Upholding Twitter Values, How and Why I Bulk Unfollowed 1,831 People, Facing the Consequences and Finally Being Happy

The number of bulk unfollowing 1,831 is accurate, that is, if you don't consider the 2 followers that I can't locate in my account (it's possibly the Twitter system bots). I will appreciate if you read the full post before giving any criticism to my actions.

Social spam, follower count craze, hyped-up marketing methods and a lot more. These are the things that kept me from using the full potential of Twitter.

Yesterday, I decided to do something. Because I thought, I can't really solve the problems in the Twitter community, but at least, I can do just a part of it however little it may seem. I knew it was right, even though it did took a major blow to my Twitter stats, well, at least I was a lot happeir with Twitter now.

The Time When I Enjoyed Twitter

To be frank, I was a lot happier with Twitter when I was only following about a hundred people. The updates were clean, there weren't much affiliate links back then and I really do know who I was following. That was a good time for me.

The Downward Spiral

All of a sudden, Twitter evolved into a marketing tool and in comes all these so-so people trying to make money out of it. Bad things started happening, you know it yourself. I realized the potential of Twitter too and I was guilty of the same mistaken of abusing it.

I wanted more followers. I have felled into the trap of viral twitter marketing, I bought into twitter systems that were designed to increase followers, and in the end, I was not benefiting in it in any way.

In fact, I felt worse, I felt that I am part of the problem why Twitter has becoming more and more of a social spam.

Now I Felt the Need to Act.

True, I did collect a large number of followers, my traffic did got a boost, but in the end, I asked myself, what's all of this for? I remembered the time when I was happy with Twitter. When I really interacted with people and shared valuable links. When saying good night and good morning was still a fad and when you can actually meet a people who can interest you.

I want to bring back that day.

So I Decided to Take Action.

Within an hour, I bulk unfollowed everybody and decided to start from scratch. Just by looking at the follower count, I realized that almost have of my followers are just using Tweetlater, (remember the automatic unfollow option in Tweetlater?). Therefore, they are not really particpating in the community and are mostly composed of affiliate marketeers who do nothing but flood twitter with spam

Starting now, I promise to myself that:

I will only follow those people I know
I will only follow those that really interest me
I will share valuable tweets
I will interact with the Twitter community
I will not post scam and spam links
I will be a good Twitterfolk
I will make the most out of knowing the recent tweets

and lastly,

I will not care about my follower count as long as I know that
my followers are genuinely interested about what I'm saying

To those who are still following me yet are not really interested in my tweets, I do apologize that I have unfollowed you. Feel free to unfollow me too as my aim is really to promote the original use of Twitter. You may or may not agree with this but thius is what I'm standing for.

To my blogger friends whom I've unfollowed, it's hard to unfollow persons one by one (imagine the 1000+ followers). Anyway, as you can see in my after 24 hours picture, I'm starting to follow back everyone I know, please leave a comment for me to follow you back if I still haven't.

Well, that would be all. I am not campaigning for you to do the same thing in any way, act with accordance to your will. My only message? Do what you think is right and at the end of the day, the right things will happen.

Now I can finally say, let's tweet!