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I have just taken the decision that in the next day or so I will be unfollowing every follower I have on my @ProBlogger Twitter account and starting again with following people.

I wanted to explain why I'm doing it here:

Why I followed so many people
I currently follow around 78,000 people. I initially followed people in such high numbers for two reasons:

1. to reciprocate - I've always felt strange about having people follow me and not following them back. Perhaps this is my 'people pleaser' trait in action on the web.

2. to open up DM conversations - I used to use Direct Messaging as much (if not more than) as 'Replies' on Twitter. Following people in large numbers opened up the opportunity for this.

Why I'm unfollowing everyone and starting again

In the past few months I've realised that in trying to please everyone I am ending up making Twitter less useful to anyone. While perhaps the reciprocation does please some it has made Twitter a lot more noisy for me - which means I become less and less useful to others.

Ironically following so many people so that they can DM me means my Direct Message Stream has become stuffed full of DM spam and DM phishing attempts. Many of these messages come from people whose accounts have been compromised by phishers. For a while I unfollowed them all but they keep coming in waves of up to several hundred a day. As a result genuine DMs are missed.

Lastly - my life has become so noisy... people around me (in real life) are telling me I'm distracted and I'm feeling it. I don't think that this will 'fix' that but I do need to simplify and reduce the stream of data that is coming IN every day somehow - this is the first of numerous things I'm hoping to do to help with this.

So I'm going to do a clean out in the coming days. Everyone will be unfollowed. I'm using +Jesse Stay to help me with this.

I will then begin to follow people again manually. It'll be a slow process so please hang in there with me as I do it. If you'd like to DM please let me know on Twitter.

While I'm sure unfollowing people will offend some - my hope is that in doing this my own experience of Twitter will improve and as a result others who I interact with will have a more useful experience also.﻿
Robert Scoble's profile photoCarol Wiley's profile photoHarleena Singh's profile photoJohn Bergquist's profile photo
I did that two years ago and it was the best thing I ever did on Twitter.﻿
I remember you doing it +Robert Scoble and thinking at the time 'I should do that one day'. I was worried what people would think.

Can't believe it took me 2 years to bite the bullet.﻿
+Darren Rowse I lost about 6,000 followers but now have gained more than 100,000 since then. I now realize that the most important thing is your inbound. If you are following people just because they are following you you are opening yourself up to a poor inbound.﻿
Ive often thought of doing this as well. DM spam is ridiculous and twitter is basically only useable via 'lists' for me.... Please post how it goes and the results.. I will be interested to see.﻿
it's a similair transition to the one you made when you changed your facebook presence to a personal and a pro fanpage. Totally get why you'd do this, and I for one am not at all impressed by authority figures attempting to follow/reciprocate as it just becomes an unmanageable mess for them! ;)﻿
Do you think there is a limit to the people you will follow to keep a more concise and useful stream? What happens if you get 50K people who are in some way useful? I highly doubt it will be that high but surely a few thousand people is probably more likely. How will you stop the same Clutter from Happening again?
Every few months I clean my list out of people who I no longer need to follow or have conversations with. Is this something you will have to maintain?﻿
Been thinking about doing the same thing and I only have 2100+ people... I couldn't imagine 78000!﻿
Wow, Darren! 78000 is kind of insane! No offense taken. WIll not be unfollowing you, and can't imagine many will. Good luck with the big job though!﻿
I want to do that too, but fear loosing genuine connections I made so long ago. Currently following 1400 or so. Many of my incoming @mentions are mistyped to the singer christian burns. He has a _ at the end of his handle. Kind of lame. ﻿
+Adam Phillips I now am following 33,000 on Twitter: all added by hand. My inbound is unbelievably interesting now, even with a bunch of noise that people produce.﻿
I don't blame you, Darren. The spam is getting ridiculous. I've cut way back on mu usage there, as few engage like they used to. I enjoy your posts so I'll still be following you.﻿
+Robert Scoble Do you use lists? How do you keep up with that many? I have a few hundred and its quite easy and could see a few thousand being bareable but more than 10k followers and I feel like it becomes to choatic and I miss to many things. How can you seperate solid content from just normal twitter "talk"﻿
I can't imagine trying to keep up with 78k people, that's just an unbelievable amount of traffic to keep track of.﻿
I dont have anything close to what you guys have, despite the fact that I signed up in 2007. but I made a "not suck" section in Tweetdeck so I make sure I don't miss things from people I dig. The rest is cool if I catch something.﻿
Chris Brogan unfollowed everyone last week and began his slow reinclusion process as well. Good luck to you, sir.﻿
Paradox of expanding social circles: The more social one appears the less social one eventually becomes.﻿
+Jess Pearson there's a Klout game? I've not really used Klout much - are you talking about lists on Twitter or on Klout itself?﻿
+Adam Phillips Not sure how many I'll follow but suspect it'll be in the hundreds initially - in time it may expand a little though as I want to DM more and more people.﻿
I did the same thing a year ago, unfollowed everybody, watch how the robots unfollow you +Darren Rowse ....

