Why did I unfollow everybody? Because it was time to say some goodbyes.
Goodbye to the people offering success in 3 short steps for only $9.95. I don’t want what you’re offering.
Goodbye to those who follow me because they know that I know that it’s considered “rude” to not follow somebody back. If I send my 9 foot tall, 550lb, lady friend to make out with you, you’ll not turn her away because that would be rude, right? Ha! A false sense of propriety will serve you badly in your analog life and feed spammers in your Twitter experience. Enough!
Goodbye to the people who set their accounts to “unfollow anybody who unfollows me”. More than 2,000 of you have unfollowed me so far. It’s okay. We probably didn’t have anything in common to start with.
Goodbye to those who follow everybody back but use 3rd party systems like Tweetdeck to “filter out” the people they don’t really want to see. I’m not interested in being a placeholder for you anymore. Why not publicly own up about who you find valuable? Do that and we won’t even need #followfriday anymore! All I’ll have to do is check out the people you’re following to see who you endorse. Isn’t that a cool idea?
I reached a turning point in my thoughts on Twitter and community in general this past Friday evening. On a whim, I found the last page of people I was following at the time (something like page 2,475) and started clicking through to profiles and websites. I covered more than 300 accounts in the five hours I spent rediscovering a part of what “makes” Twitter what it is for me.
I realized that I wanted to do something different. I wanted to start anew. So I used a few different scripts and unfollowed just over 46,000 accounts in a matter of hours today.
Why did I do this?
I want to have my “follow” count for something. In the future, when you look over the list of people I follow, you will see a group of value-adding individuals I endorse fully. They will be people I learn from, who make me smile, who inspire and challenge me to improve myself and give back to my community.
We’ve talked about community, trust, and networking a lot recently at sethsimonds.com. We’re going to be talking about them even more in the coming days.
I’m not suggesting that you unfollow everybody on Twitter. You might not want to unfollow any at all. But perhaps there are a few accounts that you’re only keeping around because they follow you back. Perhaps you’re afraid of losing followers if you speak your mind or state what’s on your heart. If there’s a chance that my action will inspire you to action of your own, whatever that action might be, I’ll be happy.
Everybody following everybody isn’t a networked community; it’s a madhouse. Enough of the madhouse. Let’s build something truly powerful and show the world all the beauty we can bring about with that power!
If we’ve connected in the past and you’re worried that I’ll forget you, drop me a link in a comment below or find me on Twitter. I paused for a few minutes at every 5k accounts I was unfollowing to see what felt right and 10-15k seems perfect. I’ll be following people back over the next few weeks and I’d love to talk to you and connect in a real way. That is, if you’re up for it. =)
Update: (8.03.09) I was wrong about the 10-15k being a good number of people to follow. It’s been 2+ months since I first unfollowed 45k and I’ve yet to follow 400 users. Once you go back to a manageable number, (with the web interface, no 3rd party system for lists) the idea of following thousands seems silly.
To those of you who have always thought that following thousands was a silly notion, good job.
