To Qwitter or Not to Qwitter

First, some background.I know that more and more people are using Qwitter to track who unfollows them. I do. I want to know.

Unfortunately, Qwitter may not give you the whole story. Qwitter tells me when someone has stopped following me and the last twitter I posted before they, er, qwitted me. The idea is that I can find out what I said that made someone decide to not follow me anymore.

Hi, Ulrn2Twtr.

Some Guy (someguy) stopped following you on Twitter after you posted this tweet:

Cool – RT @triviabuff: Just read…Every pomegranate has exactly 840 seeds. Couldn’t keep that kind of news all to myself.

Check out someguy’s profile here:

http://twitter.com/someguy

Best,
Qwitter

Three problems.

1. Not everyone decides to stop following people based on twitter contents. Some folks periodically go through and “blow out the chaff.” The idea is to make sure that your relationships are high-quality as opposed to high-quantity. With all the various ways that people decide whether or not to follow someone, my postings may have played a part but I might not have been dropped for any particular post.

2. I might be unfollowed for a post that someone is reading from early in the morning but just getting upset enough to unfollow me just at the time I’m posting a message similar to the one above. I have reason to believe that this post did not engender a Qwit — I had recently unfollowed SomeGuy because I found one of his posts very offensive.

3. If you unfollow me, I’m very likely to unfollow you. I just think it is much healthier to acknowledge that the relationship wasn’t working out and move on. If I continue to follow you after you have left, I feel like I’m stalking you. So, when I unfollow someone and they unfollow me, I’m happy that we’ve both been able to move on and find other people.

So, when I get the e-mail from Qwitter, I will know the last post I made when you qwit but I won’t know that it was that post that caused you to leave, nor will you have the full story if I qwit you.

Also, Qwitter may give you a complex. If you are going to feel hurt and obsess about why someone left you, don’t sign up for Qwitter. More detail here in this excellent post: The Fallacy of Qwitter