As far as Klout goes I will pay attention when they count my 10K Google social graph :]﻿
+Darren Rowse I wonder if thats what lists was made for? I think people under 10K following don't need lists that much but for the more intense users like yourself or +Robert Scoble then lists is exactly what you need to split up the chatter from the important. Keen to read a post on how it goes. I do a similiar thing every few months and clear out the clutter for clarity.﻿
Can totally understand mate. Interested to hear how it goes. :)﻿
+Adam Phillips lists rock my world - I have about 4 private ones that I follow and they've brought back some of the experience of Twitter - not all of it but certainly some.﻿
I follow about 1600 people; not all of them follow me, but they all have something to teach me, including you:-)﻿
I have been unfollowing tons of people myself. unfortunately a large portion of people out there are just spamming twitter, to the point I hardly use it anymore, especially now that most of the people I follow are here on Google Plus.﻿
I unfollowed about 350 people yesterday, through Twitter Karma, weeded out anyone who hadn't posted in at least 4 weeks. I personally wouldn't unfollow everybody in one hit, seems a bit extreme...﻿
Wow! Huge. I understand your situation. It's too bad people took really meant a lot when you followed those of us who are not movers and shakers. I cannot imagine many will stop following. Your content is great.﻿
I did the exact same thing a few months ago +Darren Rowse While my 10k+ followers/following (at that time) was nothing compared to your numbers, it was still a lot of social 'noise' and very difficult for me to truly connect with that many people. I still have some paring down to do; but it's much more manageable now. I did a similar thing with my personal FB profile - I now keep that to family, real-life friends and a very select few online friends. Everyone else - I connect via one of my pages.﻿
I never did "auto follow", and only will follow back folks that I know or at least recognize. Of course, this keeps my follower count very low (as most of these seem to have those "delete if not followed back" functions running), but I actually READ my Twitter stream and if there's no reason to pay attention to somebody, I don't need to have their stuff in my stream.
This is my main gripe with G+ ... I wish there was a way to include people I don't know in my "Don't Know" circle but be able to not have their posts appear in my stream. However, the way things are currently set up are to either ignore the connections (by not putting them in a circle), or have to put up with their posts!﻿
Mate I'm just grateful for the value you continually add to the social browsing experience. The fact you began one strategy by trying to please your community, then openly discussed the new strategy in the typically honest and inclusive ProBlogger style... Well, that's just testament to why we all followed you in the first place. Good luck to you and Jesse!﻿
You could also make lists of the people you find most useful and interesting on Twitter, if you don't already.

