Cartoon: #obsessingoverfollowers
If there's one proven winner in the online world, it's finding a way to digitally enable pathological, obsessive behavior.
Witness Qwitter, which I installed and removed within less than 24 hours. Not because the site's poorly designed - it's lovely. And not because the service doesn't work as advertised - but because the service works exactly as advertised: when someone stops following you on Twitter, Qwitter lets you know.
When people I'd never heard of stopped following @robcottingham, it was relatively easy to take - a few nights of binge drinking, and it was water under the bridge. But the first time I lost a friend (and I mean that in the Web 2.0 sense of "friend", which is, "someone I've never met but with whom I've traded comments briefly somewhere"), I was seized with obsession. Turns out it's a very short leap from What was it about that last tweet that pushed them away? to I'm doomed to die alone and unloved.
So I dropped Qwitter (no, the irony of that sentence isn't lost on me). I'm sure it's a valuable service for those mature and grounded enough to handle it - say, the Dalai Lama on a good day. But until I understand whatever force it is that compels me to dwell on the number of my Twitter followers (and Facebook friends, and FeedBurner subscribers, and...) I'll be staying away.
More Noise to Signal. You can follow Rob on Twitter; and follow ReadWriteWeb too @rww.
Comments
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I prefer to know when someone quits following me because... well, I'm just vindictive by nature and I'll be damned if I'm going to follow someone who doesn't want to follow me anymore. There is also a high frequency of new Twitter users following everyone they can just to get followed back and then unfollowing them. That isn't to say that I don't follow anyone that doesn't follow me back, but there are very few of them.
Posted by: Hugh Briss | January 11, 2009 11:19 AM
I thought Qwitter shut down only weeks after launch, citing scalability issues?
I liked the concept, for me it was sort of like a bad car wreck: you just can't help but look.
However, I found the service to be less meaningful than it could be because notifications seemed to be batched and not real time (2 or 3 would come at once). They try to state which tweet caused these people to stop following but it was often 10-15 tweaks before the notification. How do I know that's exactly when someone stopped following? Not to mention that rarely did a specific tweet cause someone to stop following.
Anyway, just my $0.02.
Posted by: Jmartens | January 11, 2009 12:51 PM
LOL. New to twitter, remember feeling invisible in the "everyone" pool til I found my peeps!
Social net not for the faint of heart! Love it, just left there. Kindred spirits.
Posted by: NightBlooms | January 11, 2009 1:29 PM
I can find myself in that cartoon :)
Andraz Tori
Posted by: Andraz Tori | January 11, 2009 3:20 PM
Cool pic! Btw I have same opinion!
Qwitter does not work anymore for month now as developer told me the other day. They have some problems and want to make it more secure, stable.
Anyways great post, I rather don't know why people sometimes unfollow me tafterall it's their choice?
@Livecrunch
Posted by: Livecrunch | January 11, 2009 3:29 PM
I think it's more of a last-straw effect when someone unfollows, the one tweet (or one too many tweet) is just the tipping point.
I'm relatively new to twitter but I get some random follows. Sometimes I follow back but find they tweet too much about things I'm not interested in. When I unfollow it's usually not because of their last tweet but simply because I feel it's time to do so.
Posted by: Scott Wu | January 11, 2009 3:53 PM
I figure Qwitter's scalability issues were entirely due to the mass of people flocking away from my updates. (I'm also pretty sure I'm to blame for that Amazon S3 outage a while ago... but that's another matter.)
@Jmartens, the car wreck analogy is exactly why I had to quit. I was becoming a rubbernecker at my own one-car pileup.
@Scott, you say it's because of tweet frequency. But in our hearts of hearts, don't we both know it's a judgment of my worth as a human being?
@Hugh, if only the Sopranos was still on. I'm picturing Tony ordering a hit on a guy for unfollowing Meadow.
Posted by: Rob Cottingham | January 11, 2009 4:47 PM
Being 50 helps take the edge off worrying about "qwitters".. :)
Have noticed that the number of people who sign up 2,000 people then ditch most of them to build up their own profile is slowing down.. Nice.. :)
Have also noticed that having an opinion about *anything* can on occasion prompt someone to leave.. That's cool.. Not going to affect changing one's Mind.. :wink:
PS.. Lost a couple of followers who were following nothing but guys at one point.. Can only begin to guess they had first misread my profile as...
Stud-Baker.. :))
Posted by: Cindy Sue Causey | January 12, 2009 12:46 PM
I never signed up for Qwitter because at the end of the day, I really don't care if people unfollow me. It's like my blog. I don't write it hoping others will like it, I write it for me.
However, I will tell you about a new Twitter app. that I created that has more a positive, but still hopefully addictive portion to it: Twitcrush.com.
Declare a crush, see who has declared a crush on you. It's that simple.
Thanks.
Posted by: missburrows | January 13, 2009 8:57 AM