"So too do I see it better that 100 spammers fill my feed than I lose access to the innocents who remain. I am not so self-centered as to believe I know the full set of people who I can learn from and derive value. So don't look for me to start shaking my numbers down on any of the networks - even if it is getting more popular. " love this part of the post, however I want just to notice that what make the problem isn't the unfollow but the follow, I always tried to understand the frenetic run to have million of follower, none friend every who say Hi, this is the real life, virtual social behaviour have to be the projection of the real social behaviour, so don't follow thousand or may be million of people to end by unfollowing them. it is as easy as this, auto-follow bring the spammer to twitter, and may be to add some marketer that lake of innovation made this worst and unpleasant experience. - abdellah

fighting talk - I do believe you just called scoble self-centered. Still I am sure he has been called worse ;) - Riaz Kanani

it's not about unfollowing, it's about filtering - Barak Hachamov

filter before you fellow - abdellah

Riaz, Scoble and I get along great. I wouldn't call him self-centered. - Louis Gray

I shared this in GR as soon as I read it. Congrats on a great post, Louis! All I can say is finally someone has said it. This trend of unfollowing is rather disturbing imho and shows how self-centered some people are, how desperate for attention others are, and how they all are rather clueless at creating valuable networks on these social tools they so much love to love. - Vlad Bobleanta

true, but people who don't appreciate following others shouldn't do it and shld unfollow..keeps tweeting young and influential. also, the only way to get rid of spam is to unfollow/block each such perp - Amit 'zyaada' Mittal

Louis: you will come to dislike your choice here. I used to say the same thing, but as you get more and more people who you aren't interested in you'll realize you just aren't getting anything out of the home page on Twitter anymore and, worse, you are getting spammed both on it and via DMs. That might not be a big problem for you with 12,000 friends, but as your numbers move up (and they will) you'll hit the same problems I did. - Robert Scoble

Why is Louis' followers number growing very very slowly relative to his popularity on the net - Mark

Robert, I never did get anything out of the homepage of Twitter anyway. :) - Louis Gray

I think unfollowing makes sense on Twitter. On Friendfeed Lists are your friends. - Paul Kinlan

Mark, I would say it has to do with not being put on any kind of suggested list. :) - Louis Gray

I don't find that the Twitter website does a good job of making Twitter usable. The applications are what make it usable for me. - Michael Owens

Unfollowing kinda makes sense. Have you ever played an RPG the second time through... you know what to do in the beginning, you aren't lost, and you know what your end goal is? Yeah. That's pretty much what we are talking about here. - Evan Travers

I like that Evan :) RPG - michelle harris

Yeah, the real thing here is we both are heavy users of FriendFeed. That's why I didn't care that my Twitter feed was getting worse and worse. Over the past year I've done almost all my Twitter reading here on FriendFeed. Now that I've restarted it, though, damn is it 100x more useful! And, yes, there are lots of people who are on Twitter who aren't on FriendFeed. - Robert Scoble

I could barely handle following 600 or so people, even with appropriate tweetdeck filters. There were too many people who just weren't adding value. I made a particular point to unfollow anyone who regarded themselves as an "SEO" or "Internet Marketing" expert.. I had made the mistake of following back anyone who followed me and slowly began to realize that they were just playing the numbers game. - Neeraj Kumar Agrawal

abdellah: I am starting to agree with "filter before you follow", which I also believe is what Robert Scoble is doing now as he starts to follow people. Louis Gray: I don't think it is a movement to unfollow everyone, at least, not for me. I think Scoble had to start from scratch because of the number he had... for me, having a very small number in comparison, I will start unfollowing those who are causing the spam... as my feed quiets down, picking off spammers will become increasingly easier. I agree with most of what you are saying though. - Timothy Federwitz

I've been curious as to the counter argument to this trend. Scoble's reaction albeit extreme is one I can empathize with, but unnecessarily severe. I appreciate the alternate perspective and grounded reasoning to your approach. While I have far fewer followers the numbers have crossed the line of unmanageable with out an automation service. Thanks for the great post and food for thought. - Jim Goldstein

Scoble has this big 7 point list of criteria for following you on twitter, but on Friendfeed he will follow anyone who asks! - Mark

Mark: that's because on FriendFeed I can have lists. So I can use a variety of different following strategies here. On twitter I can only follow or not. - Robert Scoble

I think I am in the middle on this. I am not about to wholesale unfollow everyone, but the noise from news bots etc in my twitter feed is getting insane. I am still nowhere close to "getting" FF so I am still struggling a bit here too.. In fact, I have fallen right back into the trap I was in a few months ago. I think it's time for another social medai diet - Andy Glover

Robert, you can certainly use tools like tweet deck to create groups, but . . .whatever. To me, it's just not an issue, either way. I like it when folks that I find interesting (and Robert is certainly among them!) follow me back, but it's not essential. I don't need to follow the Roberts of the world on Twitter in order to check in on what they're up to, from time to time. Unless someone has a private feed, it seems to be a non-issue. - Kathy Fitch