It doesn't solve the DM phishing problem but it brings up the feeds who are constantly delivering quality.﻿
Also, if you don't follow me you are crazy! Crazy I says!﻿
+Paul Foster yep - that's how I've tried to deal with it for a while now - just the DM thing that I need to fix.﻿
totally off topic, but why the heck do people +mention Darren in this thread when he started the thing? Is there a reason for it? Bugs me when people do this in convo's with me, I just don;t see the point!﻿
How many people can you unfollow at a time?
When you're done, feel free to clean up my account. ﻿
Is there any way to mass unfollow other than handling it manually?﻿
+Rupert Wood it's just habit, that's all. I hate going to Twitter now because I start messages with + and then I realize that won't work there.﻿
Your decision is a good one I think. I often struggle with the choice to follow back as it does seem to be the polite thing to do, however, it creates a DM and social mess in many ways. So many content free DMs creates a situation where it is hard to surface the real messages yet personal connections and conversation is the point of it all, after all! thanks for posting your rationale as it gives folks an opportunity to think through the impact and make their choices with some (dare I say) klout.﻿
I may do this myself... twitter DM spam is a bitch!﻿
+Robert Scoble Hmmm. I can see why it would be useful in a public stream like twitter, or even useful when addressing someone else in a 'private' stream like this, such as am doing now to you. But +mentioning the list creator just seems totally bonkers/pointless and maybe even 'attention seeking'. Am I right that it is totally unnecessary if responding to the stream starter?﻿
+Vanessa DiMauro I know it seems polite to follow back, but people who follow you do so for their own reasons - hopefully because they find your tweets compelling. I follow people I really want in my stream for because I'm interested in what they have to say, and not because they've followed me. I don't think you should fell an obligation.﻿
Maybe a very different 'industry' example for you 'pro' types to look at is Irish screenwiter +Graham Linehan (IT Crowd, Father Ted, Black Books) - might be better known in the blogging world for the prank he did by starting the story that the IT Crowd was being watched by Osama Bin Laden in those video clips released after he was found/killed, that was an excellent example of how sloppy journalism is and the power of social media!
He does have a rather large number of people 'following him' and does regularly engage with them. He recently set up a circle of 'volunteer consultants' he could enagage with to bounce ideas and share experiences to aid his writing and inspiration. Anyway, go check him out if you haven't already ;)﻿
Sounds like you're on the way to a more authentic Twitter experience. It's always nice to get a "follow" back but I'm also all for reducing the data flow to make Twitter a bit more meaningful. It's a bit like standing in a room full of people shouting at you all at once sometimes.﻿
I am sooo glad I never auto followed back, but i have followed so many that i have a ton of DM spam and phishing URLs are at least 35% of them...augh!﻿
I did that a few months ago. Didn't unfollow everyone, but cut down to about 20% of what I had been. I like Twitter a lot more now.﻿
I've always been selective about following - I follow back maybe 20-25% of accounts that follow me.﻿
I understand.

Though my numbers aren't that high, I've wrestled with similar issues, on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Is there a quick, easy way for you to unfollow everyone, or do you have to manually unfollow 78,000 people, one at a time?﻿
I don't follow nearly that many BUT my Twitter steam seems like it's filled with self promoting tweets instead of real convo. I get so lost in it all the only thing I think is sent out in my stream are my blog posts. When I try to get back into Twitter to engage, I instantly feel lost. Even though my numbers aren't the same, I'm wondering if a dramatic cut will's something worth thinking about.

BTW-I totally need to do this with my Google Reader. I have THOUSANDS of blogs I'm following and it's so cluttered I can find anything! :(﻿
Go for it. Too much noise coupled with a sense of obligation to honor it is a recipe for disaster. Like Dr. Seuss said, "those who matter won't mind and those who mind won't matter."﻿
I don't follow tens of thousands of people. I'm at ~2,500 right now. When I look at my stream, sometimes I think to myself "who the h*ll is that?!" So I can only imagine what that's like for you +Darren Rowse and what it was like for +Chris Brogan.

