interact with.
I am not into the celebrity watch as such, be they twitter, Hollywood or local celebrities, I suppose focussing on the interactions and going past the name.
I enjoy using followwatch.com. Once I got over finding out people had de-friended me, I discovered patterns- people who follow, then unfollow a day or so later then follow again a few days later etc.
I don’t really care who follows me, as long as they…
Is it worth the effort to weed out followers even if they’re bots? If you’re not going to follow back, who cares? I don’t care if anyone unfollows or blocks me. I just want to create 100% original content on twitter. It’s their loss if they don’t want it.
Lovely letter to the Hopper exhibition by the way.
The Worst of Perth´s last blog ..Weekend Worstoff 96
I’m not the author, but I’ll reply anyway. One reason I agree with @jackassletters concept is because every follower creates another incremental load on the server. To have my tweets served to thousands of people who won’t read them is a waste of resources. Being conservative with twitter’s resources helps keep the Fail Whale at bay.
I cut about a dozen of my followers the other day; most of them had been inactive for a while. The thing with their accounts is that if they are not logging in they are collecting spam followers who are more apt to find me. I figure it’s just like weeding a garden to stay on top of this.
Davina´s last blog ..Getting Sensual with Creativity
The Worst of Perth,
twitter claims they will remove inactive accounts, but I don’t think they ever have. I had some people following me that hadn’t updated in over a year! I guess this irritates me, since when the press says things like, “Ashton Kutcher with his nearly 5 million followers…” I know many only joined because Oprah told them to. I bet 1/3 of his followers aren’t real. So it would be hypocritical for me to complain about him and allow the same behavior.
Also, if you let one pornbot follow without blocking you’ll see an influx of them. They breed!
As to whether it’s worth your effort? No idea. I don’t really have a life. You may.
Thanks for the Hopper letter compliment!
Christopher L. Jorgensen´s last blog ..Michelina
Davina,
you’re coming close to what I am thinking.
I often check out people I think have the same sense of humor as me, but their interests won’t be the same. For example, I don’t follow a lot of humor accounts. So for me to check out who they are following is silly. But I can fairly certain that the people who follow someone like @thatkevinsmith might also like what I do.
So yeah, I’d be tempted to follow his followers in the hope of some exposure, but the way things work there’s no way I would ever do that. I bet a large percentage of those people follow just to be in his “list.” I bet a lot unfollow and refollow to be at the top. If he were blocking, this couldn’t happen.
Christopher L. Jorgensen´s last blog ..Michelina
I have had this same discussion with several other people and decided the numbers game is a completely superficial ego boost. I, myself, would also prefer to interface with only those I find of like mind and intellectually stimulating, or those who make me laugh. However, I am no where near as diplomatic as you are. I will block a business account in a heartbeat, and for those regular folks who wish to follow, if they dont speak up within one week of following, they get the axe as well. I have never even considered unblocking… Now, I am off to buy some Puppy Chow for my new puppy.
Thanks for this post, it has taught me how to be a better follow/follower. Turns out, I got some turds I gotta flush! Thanks again!
[...] Over the weekend, I did something amazing to my Twitter account. In the last post, we were publicising the competition to win a prize – an art catalogue pictured here on this blog, a guest post from Christopher L. Jorgensen (@jackassletters on Twitter) . The competition (open until 3rd March 2010) can be entered at his guest post on the Tweet Fail blog, The Secret to Fewer Followers. [...]
[...] @jackassletters said, having fewer followers who pay attention can be much better than a bunch of people who are following you in the hopes [...]
Christopher- I love you more than butter, Belgium chocolate and German hookers but my ego requires I have as many followers as I can- hundreds and thousands of sycophants following me and calling me queen. Yes (she said rubbing her hands together) Queen- Queen of the universe.
Just Kidding – that would be wrong. Wouldn’t it.
P.S. I don’t want a puppy- no, no puppy.
Zoe Right´s last blog ..They Looked so Normal
[...] @jackassletters – One of the funniest people we know. Jackassletters.com One of his guest posts: The Secret to Fewer Followers [...]