Why I unfollowed you (or not)

OK this may be a narcissistic post but here I go anyways. I enjoy cleaning, well not really cleaning but throwing away stuff. I adhere to the model “When in doubt, throw it out.” So as I obnoxiously tweeted yesterday I unfollowed almost 300 people on Twitter and told people if they want me to follow they need to talk to me. I am here for the conversations. So here are my reasons for following/unfollowing someone:

* If I have had a “conversation” with you through @ messages on twitter then I kept you. If you have never tweeted @ me then I may have unfollowed.

* If I recognize your avatar in my stream because I often read your tweets I kept you. If I feel like I never have seen your avatar, I checked your page and if you rarely tweet or haven’t tweeted in months I unfollowed.

* If I have met you in real life I kept you even if you rarely tweet. Those relationships are more important than Twitter.

* If you tweet about your meals, your kids, your vacations, and your favorite sports teams I kept you. If you only tweet about education and links I might have unfollowed you. If you only tweet links I suspect you may be a bot rather than a human.

* If you are a social studies teacher I kept you. If you are a math teach I might have unfollowed you. Social studies is my new focus and math was my old one. If I connected with you as a math teacher and you are active I kept you (see first * point)but if you are a math lurker then sorry you are gone 🙂

* If you are an international teacher or live outside North America I kept you. I am looking to make world connections related to social studies and expanding my network.

* If you are an educator in Michigan I kept you. Local connections are important too.

* If you are part of New Tech network I kept you as this is part of my new school.

In short, for me Twitter is about getting to “know” people. If you want me to follow you all it takes is a few @ messages. I don’t judge or rank my followers other than whether they interact with me as educators (not interested in spam :)So if I dropped you just starting talking to me. Also I don’t block any educators so anyone can follow me. I am not elitist. I just don’t see the point in listening you if you don’t want to talk to me.

Ps. My favorite people on Twitter are those who give my crazy ideas pushback. Yeah I like to respectfully “debate” people 🙂

7 thoughts on “Why I unfollowed you (or not)

  1. naomi epstein - editor

    I’ve been reading your blog faithfully for the last few months but haven’t tried ‘following” you. This post has made me curuious to see what crazy ideas you have been tweeting!
    Naomi from Israel

  2. Philip Cummings

    I’m curious about this. I have culled my following list a few times, but I’ve usually only deleted inactive folks or those that seem uninterested in conversation (self-promoters). Was this just a need to spring clean? Are there other reasons?

    I deleted my Twitter lists not too long ago, but I’m beginning to create new lists that allow me to interact more directly w/ those that are core to my learning. I rarely read my “home” stream, but I don’t want to delete potentially valuable connections from my network. I understand unfollowing to free up API bandwidth, too (I think.). We all have our individual uses for Twitter and the network. I’m just curious about what you want to achieve by culling folks from your network. Maybe I need to do it, too.

  3. concretekax

    Arg! I hate how comments work here. Will and Philip I answered this earlier today but Google ate it.

    First I think you ask a great question. I wanted to try to explain my reasoning and see if others agreed or had other criteria for how they choose who to follow. I should have spelled that out at the end of the post by asking for feedback.

    Second I hope I am making a call to lurkers to jump in and join the conversations. Hopefully that is clear in this post? I have lurked/ still do at times, but the most important thing to me are the conversations. I am not an elitist and will follow anyone who engages me in educational conversation.

    I think this worked because I “met” one great international educator today through this.

  4. concretekax

    Phil, to answer your question more fully my goal was to move my focus from math to social studies people on Twitter. That said I did not unfollow any math people that I have interacted with. I follow people of all subject areas but am now especially interested in SS.

    My other goal again is to encourage lurkers to join the conversations.

Comments are closed.