I still follow people. Every now and then I'll do a quick purge. And every time I log onto twitter, I turn to my lists first and foremost as those are the people I'm really following/conversing with.﻿
Get ready for THOUSANDS of people to prove that they don't know how to read. Planning to write on that soon, but have this goofy book deadline.﻿
Bit sad that you have to explain why you're unfollowing people. One of the great things about Twitter is the fact that you can tailor it to use it the way you want. This whole idea of supposed Twitter etiquette is overshadowing personal preference. I've unfollowed a bunch of people lately because I didn't really find much value in their tweets. I'm sure plenty of people do the same to me. I'll survive! Do whatever makes Twitter a great experience for you﻿
I don't follow thousands of people, nor do thousands of people follow me, but every time I've done what you are doing, I've lost followers. I find it refreshing, and I often find people that I follow who really contribute nothing to my TL at all.
I only want to follow people who add benefit to my TL, and I don't follow everyone who follows me for this very reason.﻿
+Chris Brogan I had the same problem when I did it a couple months ago. People are happy to complain, but don't ever bother to read in the process.﻿
I think this is a great idea. I hope you accomplish what you are after. I know it does get confusing for me when I really don't know who does what and it's really just a few of the thousands that I really have all that in common with anyway.
You'll have to keep us all informed how this works for you﻿
Darren I will continue to follow... Think it is a good thing that u r doing﻿
Even though I appreciate everyone that follows me, it doesn't obligate me to follow them back. I follow people because I want to hear what they have to say and I don't expect them to follow me back unless they want to hear what I have to say. I have a hard time following a couple hundred people and I can't even imagine what it would be like to follow 78000.﻿
I did this a couple of weeks ago though I was removing my "spammy" followers using Twit Cleaner instead of unfollowing everyone. More work but I guess you won't be able to do it with that many followers :P

I find that I can interact more with my real followers and connect with them afterwards﻿
I don't get this "nuke your Twitter" trend. Many of us reciprocated and follow thousands. There has never been any implication- at least on my part-- that one should intimately follow 20,000 or 78,000 followers on Twitter. Of course it's impossible,. But the first thing I learned on Twitter is never to follow the main stream. Using lists (small, private ones I like best) or search terms, is how I control the noise.

Do I need to follow all the people on Twitter? No. Is it worth the time to blow it up and start over? Not to me. I can just refine the few lists I follow.

And fwiw, I get that people who are offended by unfollows can go get bent. But I still think it's neither worth it nor solves the noise problem, ultimately.﻿
By the way, as +Chris Brogan says, many people will complain who don’t bother to read your post. But it will be a small, small minority.﻿
I totally get and support your decision +Darren Rowse!

I have no where close to the following you do, but I've noticed my Home Feed filled with numerous tweets by the same person and more spam than I care to deal with or know how to deal with - ugh!

Good luck to you in the removal process! :)﻿
It would be the best decision you would be making +Darren Rowse ! I guess anything that eases out your life and brings comfort to you at the end of the day, is something you we all need to work on. +Chris Brogan did the same, and I think he is much better off now.

Thereafter choosing whom to follow would be easier, as you could choose a few selected people whom you really want to remain connected with!﻿
Chan Li
haha, now you know what circles can do now ,dont you ?﻿
I've had people ask why I don't follow more people (mine is a tiny account). I follow people who tweet things I want to read. I'll give people a chance when they follow me, but if they don't post, or don't post anything I want to read, I unfollow. All that's to say -- good for you. Do what you need to do to take care of yourself.﻿
I've got a similar process to +tam frager. I add new followers to a list, and evaluate their tweets for about a week, and then either follow them, or remove them from the list.﻿
Definitely a good idea ... what did your stream look like following 78k???﻿
Talk about information overload. 78k is just astronomical.﻿
unfollowing 78k, how long will that take!!!?? do you have some kind of automation?﻿
@peekyou can analyze your Twitter followers and tell you how many are bots.﻿
I predict 62 hours. The Twitter API limites unfollows to about 1,250 per hour. It took me 75 hours to unfollow 108K.﻿
Really great idea Darren. I think Twitter etiquette has changed since the early days and it's not necessary to follow people back. I honestly don't think that many people who follow me are even watching to see if I follow them back. I know for sure that I (a) don't care and (b) don't check my inbox to see if people follow me back. I follow people because I'm interested in what they have to say and if we can strike up a meaningful conversation and I 'earn' the right to be followed, then that makes me happy. So I think you're on the right track and yes, that means that your inflow will be so much more useful for you (and even more useful with private lists which I'm sure you are using). Good luck!﻿
I get it. Though I don't have anything near the following you do and with my new Twitter account not that many at all, I've decided to do my business the way I have my life. With simplicity. I will follow those who speak to me in a way that is inspirational or teaches me something, something that I am passionate about or just really like, and in turn I will end up having those that want the same for themselves follow me!

