Laughable Social Media: The Great Twitter Purge

Thank You Dan for your great post. Love the subject. And great comments!

I will only refer to people who by using F4F-policy built their follower number up and now purge a lot. Not to people who has in their own strategy to follow only people they want to follow.

What I worry most is not tech, or unfollow itself or anything to do with Twitter.

I worry most what is the attitude of these people toward other human beings.

They really believe they are above other people. The message they give is simple and loud "I dont follow you anymore, but you should still follow me".

Some even send out a tweet and said "I will keep following 1.000 people, send a note why you should be included".

Many were people I respected and loved to read their tweets. Not any more.

"Demanding respect means you are not respectable." @leadershipfreak

What kills me about the big social media stars (Brogan, Dharmesh, Yormark, etc) doing it is that not one of them has said "you know, I was wrong about reciprocity." How could they think following 100,000+ people was manageable? They complain about the noise and DM spam but it was a monster they created to begin with by simply following *everyone* back.

I check out every follower I get and follow back anyone I think will be interesting TO ME. I get a lot that unfollow me after a week if I haven't followed back (or worse, unfollow me right after I do follow them back), but I don't care. These are people just playing the follower-count game.

I think there is one piece you didn't consider...a lot of the "stars" paid for their followers early on. And, if that was their practice, they likely have TONS of spam and unmanageable DMs because, well, robots built their followings for them to begin with. We have a client who kept bragging about how fast his network was growing...and how it was growing faster than mine. Turns out, he spent $0.02 for every follower and now he regrets it because of the reasons people are doing the great unfollow. I don't know that all of the people who have done the unfollow thing paid for their followers (likely some of the biggest guys did not), but it is something that happened in 2007 and 2008.

Daniel, Great post! Like you, I follow back those I find interesting for whatever reason, their profile, their Tweets or just a Gut feeling. I don't expect anyone to follow me back just because I follow them, but am happy when they do.

I followed many of the Social Media Elite early on and was surprised and happy when several followed me back (before I knew about auto follow) I have conversed with a few and even met a few in person at events, most of them recently unfollowed in the Great SM Purge, a few didn't, I understand the clogging of your Twitter arteries and agree there are other ways to clean it up other than a wholesale purge.

I still follow them and find they have value to me but don't Trust them as much as I once did, I think one or two of them even wrote a book about Trust ;).

I was helping a friend of a friend build his Twitter following while he was on a reality TV show, he went from 800 to over 10,000 in just a few weeks, part of it was him and his personality the other was that he truly Engaged with his fans along the way, but he still balked at following back more than 50% of his followers even though each time he did he got a Tweet saying how it had made their day, Celebrities and Celebrity Wannabes just don't Follow Back seems there is some unwritten 10% rule that the rest of us don't follow.

My rule is to follow everyone I find interesting and hope that I don't have more than a 2 - 1 ratio of Follows to Followers.

I love it, Dan. Kick some ass! ...And these guys are asses, one and all.

This line sums it up quite nicely: Would they have such great followings had they not reciprocated along the way?

Daniel I would change "Who's Who in Social Media" for "The Former Who's Who in Social Media" . Social Media in October 2011 is about being Open, Random and Supportive. To everyone. Unfollowing people is the opposite of that. These people will learn to change their policy. Just watch.

As for DM "spam" just use @optmeout. It gets rid of all but all of it

And here I thought "the big purge" was going to be about unfollowing people who tweet a play-by-play of their daily lives. I need to do a purge of those folks.

But no, you're telling me it's about egos and popularity? Really? Wow. You're right that this is laughable. Come on, it's just Twitter! People who don't live in this space would never define influence or leadership by something like followers vs. following ratio. All of those people have lost credibility in my book.

How can you engage with authenticity when you don't allow direct messages, share your email address or telephone number, and require people to complete a form to contact you that is prefaced with some form of "I'm busy so you can wait"?

Accessibility is the biggest difference between the "purgers" and great CEO's. Direct contact information, including a physical address, is available for most CEO's. Social media giants? Not. So. Much.

Personally, I don't find people who hide behind the digital curtain engaging or influential. Management of a social media community can be challenging. Unfollowing everyone doesn't improve engagement: it turns the user into a broadcaster. In reality, the purgers have always been broadcasters. Even when they followed everyone and his dog, they rarely responded to any mentions that came from outside their circle. This activity is more obvious now.

If they were true leaders, they would have used the multitude of tools that are available to manage their community. This would have demonstrated an understanding of the channel and how to use it. They chose poorly.

Disclosure: I follow the people who follow me except for obvious spammers and bots. I unfollow inactive accounts and the occasional spammer or bot that gets followed erroneously. The management of my follow/unfollow strategy is a manual process. It takes time, but my community is worth it.

