11/18/09 – Qwitter doesn’t work at all anymore. It hasn’t in quite some time.
Qwitter does not seem to be a reliable tool. I rarely get notifications that I have been unfollowed. And then on one day I will get 12 all at once.
Until recently email notified me when I was being followed on twitter but I had no way of knowing when someone had stopped following me. Now I am using a tool called Qwitter. I signed up and get an email when someone stops following me. What is really amusing about this, at least to me, is that it tells me the last tweet I sent before being unfollowed.
Obviously, someone didn’t always stop following me because of a particular tweet and coincidence plays into this a little. For example, I might be cleaning up my list of who I follow and not even be monitoring twitter and stop following someone right after they say “I love kittens and rainbows”. Now what kind of person would I be if I didn’t love kittens and rainbows and that made me stop following. Although, if I saw that in my timeline, I might wonder why I was following Strawberry Shortcake.
I also don’t really care if someone stops following me. I don’t like it when people follow me, I follow them back and then they stop following because they are trying to boost their numbers but otherwise I really don’t care. So far, most of the people who have stopped following me are ones that I wasn’t following back (I should really write something up about that) and they were probably just annoyed with my weekend soccer related babblings.
So, let’s take a look at some of my tweets that caused others to leave me. I am not going to list the usernames of the people who unfollowed me because I don’t think that would be nice.
- @mako77 Maybe I will – but I want to see the entire Villa game. I have Setanta broadband but they don’t have it in the archive yet :-( – This is an example of a soccer comment. mako77 and I frequently “watch” games together. All I can assume is the person who left me was not an Aston Villa fan (British Premiere League Soccer). Ok fine – I understand. But I wouldn’t have left you if you liked Chelsea.
- @NikkiJade thank you :-) – This one has got to be my favorite. Ok – my follower does not like politeness.
- @claynewton Congrats? Hopefully I will be soon too – they are really draagggiiinnnggg it out. – I lost three followers over this one. Was it my uncertaintly about the congratulations , my spelling of dragging, or something else. Actually, I’m not even sure what I was saying to this person.
- @imjustcreative hmm…I still getting rate limit exceeded. – This user and I were having a conversation about problems with Tweetdeck. Maybe we went on too long. It doesn’t seem offensive to me in any way.
- @problogdesign According to yoast there are three files http://yoast.com/install-wp-263/ – Did this person think I was mispelling toast? Maybe they didn’t want to do the WordPress upgrade, hear about, read about it, or anything. Or maybe it was my know it all way of correcting someone ;-)
- @lamarguerite Good point. I must admit that I don’t tend to think from a business perspective. I should but it’s not one of my strengths. – This user was disappointed in my lack of good business sense – I’m sure of it.
- @remarkablogger What?!?!? There’s a manual? I always read the manual – at least when I know of it’s existence. – My joke about reading non-existent manuals was apparently not funny to everyone. The thread of this dealt with husband and wife points. I didn’t know what that was … ok, now it really isn’t funny at all.
- Time for Real Madrid – Yet, another soccer related tweet that caused me to lose a follower. How can anyone not like Real Madrid? The team has the best goalkeeper in the world.
- @jennydecki That sounds like one of my grandmothers except it was Camels and I can’t remember what she drank. Ok – smoking and drinking grandmothers – maybe not so funny. We weren’t trying to be funny, well, at first. We were just making the point that not all grandmothers bake cookies and watch daytime television.
Give Qwitter a try if you care about that sort of thing. Or if you have a twisted sense of humor like I do. Make sure you sign up for Twitter first though.
photo credit: alasam
It almost feels like you wrote this post just for me. Think I’ll take a look…
Dave’s last blog post – Recession-proof your website
Hi Dave – I actually wrote this article before our conversation yesterday so sorry to disappoint you. :-) I don’t think Qwitter is a particularly useful tool but I find it VERY amusing.
KW, I found this article so helpful. I am writing a book online and began using Twitter about two months ago and am still learning. Thank you for this entry. My twitter name is maryltabor
Mary
Hi Mary – Qwitter actually doesn’t seem to really work anymore.
Thanks for visiting and commenting.
Funny.