You are indeed a great teacher in the blog world and I find it cool that you tell it like it is these days.﻿
Any time "what will people think" is louder than "am I able to THINK for myself" then it's time to pause and listen - exactly what you're doing and you're doing it with grace. No worries about what I think - if you're doing right by yourself you're doing right by the rest of us. Anyone who isn't on board with that is limiting their own value by trying to limit yours.﻿
I don't care if you unfollow, you don't even have to reciprocate following me Darren. Receiving valuable information from you is more than enough for me. Thanks for the update!﻿
I think it would be a nice cleansing and get rid of alot of noise. I was never a fan of reciprocal follows- not that i have a big following in the first place. I will still be following your tweets myself. Unless the blue baggers win the flag,,,... Then i think will impose a self induced exile from society..Go Pies!﻿
First Chris Brogan, then Hyatt and Jon Dale. It seems my friends are all doing this. I am still not convinced of the need. I don't get that many DMs and my followers are very valuable to me.﻿
Good move Darren. I think action like this is a sign that Twitter and social media in general is maturing. Early this year I deactivated my (professional) Facebook account. I had for the last two years friended anyone who looked half relevant to the the effect I had ended up with hundreds of 'friends' who were cluttering up my inbox with stuff that meant nothing to me. I am now more careful on Twitter who I follow but I think I could do better. I think lists are the way to go. Thanks for making me think about this again.

Ann (@annnolan)﻿
I have been considering doing this quite awhile, simply because I am losing personal connections. I do not have huge name recognition so many of my RT's and mentions come from my personal relationship with people. With the sheer number of people I am following along with an uptick in business I have found that I am putting out information, but consuming very little and my engagement has stagnated. But, I have never subscribed to the follow me, follow you or #TeamFollowback school of thought.

NOT, what I want to have happen!

Nicole (@nickelnm)﻿
I opened twitter for the first time in weeks last night and followed #911 for a couple of hours. Other than that, I rarely go there any more.﻿
Good thinking. I remember posting this tweet: "You've read too much of @problogger when: You read the posts out loud in an Australian accent..." and then I was followed by you afterwards, much to my excitement(my girlfriend didn't get it...) But I never really use my @bjorgvinben account anymore, preferring to consolidate everything into my @audioissues account for my blog, and now I'm wondering if I should rename it in my name but keep the same handle, much like you do with @problogger(Darren Rowse).﻿
True story, +Ryan Biddulph. Am I one of the only ones who didn't do the whole auto-follow or follow everyone back thing? I follow about 800 people and have less than 7000 people following me and that's just fine, really don't give a hoot about big #'s. I reply to everyone who talks to me and always check out new followers. Getting really clear with your intention for twitter helps in deciding who to follow and how to use it. About time people learned that, too bad it has to be the hard way ay.﻿
Interesting approach. I refollow (after having a quick look at the follower) manually by 90%. I do not have really spam DM problems on that, but if so, I unfollow directly﻿
im happy enough with close to 500 i follow, but would sometimes like to reduce that down a little bit more but didn't follow back automatically as i did when i first started﻿
I'm still in the reciprocation camp - I know what u mean about the DMs but in my time trade-off just ignoring them or deleting all wins out over unfollowing right now. Not trying to say you are right or wrong to do this but I'm not ready for it (yet?) - especially since so many of those spam DMs come from 'real' people who's accounts have been compromised - so what then - follow no-one?? However I do totally empathise about the noise.﻿
Maybe to reciprocate, add them to a list called 'One way', although they won't know you've added them...﻿
Totally understand!! I've been feeling a bit "over socialized" on the internet. LOL﻿
+Darren Rowse If it makes any difference - I didn't even know you were following me. I have you on a list and would share your great content whether or not you were following me :-)﻿
The funny thing is, I probably would have missed this post on Twitter because my stream is also so cluttered, and I only follow under 800 folks. ﻿
Whether it is twitter or anywhere else, if you find you need to make changes to make your life better then do so. Those true and good people will still be around and will support your deicision.﻿
Ah, such a nice example for Mr. Leo Babauta about the joy of simplification :-)

