I unfollow when people out of nowhere show up in my following list that I didn't follow, that just infuriates me. THAT needs to stop, whoever is doing it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I also unfollow "XXX" people, repetitive, boring, auto DM's, tweet about nothing but marketing and making money, those that try to get you to "buy into following to get more followers", etc. But that's the jest of it. I think that's plenty.
Spamming makes lot of users to unfollow some people on twitter
Paul - 15 years ago
I usually unfollow people when I find out they eat sushi. It's a non-negotiable of mine.
Danielle - 15 years ago
tweets not useful or interesting to me (if I follow everyone I will miss the interesting / relevant stuff!), basically!
goodbyecity - 15 years ago
pictures of food- i cant stand it! like, "this is my cupcake!" a 3 minutes later "this is my half eaten cupcake!" or "look at this interestingly cut cucumber i got in my salad today!"
If someone posts items that are not important for me, I will unfollow him/her. Not just one or two comments - it would have to be more than that. For instance there is this guy who works with one of our partners who tweets whenever he goes into shops and restaurants. Who cares about that? He rarely tweets work related items too so he's a goner ...
Maak - 15 years ago
Too many tweets of a different nature to the ones that led me to follow them.
Cindy B - 15 years ago
I love Al Roker but I had to unfollow him because my whole page would be nothing but his tweets about the weather in other places. That's what the TV or internet is for, Al. I almost unfollowed Anderson Cooper (LOVE, LOVE, LOVE HIM) because he only tweeted redirects to his AC site. Today he tweeted something semi-personal!
Greg L - 15 years ago
I generally unfollow people who post the exact same tweet day after day, and generally it's about 4 a day. I'm all for promoting things, that is half of why I'm on Twitter, but don't schedule a post to go up every 4 hours for days on end. At least TRY to reword the promotion each time.
I just unfollow those who spread prejudice ideas and spams but those who I really despise and block are all users trying to force me to follow them through scripts.
lls - 15 years ago
I checked Too many tweets but it's not simply the quantity - it's not the content - it's the messy factor. If they are a pain to read most times I simply scroll on by. It's nice to attribute but pick one - if I follow the link I'll see the starting point - and also pick one # please, 3 or 4 is overkill.
Bryan - 15 years ago
swearing, no bio, shortened URL for thier bio website, followers and following but no tweets, always selling something
I typically unfollow people who swear in their tweets, or who tweet anything disrespectful of my beliefs.
Em - 15 years ago
- People who auto-DM me. No thanks.
- People who post nothing but 'inspirational' quotes.
- Hate-mongers.
- An excess of religious tweets; not interested, sorry.
Jen - 15 years ago
When they post too many negative tweets; or too much stuff about sport; or too many boring RTs; or too much promotion of their favourite interest.
Emmy - 15 years ago
So many different reasons...
People that are rude, people that just plain annoy me, spammers, boring people, people that feel the need to be constantly bitchy...so many reasons!
I unfollow the very moment I see text-spelling, constant self-promotion (a teeny little bit is usually ok) horrible grammar, same tweet over and over, or really anything that annoys me. :) The worst, however, are marketers with no personality.
Basically all of the above options can be summed up in the "lacks personal voice" department. So many people think that just linking 'good content' in twitter will bring them fame and glory, which ultimately just turns that persons account into a voice for other user's spam. Somewhere the whole "follow those who follow you" twitter etiquette came into play, definitely not finding any merit in that practice heh.
I unfollow if it's spam (obviously), if they tweet 4-10 times in a row on a consistent basis, have nothing relevant to offer to any conversation (ie. only talk about what they just had to eat), or are overly religious/political in their tweets.
Actually, it only takes about one religious comment for me to unfollow; I'm a little less critical of political rants.
danny g smith - 15 years ago
I have no tolerance for porn, politics and personality bashing.
Mika - 15 years ago
I have unfollowed at least 2 major design agencies because all of their tweets were them complaining.
Also, if you're an Apple/Microsoft/Linux/Adobe/Whatever fanboy I'm going to unfollow you. Just dumped WebDesignDepot today because I was tired of all the Microsoft bashing at every turn. I'm not a fan of Microsoft but the negativity gets really old after awhile.