I’m always amazed at those who follow, then once you follow back they unfollow to boost their numbers. It’s kind of sad and yes I do monitor my list of followees from time to time and get rid of those idiots.
Vered – MomGrind’s last blog post – Should “A-List Bloggers” Close Comments?
Most of my “unfollows” are people who I didn’t follow back. I couldn’t figure out why they were following me in the first place.
I really like your comments for the unfollows. Maybe you’ve invented the “unfollow game”.
Lynn Jordan’s last blog post – National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and 12seconds.tv: Inspriation or Procrastination?
Many people who follow me are from the ProBlogger list of a couple of months ago. I don’t automatically follow but evaluate each one for the potential of good conversations on like interests.
I won’t be using Qwitter because 1) I respect the person’s decision not to follow me for the same reasons I hope they respect my decision not to follow them, and 2) I wouldn’t change who I tweet and how I tweet anyway.
Curious: I kept falling into abbreviated Tweet-speak while I was writing this comment, trying to get it all in in 140 or so characters!
Mike Nichols’s last blog post – What is Mental Wellness? Living with Health, Wellness and Wholeness
I got unfollowed when I stated that I was no longer a raw vegan to someone else. I guess cooked food omnivores = the devil to her.
I also don’t care who stops following me. Sometimes, I get unfollowed by people that I never followed myself. I guess they didn’t like that I didn’t follow them. I don’t unfollow someone just because they did it to me. I’m thinking about unsubscribing from that service.
Carla’s last blog post – Green and Chic Updates | Free Shipping
I once had someone stop following me because I said I was eating waffles. Something against waffles?
Wesley’s last blog post – My 100th Post!
I do have to laugh because I get a few Quitter notices about one tweet and one tweet only – it stated, “I love Basecamp” well, I can understand that we all have our favourite software, and I just made a client very happy with a managed project in Basecamp, so I shared the joy. Apparently that joy was too enthusiastic or maybe was too early in the morning, but it has been the reason I lost 4 followers. So darn funny.
I get enough email, I probably wont subscribe to qwitter. If they quit following me what am I going to do anyway. For the most part I just don’t follow the spammers…
Good post Kim, you do have a unique sense of humor.. :)
BloggerNewbie’s last blog post – Creative Titles Are Crucial
Great article, Kim!
I’m not a Twitter user at all so I don’t really have any use for Qwitter but I really laughed hard reading this. It sounds like you encounter as much random weirdness online from people and the article really did a great job of showing off your awesome sense of humor. You were almost as funny as in real life. :-)
Ron Obvious’s last blog post – Do the Republicans have ANY cool celebrity supporters?nRobert…
Hi everyone – first I want to say follow @davewilkinson He doesn’t think he has anything worthwhile to say but I think he’s great. Also his site, thinkdave, is listed in my sidebar and he writes some really good articles about SEO and setting up your blog.
@Vered – Why is it about numbers and grades to so many people? It’s about value, connections and learning.
@Lynn – Hi! Nice to see you again. Here and on twitter. Most of the followers I’ve lost while tracking this have been people that I wasn’t following. I like that – the “unfollow game”
@Mike – lol I’ve had conversations w/ Ron below where I start to call people @charlie, @mary, etc and then realize I’ve been spending too much time on Twitter. I agree with your stance on Qwitter. I wanted to test it and over a weeks time it gave me some great material for this article.
@Carla – What? You eat cooked food? Unbelievable. ;-) I am planning on unsubscribing from Qwitter when I am done with this experiment too.
@Wesley – I saw when you posted that. I was already gathering info for this article and didn’t want to say too much. But, really, switch to French Toast ;-)
@Kimberly – Hi! Thank you so much for visiting and commenting! Was the basecamp tweet the last one you made for awhile? Sometimes Qwitter gathers up all the ones you lost and when they are sent it seems like they all unfollowed after that last tweet. I don’t love Basecamp but it really makes project collaboration easy. Silly.
@BloggerNewbie – I’m glad you enjoyed the humor! I hope unique isn’t a euphemism for something else ;-) I don’t recommend signing up for Qwitter.
@Ron/Jim – Well, you have a twitter account – you need to follow everyone that I do and then just retweet everything that I say – lol I’m so glad I brighten your days with my non-stop nonsense.