Hmm, I bet your life is noisy. There's already 120 comments on this post alone. Well, good luck then :-)﻿
That is an excellent decision. I hate when people follow 50,000 people just to increase their own follower count. It defeats the purpose of twitter.﻿
nice decision,for ppl like you..its a mst one not to caught on spammers net..﻿
That's a tremendous decision! Good luck with it, I'd be interested in hearing how that turns out. I've enjoyed your posts and will look forward to them still!﻿
Well done mate. I think more and more people are starting to realise that sheer numbers actually reduces engagement. It's not just about quality over quantity - it's about substance over noise. You articulate this really well.
It's a calculated risk but one that will hopefully bring you a lot more engagement, purpose and twappiness! ﻿
I remember thinking it was a good idea when +Robert Scoble did it. But I thought "I'm only following 10k - it's still manageable." Then I thought about it when +Chris Brogan did it - but same reaction plus I didn't want someone to say "oh you're only doing it to try and be like the cool kids." But you know, watching you make that call +Darren Rowse? Is making me rethink it. Because I'm not some "super-popular user" - but I would like to get back to interacting with people. I think I'm going to make a list though of people I'm afraid I wouldn't remember but would really miss first. Besides, +Jesse Stay is probably slammed. ;)﻿
I did that recently, though i was only following 4,000 people, have to say it felt good... really enjoy twitter now. And yes, I'm building up who I want to follow but also being much more selective about it (like I read their blog, or know them personally etc...)﻿
That is a big decision. Good luck to you as you begin the process. ~Kelly (Naked Girl in a Dress)﻿
I'm no where near the numbers you guys are talking about, but I am already finding at 400 follows it's messy. How do you even keep up with such volume?﻿
I check out every single person that follows me so see if they are someone that I want to follow. Most I do, quite a few, I don't. At your level, I am sure it would be more difficult.﻿
Good for you. I'm interested in seeing who you do keep.﻿
+Darren Rowse +Robert Scoble +Chris Brogan interesting move, I can appreciate the economy and time factor involved in getting rid of the spam. But doesn't it reduce your streams to just another traditional broadcast communication channel? Or should we all agree to drop the word social and call it for what it really is as a communication & human resource channel for our blogs?

I know it's impossible to be engaged with everyone, even at only 1,180 followers I only follow back those I think I can learn from myself. I know because I go through every persons bio who follows me and make the call on following back on that basis that I get a different result in my DM's and streams. No spam, no stupid DM's.

Are you three really at the growth phase where you really need 'community managers' to manage your social networks like the larger corporates do to manage the channel?﻿
I have often thought that "popularity" has a serious impact upon your ability to engage with others. At some point there simply isn't enough time in the day to do it.﻿
I am also going to start a huge clean out this weekend! I should have done this ages ago but now it so needs to be done . I know some people will be rather cut and i hope they will understand.﻿
I remember questioning +Robert Scoble when he decided to go on his "follow everyone" spree years ago. Unfortunately, people with a lot of influence sometimes influence people to do dumb things.﻿
You were one of the first people I followed when I first got started on Twitter a little more than three years ago, and your mini-treatise on 'The (x number) people you MUST follow on Twitter' was and still is to this day the single most useful post I've ever read regarding this medium. So thanks, Darren, I hope I'm able to return a fraction of that usefulness back to you, but that's not likely. And while I am a little bummed to no longer have DM access to you, I mostly listened anyway; nonetheless, you're one person I'll always follow. So go reclaim your life and your family, brother. You deserve it! :)﻿
Ultimately the correct way to use Twitter is the one that works for you.﻿
I find this "trend" / "experiment" in unfollowing an interesting topic for conversation, and boy has i ever made for a lot of conversation. I get it, once you get to an amount of followers that is out of control... or if you get so much DM Spam you want to throw your laptop out a window. This works for celebrities, online celebrities, and for brands etc... but what if everyone played the unfollow game? Would anyone pay attention to anyone? I get why +Chris Brogan +Darren Rowse +Robert Scoble and the like do this, it makes sense to a degree. Anyway, I am a bit undecided on how I'd go about it. I use a program called SocialBro... so far still Free in Beta, and I use this to clean spammy accounts, old accounts that have no activity, and pay attention to those who unfollow me. (that is how I saw +Chris Brogan and +Darren Rowse did the unfollow in the first place). Anyway, on the flip side, I am no unfollowing either one of these guys as I value the information I get. So there ya go... clear as mud. (and to each their own).﻿
+Stephen Grant-Jones I agree it is extreme, but if you are going to do it, in cases such as these, I think "all at once" makes sense if you put yourself in the position of a follower that is being unfollowed. When the follower realizes that the person they follow is unfollowing everyone at once, they won't feel that they have been selectively unfollowed. In other words, they may not take it as a personal dismissal.﻿
I have been thinking of pruning those I'm following on Twitter too. I would love a way to get a spreadsheet of everyone I'm following so that I can review it as I manually re-add people.

