I am sure you are all aware of the URL even if you don’t have an account.
If you do, you probably know that the people who subscribe to your feeds (tweets) are your “followers”- (makes you feel like you are a religion, doesn’t it?)
With considerable amount of “live” time that I’ve spent on twitter, I’ve seen behavioral similarities between different individuals and their “following” patterns. You might have noticed these too and more but I am restricting it to the types that I’ve experienced.
1.”Follower”
A genuine person (few of these left, both in the twitter and real world), who follows you for your content and probably to stay in touch using twitter as a medium.
2. “You Don’t – I Don’t”
A typical Tit For Tat example- You don’t get followed unless you follow. Sometimes
they expressly say it to you, even have it written in their limited space-bios. Should you commit the grave sin of unfollowing them, expect an instant unfollow back. Applications like Twittaquitta - were made just for people like these.
3.”I Do, You Do”
These gracious folks are kind enough to follow you first… but with a catch. They will want you to follow them back almost instantly. They’ll probably give you a month, a week, a day.. Some won’t wait over an hour. And if you don’t return the follow within this window, they will resort to un-following you *gasp*. “What would I ever do without you following me?”
4. “I’m all about numbers; You are just a statistic”
These are the sneaky ones. They’ll follow you and you may follow them back out of politeness. But watch out, they are the least interested in your tweets. They were waiting for you to follow them back so they could inflate their follower count. So don’t be too surprised if you are unfollowed right away. It was nothing you said. You know how it goes, “It’s not you; it’s me.”
5. “I am right HERE. Look At Me!"
The attention grabber… that annoying kid in class who is always waving his hand. You find them on Twitter too. These guys follow you and un-follow you and then follow you back and then unfollow you again in repeated fashion until you can set your clock by it. But all they want to do is a remind you that they are a part of your flock and you should be a part of theirs.
They may also want to be seen higher to the top on your list of followers and increase their visibility. They will also retweet just about anything you say as a sign that they have good taste.. hoping against hope that at least their more-than-generous retweets will garner a follow back. Little do they know….
I am sure you know at least one twit who falls in the category or perhaps identify yourself as one of these types. But I hope there shall be a different attitude in people on twitter after they are done reading this article.
Jokes aside, when people unfollow you, it probably means that the person doesn’t find your tweets interesting anymore, nothing personal. Surely your self esteem doesn’t rely on your number of followers. Besides, if you want to stay in touch you can add each other on Facebook. Twitter is NOT a social network!
Moral: People in Qatar should stop taking twitter and the politik of follow-unfollow a little less seriously.
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