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Per Twitter’s Request, We’re Removing Auto Unfollow

16 points by bensummers 17y ago

axod 17y ago
For once I agree with Twitter. Why would you want to automatically unfollow someone just because they unfollowed you? Either you're genuinely interested in their tweets, or you're not.
- spxdcz 17y ago
  Because Twitter is about communication and conversations. And if someone unfollows you, it shows that they're not that interested in you. I totally agree with reciprocating unfollows; I'll happily follow most (non-bot, non-spam) twitter people, because that's what makes Twitter interesting. But if they then unfollow me, clearly they're not interested in forming a communicative relationship. Personally, I find it a little worrying that Twitter are dictating the use of their API: not in terms of number of requests (which they should be dictating), but what 'good practice' behaviour should be (which, perhaps, they shouldn't). EDIT: I don't mean to sound so prescriptive; what I mean is that many people use it for conversations and communication; I understand some use it as 'RSS', and therefore - to these people - it doesn't matter if follows are reciprocated. But for those that want to use it to build relationships, auto-unfollowing makes sense.
  - mootothemax 17y ago
    To be fair to Twitter, they do dictate usage rates, and I think the rates are pretty conservative: http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Rate-limiting http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Rate-limiting
  - alexro 17y ago
    As usual, there is a very file line in regulating any social activity, and in this case i think Twitter is very close to crossing it but still not done so. I think for these who are interested in building true relationships on Twitter current bad practices harm a lot more than removing autounfollow, coz in true relations you don't have that many people to unfollow and can handle it manually easily.
- gyardley 17y ago
  If you're just using Twitter to build out a list of contacts for commercial purposes, that's exactly how you'd use it. That's how most affiliate-spam accounts grow - they follow as many people as possible, wait a period of time, and then automatically unfollow everyone that doesn't follow them back. The cycle repeats indefinitely. Many of these Twitter automation tools are primarily interfaces for scammers. If the tool was built with that in mind, then it carries a hefty price tag. If the tool's creators were well-meaning but naive, then the scammers get a free ride. I'd guess that Twitter saw the amount of 'internet marketing' done out of SocialToo and decided to reduce its utility a bit.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    I don't understand, how would SocialToo help the scammers? Seems to me if a scammer follows you and then unfollows after a week, it would be nice to have auto-unfollow. So SocialToo would help against the scammers?
    - gyardley 17y ago
      Scammers don't typically unfollow people who are following them, since it increases the likelihood of those people noticing and unfollowing back. They want you to stick around and learn how to get rock-hard abs in your sleep with a patch. Twitter accounts are blocked from following too many people if they have a high follower-to-following ratio, so in order to have a large audience, you have to keep this ratio closer to 1. An 'internet marketer' will follow many people in an automated fashion. Some will follow them back - either automatically, or because the scammer is convincingly faking a real person. The ones that don't follow them back are useless to the scammer. He therefore needs to unfollow them - so he can drop his following-to-followed ratio and begin the cycle again. SocialToo (and many other tools) help with this by automating the unfollowing part of the process. Promoting scammy affiliate offers through Twitter only scales to an interesting point through automation, so if you break the automation, you break the process. That's what I assume Twitter is doing. The scammers will eventually replace API-based methods with screen-scraping bots, which is what they use for other social sites around the web.
- Tichy 17y ago
  I think it is not so simple. Despite of the casual nature of Twitter, there is still a lot of diplomacy and politics involved. To me it still feels like the polite thing to do to follow back if somebody follows me - it is like answering "hello" if somebody says "hello" to you. Except that I completely stopped managing my Twitter followers atm, because it became too overwhelming. Another example is #FollowFriday - how do you react if somebody recommends you? Recommend them back? Does recommending somebody mean you value your other followers less? And so on - just saying that there are still some issues... Another issue is that if you are a company and want people to be able to contact you via Twitter, you basically have to auto-follow. People can only send you DMs if you follow them, after all. So if the following-limits become a problem, I could see auto-unfollow help, too.
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    To me it still feels like the polite thing to do to follow back if somebody follows me - it is like answering "hello" if somebody says "hello" to you. No, what you're doing is more like inviting someone to your house for dinner because they said "hello" to you. At any rate, I've found my life to be drastically simpler than many reports of social-media use, and I attribute it largely to the fact that I only follow/friend/whatever people I know and like.