I think I might have to do this with my 300 RSS feeds too. There's just no way to keep up. I wonder if anyone has any advice or experience with that.﻿
Bet it felt good. Scoble, Brogan, Rowse ... who's next? ;-)﻿
+Stephen Grant-Jones - because it's far easier to unfollow everyone. You're thinking that it was done manually, but it's a script that wipes the database clear. You can't sit around and unclick 200K people.

On the other side, Darren's #1 was my #1. I reciprocated follows, because otherwise, I felt like a jerk, but because we get over 600 new follows a day, we can't manually add people, so that's where the mess came.

But the big point of doing it all was to reclaim Twitter so that we could actually see interesting posts instead of just junk and spam.﻿
+Chris Brogan you're right, i did think it was being done manually (albeit by using some sort of tool) and it would be hugely time consuming if you were personally doing it. (+Darren Rowse said he was getting help).

I gave up trying to reciprocate follows ages ago and that was with my 6 new follows a day as opposed to 600 ;)

I now mostly follow people that I find interesting and who c o m m u n i c a t e with me as opposed to just doing the reciprocal thang...

I'm all for reclaiming Twitter, I can't help but feel that the good ole days are gone though...﻿
...and straight after posting I check Twitter and there's a semi-naked woman tweeting me to click on her link...﻿
+Stephen Grant-Jones - and that's a great way to do it. Where +Darren Rowse and I are a bit "damned if you do," is that both he and I have large audiences of people who feel like they know us well, and like we're friends (without quotes, even). So, when we don't follow back, those people feel we're jerks, that we're one-sided communicators, etc. It's a complex psychology, actually. Interesting to consider, and tricky to navigate.

(Not complaining, but it's been on my mind a LOT for the last several weeks).﻿
Reminds me of when Forrest Gump stopped running and just went home. The followers were baffled. My claim to fame (@tweric): I've been unfollowed by all 3! Scoble, Brogan, Rowse, some back! Or not. ;-)﻿
+Chris Brogan The first piece of advice I give to Twitter newbies is to find interesting people to follow and join in the conversation. That's kinda hard to do with 100's of people, let alone 200K people (as you know).

I do like the serendipity or synchronicity of dipping my toe in the stream to see if it's warm enough to go for a swim and sometimes it leads to deeper connections than I could have imagined.

I've been routinely unfollowing people that haven't tweeted anything in more than 4 weeks but I find it hard to unfollow peeps I've made a nice connection with, so I leave them in the hope that someday they'll come back...

As for those who get upset that you don't follow them back... it is they that needn't take it personally, not your good self.

Keep up the good work btw :)﻿
I agree with the many of you who said you use lists. I can't believe how few people who use Twitter bother with lists, and yet I can't imagine Twitter without them. I OFTEN just add someone to a list without following them. I 'glance' at my main stream but often spend more time with four or five key lists that I've been refining over the last few months.﻿
I beg your pardon? The criteria the app uses to quantify who's relevant or not appears to be lacking imho. Someone hasn't tweeted for some time? The app says unfollow. Someone posts urls often the app says unfollow. Someone retweets often the app says unfollow? By all means please let me know if "any" of the above aforementioned criteria fits "you" or your brand? I tried it and then immediately revoked access. Would you like another dose of reality? Spend twenty minutes of your time...I dare you, to review their followers (the app) and see how many of your friends or supporters use this app and out of their entire following (which by definition is a reflection of the app and it's relevance) you would remotely consider following yourself? exactly. We now return you to your large audiences of relevant and influential friends you didn't unfollow all ready in progress. Cheers, Robert

re: Twit Cleaner﻿
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