Though I created a Twitter a/c sometime back, I never used it effectively… I hear from some prolific bloggers that they have as high as 20% traffic coming in from Twitter…
Anyways, this should be useful for all twitter lovers ;)
Ajith Edassery’s last blog post – Lypha.com – cheap web hosting solution for your blog or website
I want to unfollow some people, only because I hardly ever hear a tweet out of them and they don’t tweet me and I guess I don’t tweet them back. I really want to only follow people whose blogs I subscribe to so I can further discussions with them. I already feel like I know them. I might go unfollow some people, but not because of what they said. nothing personal, i just want to tweet people i already have a “relationship” with….thanks for the encouragement, i’m going to unfollow.
NaTuRaL’s last blog post – Answering Comments: Obligation, Optional or Off?
@Ajith – I would definitely give Twitter another try. It has been invaluable to me – for work opportunites, getting people to visit the site, and for having fun.
@Natural – If someone isn’t providing value, you should unfollow them. it shouldn’t be about you followed me so I’ll follow you. It’s about finding the right mix of people for networking and, at least in my case, having fun.
Lemme give it another shot :)
Ajith – Great! Here are some of the usernames of people who comment here.
@kwbridge
@vered
@mikenichols0
@davewilkinson
@mako77
If anyone else wants to add their usernames for Ajith to follow, please add them to the comments. Unfortunately, I don’t have everyone’s memorized.
Great post, Kim!
I can’t wait to try this out. I just know that its going to aggravate me yet part of me is itching to see who dropped me.
In my mind, clearly everything that I have to say is important and everyone should follow me. ;)
Thanks for the heads-up on this nifty tool. I’ve been heart broken since Facebook’s “Unfriender” was pulled.
If anyone wants to follow me (and potentially un-follow me) – feel free – @gooddogzbeth!
I’ve been using for a couple of weeks. I have noticed a pattern of people who add you, and then when you add them, they stop following, probably trying to get their number of followers higher than who they are following.
Ironically, the most people stopped following me after I mentioned being a bit dyslexic, which I thought was odd.
~ Kristi
Kikolani | Poetry, Photography, Blogging Tips’s last blog post – Baby Bunny
@Beth Hi! Thanks for visiting and commenting. We are already following each other on Twitter – is that how you found my site? Good luck with Qwitter. I think it will end up aggravating you. lol at the potentially unfollowing part.
@Kristi – That is a strange tweet to get unfollowed for. It’s probably just a coincidence. My tweets were a little off the wall and annoying today so I’m curious to see what my qwitter email says. Wesley in the comment above got unfollowed for saying he was eating waffles.
Kim, your comment about Qwitter on Twitter caught my attention but now when I read this I understood. You sure have a great sense of humor! I guess since I am a relative Newbie at Twitter, I haven’t really paid attention. When I connected with Flylady, I automatically had a number of new followers. I think her use of Twitter for announcements and encouragement will boost numbers significantly but to non-flybabies much of the conversation will sound strange. I will have to watch followers and unfollowers closer.
Julie Walraven’s last blog post – Proactive or Reactive?
Hi Julie – Thanks! If only I were as funny as I think I am :-) I didn’t know FlyLady was on Twitter. I’ve tried her program a couple of times but it really isn’t for me. I think it really works for some people though. It’s nice to see you on Twitter.
It is a nice servie but it is very disappointing to see people you know unfollow you. And i am amazed to know that people unfollowed you because of soccer tweets.
Madhur Kapoor’s last blog post – PicPick Tools – Screen Capture Tool with Lots of Features
@Madhur – Yep, I lost a follower because I was talking to you – lol :-) I’ve lost another one since I wrote the article so I’ve lost three people because of soccer tweets. Although I think these were all Internet Marketers that I hadn’t followed back. I wonder if it was coincidence, they don’t like soccer, or they didn’t like the teams I was talking about.
One more question do you Twitter Updater WP plugin? Is there any better alternatives??
Ajith Edassery’s last blog post – Lypha.com – cheap web hosting solution for your blog or website
Ajith – Do you mean to run your RSS feed into Twitter? I don’t use one. I enter them manually and try to ask a question with a link to the article rather than using a plugin. I used to use Twitter Tools but it stopped working for me and could never figure out why.
