Five reasons why I don't follow (or have unfollowed) you on Twitter

For someone like me who checks his Twitter account day in and day out, it's important who I follow--or don't. With 194 users that I follow as of the moment (many of whom are hyper active tweet addicts), my timeline can get crowded easily.

[Photo courtesy of news.cnet.com]

I don't mind reading through all the tweets--as long as they are relevant to my life. That is why I follow you in the first place. But once in a while I encounter a user that throws enough trash tweets to make a virtual Twitter dumpsite. It's a waste of time to read through all these so, a lot of times, I'd rather just unfollow.


The thing is, I believe this happens to a lot of people aside from myself. There's a million reasons why someone would not follow (or unfollow) a Twitter user, but I've listed down five based on my experience of being an avid Twitter user for more than a year now. Here they are:


1. You retweet posts from users I don't like or not interested in
          It's annoying to see tweets in my timeline that aren't supposed to be there. If you keep on retweeting posts from users that I don't like, I might as well unfollow you. After all, when I followed you, it's because I'm interested in what you have to say or recommend. If I'd want to read keep on reading the tweets of the users you keep on retweeting, I'd have followed them myself.

2. Too much personal conversations publicly
          You know that feeling when you're in a public place, say a bus or the train, then someone starts talking on the phone and suddenly you know how many puppies he or she has; or why he/she broke up with his fiance? I hate when this happens! Sure, we can converse once in a while publicly. But not too much. That's why the direct message function was created. Hello, privacy! :)

3. You never followed me back       
          There are certain users you follow who you couldn't care less if they followed you back or not (of course, I don't expect Mariah Carey to follow me back). But there are those who you feel should or expect to do so. Personally, if certain users don't follow back, despite my best efforts to make my presence felt, I just unfollow. After all, I don't want the answering machine picking up my calls all the time, if you get my drift. For me it's like waving to someone across the room and not getting a wave back.

4. Your tweets are irrelevant or annoying--or both
          I've encountered users who don't  have anything to say but "Good morning" and "Good night"--every single day. There are also those whose grammar use is unacceptable (yes, my grammar is far from perfect, I admit that; but it's not that bad). There are those whose tweets are all too negative, complaining about this and that--all the time. Sometimes, it's just that, it turned out, you love wrestling or video games or Justin Bieber (I don't).

5. You never tweet / You tweet too much
          Take it from that Spice Girls song--too much of something is bad enough; too much of nothing is just as tough. What's the point of creating a Twitter account if you don't tweet? Well, I guess some people are more of content consumers (rather than generators), but if you tweet once every two weeks (or not at all), that's a little bit too much. Then again, let's not overdo it. Everything in moderation. :)

* While we're at it, I'd like to invite you to follow me on Twitter. My username is hot_ken. I promise not to hold grudge if you unfollow me because I committed any of the five things above. If you have other reasons why you decided to unfollow a certain Twitter user, let us know why by commenting below. Thanks! :)