31 August 2018

Twitter Tests Telling People Who to Unfollow


Twitter is only as good as the people you follow. Which is why so many people struggle to get the most out of Twitter, as they join the site, follow a handful of people, and then get bored. On the other hand, it’s possible to follow too many people.

Following too many people means a timeline filled with uninteresting nonsense. And the need to scroll through tweets you have no interest in to get to the good stuff. Which is why Twitter recently started recommending who you should stop following.

Who to Unfollow on Twitter

This was spotted by several Twitter users, some of whom took screenshots of the recommendations. Twitter has long recommended “Who to Follow” based on who you’re already following, so this would seem to be the natural balancing force.

Matt Navarra was invited to “improve your timeline by reviewing some accounts you may not need to follow”. Clicking “Take a look” then opened up a list of accounts Twitter thought he could live without. Probably due to a lack of engagement.

The wording was different for different people. Tim Fernholz’s was much more to the point, saying, “You don’t need to follow everyone to know what’s happening. Make sure you’re only following the people that make Twitter great for you.”

Twitter issued a statement to Slate saying:

“We know that people want a relevant Twitter timeline. One way to do this is by unfollowing people they don’t engage with regularly. We ran an incredibly limited test to surface accounts that people were not engaging with to check if they’d like to unfollow them.”

So, it was a test, and one limited to a small percentage of Twitter users. Still, Twitter hasn’t yet indicated whether it deemed the test to be a success and whether it’s likely to be rolled out to more users in the future. So this could be the last we see of it.

Twitter Knows Your Tastes

Suggesting people you should unfollow makes a lot of sense. After all, Twitter knows which tweets you’ve read, which links you’ve clicked on, and which profiles you’ve explored. So why not let them help you decide who is surplus to requirement?

Whether you’re new to the site or have been tweeting for years you should probably read our guide to using Twitter. And then take the opportunity to go through the list of people you follow and cull any you no longer have any interest in engaging with.

Image Credit: Bram Koster/Flickr

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