Ok – duh – I just looked it up. That looks like a good one but I’ve never tried it. Some people also use Twitterfeed.
I did not mean the twitter feed option. There’s a plugin that updates twitter of any changes made by you to your blog posts (new post, new post saved, new post published, old post edited). This is kind of handy because it alerts the user of the action, the post title and a shortened (tiny URL) to your original post!
Just activated the plugin… it’s really cool. For other purposes I am trying to get used to twhirl
Twhirl is a good program. Tweetdeck is a good one too.
This is tooooo funny! I’ve been meaning to add Qwitter and I can see how I would read way too much into knowing when someone stops following! LOL But, now that I’ve read your post and these comments I will be able to just let it go … as you mentioned it’s also a great way to weed out the “losers” who are just trying to get one-way followers – geez. *SmiLes* Suzanne
Suzanne@Money Making Ideas’s last blog post – What is an RSS Feed and Why You Should Offer One on Your Blog
@Suzanne – I’m glad you see that. Qwitter is useful if you want to know who stops following you but for analyzing why … not so much? The last tweet before you were unfollowed really doesn’t mean too much.
Of course, I intended to unsubscribe from Qwitter after writing this article but haven’t yet :-)
Many people just follow you hoping that you will follow back. And then after 2-3 days they will just unfollow . I have seen a lot of such cases.
Madhur Kapoor’s last blog post – Shutdown and Restart between Different Operating System quickly
@Madhur – It’s really annoying and I’ve noticed it happening more frequently. I think you should give someone more that a couple of days to follow before unfollowing. I follow some people who don’t follow me back.
i am seriously thinking of unfollowing a couple of people. i firstly followed because they started following me but they don’t tweet something that interests me and they tweet ALOT something that makes me lose my grip and maybe better tweets fall down the drain. my point is it won’t be because of something they said but because i really don’t care ;)
stratosg´s last blog post – Small hiccup on the “Featured” post
@Stratos – I’m sorry you will be unfollowing me ;-) Just kidding.
There is nothing wrong with unfollowing people if they aren’t providing value to you – it’s nothing personal. Some people might take it personally but they shouldn’t. A couple of months ago I stopped following someone because she was too chatty. I’ve started following her again though because she recommends people to me.
I agree Kim – what’s the point of following someone if they don’t provide you with some value? Similarly, do you want followers who aren’t really interested in your tweets?
@ChicAlert
Hi Sally – Thank you for visiting and commenting. I do need to
update this article because as far as I can tell Qwitter has not really
been working lately.
Qwitter does not work … at all.
Hi Alex – This article needs to be updated. Qwitter is very sporadic.
I didn’t get any notifications for a long time and then in the last couple
of days I started getting them again. I’m not sure what the problem is
with the service.
Unfortunately this service appears to be broken and way out of date.
Try using “Twitterless” instead (http://twitter.com/tless)
Hi Jeff – You’re right – the last time I updated this article Qwitter worked sporadically but it doesn’t work at all anymore.
Now you have these sites and applications:
Are you following me too?: http://ruf.cloudapp.net/home
Twitterless: http://twitterless.com/
.-= Carla´s last blog ..Naturity Organic Bath and Body at Green and Chic =-.
Hi Carla – Thanks :-)
I am really enjoying Twitter right now but finding it hard for celebs to follow me back. The only one so far is Mark Boardman @markmeets.com He is the film premiere guy from T4
Which celebs are following you back ?
Hi Nick – I don’t think any celebrities are following me back. But then I can’t think of any celebrities I’m following. Well, I follow Jerry Garcia but that’s just someone posting links to old shows because the real Jerry Garcia is dead.
Hi guys, did you find any tool apart of this quitter ?
I was going to try it but since I read that it was not working anymore I won’t loose my time (I prefer to loose time writing this)
Just send me a message to my http://twitter.com/bemovil account. Thanks!
.-= Martin´s last blog ..Sincerely, Spain (by Matthew) =-.
One question more: What plugin do you use for the “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail”checkbox ?
.-= Martin´s last blog ..Sincerely, Spain (by Matthew) =-.
Hi Martin – Some people use Friend or Follow
http://friendorfollow.com/
The plugin is Subscribe to Comments
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/