Andy: on FriendFeed whenever things go nutty, just open up a new friend list and move your high quality follows into that. Leave all the other people in the old list, so you can check in once in a while. - Robert Scoble

I don't see how anyone could follow as many people as Robert w/o losing control. Twitter would become marginalized by sheer un-manageability. Even with groups etc. there's only so much real estate on a monitor. I have groups on FriendFeed as well but honestly I spend most of my time on the home feed. - Rick Bucich

That said, when I'm launching a new twitter presence (as I just have for an organization), it's *really, really great* when people and organizations with similar interests follow back. If nobody did, that would just be sad. Still, I'm mostly interested in the feed aspect of things, so even then, it's not really crucial to have followers. - Kathy Fitch

What I don't get, and what has never been explained to me despite asking, is why have low "quality follows" in the first place? I know you follow me, and given that there is seldom interaction its quite apparent I'm not on the high quality follows list. If its not for ego, what's the point? Mass unfollow, filter, etc. that's entirely your decision, but why follow to the point that mass unfollow is necessary? - JCunwired

I've always had the policy of being quick to follow and even quicker to unfollow. As soon as someone begins to bore or annoy me I just unfollow them. But on the other hand I'm glad to follow people on a whim. You never know. - Leo Laporte

Rick--so true. In some ways, the conversations that these folks with massive followings are having around the follow/unfollow issue just is utterly irrelevant to those of us with more moderate goals and purposes. - Kathy Fitch

Nice to see Leo Laporte being more involved on Friendfeed - Mark

Right Leo - follow to see what's interesting, unfollow when you find out there's no value. The alternative, if I may say so, is misleading and unfair to the end user. - JCunwired

Value in this instance is pretty subjective, and that's the point, really. What is your subject position? I'm in SMB mode, so what I'm after is quite unlike what a twit guru would be after. For me, the following/follower # some are cutting down to would be massive. If I hit those numbers, then I'd probably want to trim it back down. Robert is still about 500 over anything I'd be interested in. - Kathy Fitch

One of the first people I looked through was Leo Laporte's following page. He has some great people who he is following. - Robert Scoble

Take a look at Dave Winer's RSS Cloud technique - a great way to assess a following list in your newsreader before adding. http://www.scripting.com/stories... - Leo Laporte

Why limit yourself? Someone asks to follow me, I check out their profile and tweets. If the words SEO,check out my webcam, or Arrington are there, I don't follow, If I do follow, I give them a month and then unfollow if any major douchbaggery makes its way to mine eyes. - Paul Puri

Ah, somewhere there's an SEO person who is offering useful tweets about how beginners can use the basic Google Analytics and Webmaster tools to help them create better, more useful sites for users and potential users. That person could be good for some folks to follow. - Kathy Fitch

On the "low quality followers/follows" point, I really needed some of those at first to help me get a feel for the ebb and flow. The trajectory of any given twitter user's account, if it's public, probably follows that basic pattern of "whoo hooo, followers!" to "what the heck?" to "now that I get how it works, how would I like it to work for me?" Seems pretty common sense. It's okay that answers to the final question vary. All as it should be. - Kathy Fitch

I'm just generalizing, of course, but most of the people who try to follow me that have SEO in their bio have 10 tweets and they are link bait. - Paul Puri

I shared w/ Robert and will share with you, YES I spend too much time trying to block all the FakePornSpamBot accounts. And I miss blocking many. BUT, my HOME Stream is the most amazing view of the world! With a few refreshes I can get the pulse of what's going on! Besides, even if someone is often a voyeur, there are those times they pop up and share the most insightful things! I believe I can learn from everyone! So if you're real and follow me - I'll follow you! - Arleen Boyd

In parallel to this, I do manage a corporate account for one of the companies I consult for. Every follow and unfollow there is measured. But I learned a long time ago, that at least for me, people just want to be connected, on any network they prefer, so I try not to get in their way. - Louis Gray

Louis: there's another aspect to this too: every follow you make signals to the world what kind of person you are. Look at my following list. You'll see geeks, VCs, journalists, entrepreneurs. Who isn't there? Not many celebrities. Not many plumbers or quilters, if any at all. That signals to the world the kind of people I want to have in my life and the kinds of information I want to hear. If you are autofollowing that opportunity to signal to the world is totally lost. - Robert Scoble

Chris: always. :-) - Robert Scoble

Oh, Paul, point well taken, of course. I'm just pointing out that they've no doubt ruined it for a handful of smart and useful SEO folks. Arleen was actually one of the first folks to follow me back, and just watching her from a distance (I guess that makes me a voyeur? <grin>) helped give me a good feel for how someone at her level of #'s worked with the system. Very educational! - Kathy Fitch

The "signal to the world" bit makes much more sense to me on the corporate accounts I'm working with. For the Catholic parish, for instance, who to follow gets really important. I can't afford to have anything with even a whiff of inappropriateness about it in the stream. That's going to be a very small list! - Kathy Fitch

I just think the only way you can do this wrong is if you don't continually revise your thinking and your approach. Right on to all of you for exploring this topic. - hollyrae