16 points by bensummers 17y ago

axod 17y ago

For once I agree with Twitter. Why would you want to automatically unfollow someone just because they unfollowed you? Either you're genuinely interested in their tweets, or you're not.

spxdcz 17y ago
Because Twitter is about communication and conversations. And if someone unfollows you, it shows that they're not that interested in you. I totally agree with reciprocating unfollows; I'll happily follow most (non-bot, non-spam) twitter people, because that's what makes Twitter interesting. But if they then unfollow me, clearly they're not interested in forming a communicative relationship. Personally, I find it a little worrying that Twitter are dictating the use of their API: not in terms of number of requests (which they should be dictating), but what 'good practice' behaviour should be (which, perhaps, they shouldn't). EDIT: I don't mean to sound so prescriptive; what I mean is that many people use it for conversations and communication; I understand some use it as 'RSS', and therefore - to these people - it doesn't matter if follows are reciprocated. But for those that want to use it to build relationships, auto-unfollowing makes sense.
- mootothemax 17y ago
  To be fair to Twitter, they do dictate usage rates, and I think the rates are pretty conservative: http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Rate-limiting http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Rate-limiting
- alexro 17y ago
  As usual, there is a very file line in regulating any social activity, and in this case i think Twitter is very close to crossing it but still not done so. I think for these who are interested in building true relationships on Twitter current bad practices harm a lot more than removing autounfollow, coz in true relations you don't have that many people to unfollow and can handle it manually easily.
gyardley 17y ago
If you're just using Twitter to build out a list of contacts for commercial purposes, that's exactly how you'd use it. That's how most affiliate-spam accounts grow - they follow as many people as possible, wait a period of time, and then automatically unfollow everyone that doesn't follow them back. The cycle repeats indefinitely. Many of these Twitter automation tools are primarily interfaces for scammers. If the tool was built with that in mind, then it carries a hefty price tag. If the tool's creators were well-meaning but naive, then the scammers get a free ride. I'd guess that Twitter saw the amount of 'internet marketing' done out of SocialToo and decided to reduce its utility a bit.
- Tichy 17y ago
  I don't understand, how would SocialToo help the scammers? Seems to me if a scammer follows you and then unfollows after a week, it would be nice to have auto-unfollow. So SocialToo would help against the scammers?
  - gyardley 17y ago
    Scammers don't typically unfollow people who are following them, since it increases the likelihood of those people noticing and unfollowing back. They want you to stick around and learn how to get rock-hard abs in your sleep with a patch. Twitter accounts are blocked from following too many people if they have a high follower-to-following ratio, so in order to have a large audience, you have to keep this ratio closer to 1. An 'internet marketer' will follow many people in an automated fashion. Some will follow them back - either automatically, or because the scammer is convincingly faking a real person. The ones that don't follow them back are useless to the scammer. He therefore needs to unfollow them - so he can drop his following-to-followed ratio and begin the cycle again. SocialToo (and many other tools) help with this by automating the unfollowing part of the process. Promoting scammy affiliate offers through Twitter only scales to an interesting point through automation, so if you break the automation, you break the process. That's what I assume Twitter is doing. The scammers will eventually replace API-based methods with screen-scraping bots, which is what they use for other social sites around the web.
Tichy 17y ago
I think it is not so simple. Despite of the casual nature of Twitter, there is still a lot of diplomacy and politics involved. To me it still feels like the polite thing to do to follow back if somebody follows me - it is like answering "hello" if somebody says "hello" to you. Except that I completely stopped managing my Twitter followers atm, because it became too overwhelming. Another example is #FollowFriday - how do you react if somebody recommends you? Recommend them back? Does recommending somebody mean you value your other followers less? And so on - just saying that there are still some issues... Another issue is that if you are a company and want people to be able to contact you via Twitter, you basically have to auto-follow. People can only send you DMs if you follow them, after all. So if the following-limits become a problem, I could see auto-unfollow help, too.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  To me it still feels like the polite thing to do to follow back if somebody follows me - it is like answering "hello" if somebody says "hello" to you. No, what you're doing is more like inviting someone to your house for dinner because they said "hello" to you. At any rate, I've found my life to be drastically simpler than many reports of social-media use, and I attribute it largely to the fact that I only follow/friend/whatever people I know and like.