A combination of too many tweets and uninteresting ones. I like to follow accounts like smashingmag but when I get random people telling me what they had for dinner, I unfollow. I also check everyone that follows me, if they spam or tweet to much then I don't follow them. Never really come across much spam or political/religious stuff so can't comment on that.
matt - 15 years ago
Any mention of religion. Don't like it invading my personal space.
Ken - 15 years ago
Definitely when the tweets get boring. You need to add "Tweets get boring" to your poll. :)
Zak - 15 years ago
Spamming and too many tweets. That is why I dropped SmashMag and am now just checking the profile url on occasion.
Religious tweets (particularly if that's not what you promoted your feed to be about). Too many pointless tweets ("making tacos for dinner" "Going to bed now"). Twitterscope posting, "sending gifts to friends/send me one back" crap. Big one: reposting tweets multiple times a day. I'll let two a day slide because of international time zoned, but four, six, ten times a day? AURGH!
Christy - 15 years ago
when they hurt my feelings by doing things such as follow friday - I include them in mine, then they include everyone but me in theirs.
@smashingmag Just a thought, these poll results would look better/make more sense if they were displayed as a pie chart. It would also make the results more comparable.
Keep up the good work.
Taliesin - 15 years ago
I HATE when I'm following "gurus" (social media, marketing, technology, etc.) who insist on injecting political commentary into their Tweets, particularly when it's snide, "drive-by" remarks. Screw that. Why alienate half your audience? Check your political baggage at the door (no matter which side you favor). Or save it for your Facebook "friends". I'm following you for professional reasons, not political ones. If I want political tweets, there are plenty of actual pols to follow. You know—actual policy makers, lobbyists, and professional pundits. I've already decided not to hire one of these consultants because I was afraid I'd be paying for his political commentary.
Hoover - 15 years ago
People who don't spread the link love. They read something you wrote and then tweet it as their own. Bah!
E - 15 years ago
Too boring. Swearing. Too much complaining. Only retweeting.
Andre - 15 years ago
I don't mind @replies as long as it's not a discussion. Sometimes I find other interesting twitter users. Excessive RT, however, gets a block from me: if you haven't anything new to say, work harder. Also, increasingly, one sided tweeters are losing my confidence: I respect those that respect their audience. Paul, from boagworld, personally responded to my question (his son is 6 years old), and so did 160over90. These two will never be blocked. Zeldman, on the other hand is all personality and little personhood.
I usually unfollow somebody who tweets excessively, especially if I haven't liked anything they've had to say lately. I also unfollow people who keep reposting the same tweets, or who excessively advertise themselves. It should be a fair mix of business and personal tweets. And by personal, I mean your personal thoughts on the article you just linked to, not what's on your sandwich today.
people who say dirty words, people who try to create a trending topic saying nonsense with hashtags, people who tweet mostly about politics and sports, people who I disagree on an important issue, people who vomits a long list of names on #FollowFriday, blogs that use Twitter as RSS with not even 1 tweet besides their own blog, newbies testing functionalities and making mistakes, etc.
I like Smashing Magazine tweets, I'm not going to unfollow you anytime soon :)
I have unfollowed twitter users who post too many irrelevant tweets (mostly boring personal stuff like "I'm eating this, drinking that"). I think twitter users should use multiple accounts if they want to post on different topics. Oh yeah, retweeting gets on my nerves too, but that is not a reason for me to unfollow someone. And too many personal @ reply might be the next reason for me to unfollow someone.
Here is a good idea for finding interesting users to follow. If a user has more followers than is following himself = good user to follow. If someone is following more users than being followed = bad user to follow. This is just a rule of thumb, but is true for many cases.
tweeting one of those "Hi I just joined tweeterspam to get 4000000 instant follwers" auto-tweets is an instant unfollow
Christophe Divina - 15 years ago
Tweets that are not interesting...
Dave - 15 years ago
I unfollow people who do nothing but retweet sites like Smashing Mag. I already follow these sites, so why do I need a third party retweeting every bloody tweet they put out?