Leo, I can usually tell by the last 4 to 5 tweets whether I should follow back. But, everyone is annoying or boring sometimes (including myself) so I don't unfollow very often unless someone's stream becomes overly promotional or full of gimmicks. - Rick Bucich

What's the benefit of following thousands of people? if you say its because you have to in order for them to DM you, how can you possibly respond to potentially thousands of DM's consistently? Once, I tried following everyone that followed me and it made my follower count jump quickly, but it made twitter less fun because I had random automated DM's from people I didn't know, and a useless stream of info from people I followed for no reason. - Dusty Edenfield

Robert/Kathy: I think who I follow making a statement of who I am and what I'm about is less important to me since I am using it for a personal experience and my likes are wide and deep. If I was using my Twitter account as an outward facing presence for my business/organization, then it would matter much more to me... but I'm just having fun with it and like the idea of seeing lots of things realtime. I still want to manage the "spam" though, so selectively unfollowing makes sense to me at this point, and my numbers are low... but following anyone who followed me has taken its toll and Twitter is less usable for me, because I know I'm missing intelligent or interesting things from people I follow but are not yet in a special group for me to watch. - Timothy Federwitz

The DM thing. Sigh. Here on FF, it's totally useful. I've never had a single pointless DM. On Twitter, it's a thing to scan very occassionally, and ignore the rest of the time, seems like. - Kathy Fitch

The thing that is being overlooked is this: The real issue is the auto-follow, NOT the total number of "following". It is what removes the vetting process. Once vetted, I'd say the more the merrier, b/c there is real value in your "with friends/following" stream, precisely b/c it is way different to search/filter it vs. regular Twitter Search. It is a huge omission/mistake that this is not available in Twitter, with importing as many of your Twitter "following" users into FriendFeed as you can being the current workaround. - Alex Schleber

Since I mass unfollowed I've had SIGNIFICANTLY better interactions with the people I genuinely want to communicate with. A good % of the social media gurus who just follow in the hopes that you'll follow back unfollowed and it's seriously been like a weight lifted off my shoulders. - Ryan Stephens

(cont'd) For this reason, I will openly admit to trying to get as many of my Twitter peeps registered into FriendFeed as possible, & I won't even care if they sub to me there or not (not required for conversation on FF anyway). It's to get them into the stream that I can then search over, and further add people into separate Friend Lists from there. Currently I'm at about 1k of 3k "following". When I search that stream for say "wordpress", I know I am getting stuff from people that I have vetted to some extent, and in this case that have further self-selected by being savvy enough to be on FF. - Alex Schleber

Also see "My comment on: 'Why You Should Start Over On Twitter With A BRAND NEW Account - Twitip' Hint: I disagree" http://post.ly/1owO This about sums it up: "..the solution to overwhelm by technology is better technology, not retrenchment..". - Alex Schleber

Louis, I only read part of your post, but I agree as far as the types of people that are following others. Twitter has become a place more for business than meaningful conversations. Best thing to do is look at who is following you and purging those who just seem to market links to " Ways To Generate Massive Cash " through whatever they might be involved in hawking. - Lew Newmark

@Lew funny you call this "business". I call it "racket" - Jorge Escobar

Somewhat parenthetically, like the 19th century theoretical "corporate shield" that was supposed to shield individuals from liability, artificial demarcations between "my personal site" and "my business site" are increasingly obsolete. We are all complex, intertwined, interdependent, human-computer, systemic hybrid participants in an increasingly systematized hybrid world. The old silos just don't apply any more. Instead, HOW and WHY you do your own twitter reboot matters more than doing the deed itself. http://u.nu/6xrr or http://u.nu/52sr for example. There may be a million ways to go about this, it's not a question of good/bad, right/wrong. It's a question of what we're trying to accomplish and why. IMHO. ;-) - michael silverton

@Louis - I think you are right. Doing something because it's a "trend" is dumb. Can you tell me what the metric is you use to measure when something breaks through to "trend" status? When "unfollow" hits Trending Topics, maybe? I didn't reboot my following list to join a trend. I did it because I really like following the people I follow...and they were getting drowned out by the people I was politely following. By the way, I have other accounts that are "branded" and used for marketing purposes that I'd never reboot. - Rex Hammock

I'm going to mass unfollow everyone who ignores me :) - JCunwired

Lets be honest, this unfollowing thing by "certain" people is nothing but a PR stunt - Spencer

Spencer--well, of course this thing does have PR implications. After all, the big wigs are all talking about it non-stop, and then those on the next few tiers down from there are talking about the talking. Still, having PR implications and being a stunt aren't exactly the same thing. Many of these big name folks *are* established brands, which isn't something most of us can claim. There's a PR aspect to all that they do, including the mistakes. I'm guessing that's not always fun. Certain advantages to being a little fish in this pond. - Kathy Fitch

@Spencer - I know my unfollowing thing was nothing but a PR stunt. As is my commenting here. - Rex Hammock

agree. More than reasonable post, Luis.. - Marco Castellani