Dan, thanks for the thoughts. I don't have anything new to add, but since I just spent 15 minutes here reading through all the comments, I at least wanted to say hi :)

Are these “Purgers” as influential as the CEO of a fortune 500 company? (I have an opinion on this…what is yours?) - Seriously?

Most of these "purgers" would get laughed out of any board room, let alone have the "influence" as a CEO of a major company -- unless they were pitching an idea about the next book they're writing.

People, we need to stop confusing "influence" with "online reach." The only people these "purgers" influence are others who play in the same space.

Twitter Purge? Is that a new California Celebrity Diet??

I have recently done the big purge as well. Its impossible to really "follow" thousands of twitters. Creating lists is the helps me follow who I am actually interested in . Unfortunately , twiiter sometimes fights with my not updating and these followers get a lost in the sauce. I really do check every profile before I follow. happy to see so many comments by people I truly do follow.

At the end of the day each of these "big named" people provide one example strategy, or in this case tactic would be a better word. Will it work for my customers? Will it help my customers make money? Not so much. So that tactic is shelved. Makes for great blog fodder though. Yet that is fleeting.

I saw people freaking out about Chris Brogan and others unfollowing them, but do you really think he was listening all the time? If you read about the amount of stuff that Chris or any of these other folks like @problogger or Brian Clark do they're all supremely busy people. Twitter and their communities there are one of many channels. I urge everyone to not place their self-worth on who is following them on Twitter or another social media site. Those relationships start very shallow (as @dinodogan would say) and many stay that way.

Now I'm not saying that it's alright to blanket unfollow everyone in a community that helped build your brand or that there aren't more than enough tools (lists, searches, etc.) to help you get into the conversations you want to listen to. But you won't see me unfollowing a mass amount of my Twitter community anytime soon.

Thank you for writing this, Daniel! I've been sitting on a post that called out this practice, but was doubting myself, thinking I was the only one who saw this for what it was.

Thanks for being a voice of reason on this and for giving me the kick I needed to publish my post. Maybe I'm not alone in thinking that this is a bunch of silliness. As you say, the tools and resources are there to address the problems. Unfollowing everyone is a whole lot of overkill.

And, more than that, it just sets a bad precedent for those who look to the "gurus" for guidance on how to use platforms such as Twitter. What a shame.

I feel people should just follow who they want to follow.

I for one don't follow back unless they provide interesting content I want to read.

I generally want to read all tweets I receive in my timeline, so why follow people who's tweets I'm not interested in reading?

I always found the whole "follow back everyone" a little silly. Plus that a lot of accounts that follow me are generally spammy, why would I want to follow that?

I just read your article thanks to @deleted_91832_Sean McGinnis 's tweet ;) and literally laughed out loud. I've had a very similar post inspired (correct word?) by @ChrisBrogan 's epic purge. The thing is I saw it coming months in advance. Chris has/had? a few Twitter handles that correspond to various startups or causes he's created over the years. At first, I was followed by the original @ChrisBrogan but then was unfollowed at some point and was then followed by one of his other TW handles. I didn't notice I was ultimately dumped by all handles until I read his post and I'll admit that for a couple of days I was genuinely hurt. I did feel like it was a slap in the face because I did get an opportunity to meet and talk to Chris during the SOBCon11 conference in Chicago. I was (and still am) a @ChrisBrogan follower and was very excited to have had the chance to finally meet him and after spending a couple of days in his company realized he was as genuine and authentic as he is in the SM realm. Crap! I even trade tweets with his mom on occasion! I was family for goodness sake! No seriously. I was hurt.

But then reality whispered in my ear and it opened up a fresh perspective on being dumped by a social media guru and mega ninja like Chris. To put it simply, I stopped feeling victimized and actually took the time to view his decision through a different lens. Knowing what I do know about Chris the person and Chris the social media megamind, I know he didn't and doesn't go out of his way to "piss on people's heads". He really does have a good heart which is evident in all of the people that he's helped by directly taking the time to encourage them to find their passion as well as all of the causes he and his companies have helped build. Chris is one of those people that truly produces good content, engages people and builds communities. How many times have we had to or wanted to just "go to the well" seeking new perspective and focus? Just wipe the slate clean? The fact is, I follow Chris because he helps me grow and I trust him. If he hasn't followed me back maybe it's because I haven't said or done anything to inspire him to do so.

Those are my 2cents plus a dollar ;).

BTW, your post absolutely rocked and I am totally stoked to be following you now. You are a "gate jumper" and a thought provoker and for that I sincerely applaud you.