Hooked on Birdbrain - and a new Twitter dynamic...

So I love this app from Birdbrain.  It provides me probably the most useful look at my Twitter network of any tool I've seen. 

One of the interesting things it does is look at my followers every time I start it and tells me, since the last time I checked, not just how many new followers have joined and who they are but who has also stopped following me since the last time I checked. That's not really a totally new feature I know but BirdBrain does it faster than any other tool I've seen and it has resulted in a new dynamic for me. 

I've become really interested in who stops following me. Some are really obvious, people who have different interests, bots, etc., but some are not so obvious and those are the ones that interest me. 

Like @socmedia12 - into social media marketing. Were my tweets just not on point enough? Let me be clear, I'm not hurt, I'm not taking any of this personally - I'm just trying to understand the dynamic of how people reach the point where they are sufficiently moved to take the action to unfollow someone. Maybe its just interesting to me since I really rarely unfollow people and I wonder how other people make that decision. 

I've also started following a larger % of people who unfollow me because as BirdBrain highlights them to me, I'll take a look and find someone with interests that I'd like to track. So I guess I'm increasing the asymetry in my network by following more and more people who aren't following me. 

So thanks Birdbrain for crafting a UX that has allowed me greater insight into my lil ole twitter network - you're helping me pull together a better, more interesting, richer network. Plus, I just love that lil twitter bird with the glasses and pencil! 

Comments

[mark oehlert]

Stephen,

Morning! Thanks for the comment but just to clear a couple of things up:

-I'm not agonizing over whether or not people follow me or not and I can't really believe that anyone out there is actually on pins and needles wondering if I'll follow them.
-Without agonizing over it, my Twitter network is a very important resource for and I am very interested in the dynamics of how me/you/we relate to these networks and I think the exposure of who unfollows me is just an interesting point of inquiry.
-Wait...you don't follow anyone on Twitter? Isn't that kind of missing the point?
:-)

[Stephen Downes]

See, this is why I don't follow anyone on Twitter -- I don't want people agonizing about whether I will follow them or not, and wondering why I don't, and wondering what went wrong if I unfollow.