Twitter is a more fancy version of RSS for me, I drop someone that tweets about self promotion or those stupid "follow Friday" lists. I follow blogs like Smashing Magazine for decent articles on trends etc. I used to follow Boag World because it started off being interesting with links to various articles and then just turned out to be trash about going shopping and what car to buy. Dropped!
Boring not interesting tweets. Too many @ reply chit chats. Twitter is not IM if you need to chat then go use a messenger service. Again some developers and designers carry on tweeting same links again and again, its their site's links you know. They start the day tweeting those links and end the day tweting those links. I think there must be something like unique tweets from an account. You mustn't be allowed to tweet same thing again and again. Its making twitter a boring place.
mrgatwork - 15 years ago
Get rich quick, big fat tweet conversations... Leave that to email or just pick up the phone, marketing sign-up for this or for that....get lost.
When they tell me every single bloody detail of every tiny insignificant part of their day. I don't care how long the line is at the 7-11 unless there's a banana wielding mad man in it, don't tell me that your bus is late or that you're riding the subway. No one cares! :)
I rarely drop people for just one reason. Usually it's a combination of factors that suggest the tweeter does not understand the purpose and conventions of social media.
I am likely to drop people who don't put a hook in their tweets. They say things like "I just posted to my blog." That wastes my time. Give me some reason to look at your blog.
I also tend to unfollow people who pepper their posts with abbreviations, including texting shorthand. That says to me the poster is too absorbed in his/her own interests to interact.
Definitely unfollow when someone becomes boring...there's only so many times I want to know about what they're eating for lunch or how their game of 5 a side went last night.
I also unfollow developers/designers who keep advertising their services and rates.
As of yet, I have not unfollowed anybody. However, if their messages are spammy, I suppose I would unfollow them.
Too many tweets is the craziest thing :-) Have great day Vitaly!
When they talk shit, bore me..
I unfollow when people out of nowhere show up in my following list that I didn't follow, that just infuriates me. THAT needs to stop, whoever is doing it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I also unfollow "XXX" people, repetitive, boring, auto DM's, tweet about nothing but marketing and making money, those that try to get you to "buy into following to get more followers", etc. But that's the jest of it. I think that's plenty.
Spamming makes lot of users to unfollow some people on twitter
I usually unfollow people when I find out they eat sushi. It's a non-negotiable of mine.
tweets not useful or interesting to me (if I follow everyone I will miss the interesting / relevant stuff!), basically!
pictures of food- i cant stand it! like, "this is my cupcake!" a 3 minutes later "this is my half eaten cupcake!" or "look at this interestingly cut cucumber i got in my salad today!"
unfollow.
If someone posts items that are not important for me, I will unfollow him/her. Not just one or two comments - it would have to be more than that. For instance there is this guy who works with one of our partners who tweets whenever he goes into shops and restaurants. Who cares about that? He rarely tweets work related items too so he's a goner ...
Too many tweets of a different nature to the ones that led me to follow them.
I love Al Roker but I had to unfollow him because my whole page would be nothing but his tweets about the weather in other places. That's what the TV or internet is for, Al. I almost unfollowed Anderson Cooper (LOVE, LOVE, LOVE HIM) because he only tweeted redirects to his AC site. Today he tweeted something semi-personal!
I generally unfollow people who post the exact same tweet day after day, and generally it's about 4 a day. I'm all for promoting things, that is half of why I'm on Twitter, but don't schedule a post to go up every 4 hours for days on end. At least TRY to reword the promotion each time.
I just unfollow those who spread prejudice ideas and spams but those who I really despise and block are all users trying to force me to follow them through scripts.
I checked Too many tweets but it's not simply the quantity - it's not the content - it's the messy factor. If they are a pain to read most times I simply scroll on by. It's nice to attribute but pick one - if I follow the link I'll see the starting point - and also pick one # please, 3 or 4 is overkill.
swearing, no bio, shortened URL for thier bio website, followers and following but no tweets, always selling something
I typically unfollow people who swear in their tweets, or who tweet anything disrespectful of my beliefs.
- People who auto-DM me. No thanks.
- People who post nothing but 'inspirational' quotes.
- Hate-mongers.
- An excess of religious tweets; not interested, sorry.
When they post too many negative tweets; or too much stuff about sport; or too many boring RTs; or too much promotion of their favourite interest.
So many different reasons...
People that are rude, people that just plain annoy me, spammers, boring people, people that feel the need to be constantly bitchy...so many reasons!
narcism
Other: When the service or idea they are providing is no longer relevant to me.
Spam
Foul language, swearing, angry
Negative
Useless
Posts only trying to sell, nothing else.
I unfollow the very moment I see text-spelling, constant self-promotion (a teeny little bit is usually ok) horrible grammar, same tweet over and over, or really anything that annoys me. :) The worst, however, are marketers with no personality.
When they just tweet boring stuff...
Basically all of the above options can be summed up in the "lacks personal voice" department. So many people think that just linking 'good content' in twitter will bring them fame and glory, which ultimately just turns that persons account into a voice for other user's spam. Somewhere the whole "follow those who follow you" twitter etiquette came into play, definitely not finding any merit in that practice heh.
I unfollow if it's spam (obviously), if they tweet 4-10 times in a row on a consistent basis, have nothing relevant to offer to any conversation (ie. only talk about what they just had to eat), or are overly religious/political in their tweets.
Actually, it only takes about one religious comment for me to unfollow; I'm a little less critical of political rants.
I have no tolerance for porn, politics and personality bashing.
I have unfollowed at least 2 major design agencies because all of their tweets were them complaining.
Also, if you're an Apple/Microsoft/Linux/Adobe/Whatever fanboy I'm going to unfollow you. Just dumped WebDesignDepot today because I was tired of all the Microsoft bashing at every turn. I'm not a fan of Microsoft but the negativity gets really old after awhile.
A combination of too many tweets and uninteresting ones. I like to follow accounts like smashingmag but when I get random people telling me what they had for dinner, I unfollow. I also check everyone that follows me, if they spam or tweet to much then I don't follow them. Never really come across much spam or political/religious stuff so can't comment on that.
Any mention of religion. Don't like it invading my personal space.
Definitely when the tweets get boring. You need to add "Tweets get boring" to your poll. :)
Spamming and too many tweets. That is why I dropped SmashMag and am now just checking the profile url on occasion.
other- I unfollow when someone starts talking politics I hate, or too many constant tweets about gaming.
When the tweets cease to be interesting.
When I realise I'm not interested in anything they have to say or if they haven't said much in the past 4-6 months.
Religious tweets (particularly if that's not what you promoted your feed to be about). Too many pointless tweets ("making tacos for dinner" "Going to bed now"). Twitterscope posting, "sending gifts to friends/send me one back" crap. Big one: reposting tweets multiple times a day. I'll let two a day slide because of international time zoned, but four, six, ten times a day? AURGH!
when they hurt my feelings by doing things such as follow friday - I include them in mine, then they include everyone but me in theirs.
@smashingmag Just a thought, these poll results would look better/make more sense if they were displayed as a pie chart. It would also make the results more comparable.
Keep up the good work.
I HATE when I'm following "gurus" (social media, marketing, technology, etc.) who insist on injecting political commentary into their Tweets, particularly when it's snide, "drive-by" remarks. Screw that. Why alienate half your audience? Check your political baggage at the door (no matter which side you favor). Or save it for your Facebook "friends". I'm following you for professional reasons, not political ones. If I want political tweets, there are plenty of actual pols to follow. You know—actual policy makers, lobbyists, and professional pundits. I've already decided not to hire one of these consultants because I was afraid I'd be paying for his political commentary.
People who don't spread the link love. They read something you wrote and then tweet it as their own. Bah!
Too boring. Swearing. Too much complaining. Only retweeting.
I don't mind @replies as long as it's not a discussion. Sometimes I find other interesting twitter users. Excessive RT, however, gets a block from me: if you haven't anything new to say, work harder. Also, increasingly, one sided tweeters are losing my confidence: I respect those that respect their audience. Paul, from boagworld, personally responded to my question (his son is 6 years old), and so did 160over90. These two will never be blocked. Zeldman, on the other hand is all personality and little personhood.
"Too much personal voice in tweets".
Agreed with blogoreader: "boring or non-interesting tweets".
I usually unfollow somebody who tweets excessively, especially if I haven't liked anything they've had to say lately. I also unfollow people who keep reposting the same tweets, or who excessively advertise themselves. It should be a fair mix of business and personal tweets. And by personal, I mean your personal thoughts on the article you just linked to, not what's on your sandwich today.
people who say dirty words, people who try to create a trending topic saying nonsense with hashtags, people who tweet mostly about politics and sports, people who I disagree on an important issue, people who vomits a long list of names on #FollowFriday, blogs that use Twitter as RSS with not even 1 tweet besides their own blog, newbies testing functionalities and making mistakes, etc.
I like Smashing Magazine tweets, I'm not going to unfollow you anytime soon :)
I unfollow on any auto DM. I hate those with a passion.
Overly emotional tweets or religious tweets, as another person said, not the forum for that kind of thing.
I have unfollowed twitter users who post too many irrelevant tweets (mostly boring personal stuff like "I'm eating this, drinking that"). I think twitter users should use multiple accounts if they want to post on different topics. Oh yeah, retweeting gets on my nerves too, but that is not a reason for me to unfollow someone. And too many personal @ reply might be the next reason for me to unfollow someone.
Here is a good idea for finding interesting users to follow. If a user has more followers than is following himself = good user to follow. If someone is following more users than being followed = bad user to follow. This is just a rule of thumb, but is true for many cases.
tweeting one of those "Hi I just joined tweeterspam to get 4000000 instant follwers" auto-tweets is an instant unfollow
Tweets that are not interesting...
I unfollow people who do nothing but retweet sites like Smashing Mag. I already follow these sites, so why do I need a third party retweeting every bloody tweet they put out?
too many tweets that are of no interest to me.
Twitter is a more fancy version of RSS for me, I drop someone that tweets about self promotion or those stupid "follow Friday" lists. I follow blogs like Smashing Magazine for decent articles on trends etc. I used to follow Boag World because it started off being interesting with links to various articles and then just turned out to be trash about going shopping and what car to buy. Dropped!
Boring
Boring not interesting tweets. Too many @ reply chit chats. Twitter is not IM if you need to chat then go use a messenger service. Again some developers and designers carry on tweeting same links again and again, its their site's links you know. They start the day tweeting those links and end the day tweting those links. I think there must be something like unique tweets from an account. You mustn't be allowed to tweet same thing again and again. Its making twitter a boring place.
Get rich quick, big fat tweet conversations... Leave that to email or just pick up the phone, marketing sign-up for this or for that....get lost.
Too many tweets and too many uninteresting RTs (top 99 articles for designers etc)
when the tweet become repetitious, inane post about nothing of true interest or value - which for the most part is what is on twitter
When they tell me every single bloody detail of every tiny insignificant part of their day. I don't care how long the line is at the 7-11 unless there's a banana wielding mad man in it, don't tell me that your bus is late or that you're riding the subway. No one cares! :)
I un-follow any one whose tweets involve too ranting/talking/commentating about sport as well
When they use too many abbreviations all the time
I hate it when people constantly retweet crap.
Too many uninteresting or negative tweets.
When I don't find tweets interesting. Simple as.
Too much chatter. Too much Tweets that I'm not interested.
I rarely drop people for just one reason. Usually it's a combination of factors that suggest the tweeter does not understand the purpose and conventions of social media.
I am likely to drop people who don't put a hook in their tweets. They say things like "I just posted to my blog." That wastes my time. Give me some reason to look at your blog.
I also tend to unfollow people who pepper their posts with abbreviations, including texting shorthand. That says to me the poster is too absorbed in his/her own interests to interact.
When they send the third tweet which has zero interest to me....
The follower doesn't active and only follow others with no own followers.
When they start posting too many pointless polls... ;)
definitely emo tweets, and negative voices
I unfollowed one person for too much swearing and moaning all the time. Mostly I unfollow if the tweets aren't interesting or useful to me.
Definitely unfollow when someone becomes boring...there's only so many times I want to know about what they're eating for lunch or how their game of 5 a side went last night.
I also unfollow developers/designers who keep advertising their services and rates.
when they update emo tweets.
Oh please.
Religious comments - nothing against any religion, but my Twitter stream isn't where I want to see it.
Other variant - boring or non-interesting tweets.