Today Sherice Jacob (follow her at @sherice) from iElectrify takes a look at a twitter tool that has had a lot of press lately – Qwitter.
It happens. You’re having one of those days where everything that can go wrong does. You log in to Twitter and a 140-character rant turns into a small novel as you spill your guts on everything that went wrong that day.
The next thing you know, a chunk of your followers have seemingly dropped off the face of the Twitterverse, leaving you to wonder…
Was it something I said?
With Qwitter, you can find out exactly what that “something” was. Qwitter tells you when you’ve been un-followed and what your most recent tweet was when it happened. While the system doesn’t always give you the exact reason someone left, you can use it to pinpoint what’s unappealing to your followers and possibly adjust your tweets in the future.
Signing up for Qwitter is easy, free and private. You simply enter your Twitter username and email address (which is used to notify you when someone un-follows and what your tweet was when they left).
Here are just a few of the ways you can use this to your Twitter marketing advantage:
- Find out if a particular affiliate product or offer doesn’t sit well with your Followers – particularly if it’s something you recommend that other people have tried and aren’t satisfied with.
- See which blog posts leave your followers wanting more. You can use the free TweetMyBlog service at www.tweetmyblog.com to tweet your blog posts to your followers.
- Learn what questions push the wrong “hot buttons” – especially if it’s something that can be found out with a quick web search. You might find out, for example, that 25 people un-followed you after you asked “What’s the difference between PCs and Macs?”
While these are rather extreme instances of being un-followed, you’ll likely learn a few valuable tidbits about your followers as a result of using Qwitter – and since it’s free, you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it out and getting a glimpse of the kinds of tweets your followers value and which ones they’d like to see less of.
To sign up for Qwitter – visit www.useqwitter.com
@deege
With the increasing number of people following and then unfollowing later to increase their subscriber numbers, it might give you a false positive on why they left.
It does however let you catch them in the act if you remember when they originally followed you!
@ggw_bach
how about an article on “Top 10 Reasons Why People Unfollow”??
for me, it would be consistent and shameless self-promotion. Some twit feeds read like a running advertisement of how great their web site is.
another reason: too much twitterfeed content. I want to hear your voice, not your rss feed.
but definitely Qwitter would help in diagnosing your own faults and improving on them.
@tumblemoose
I’ve been tempted to check out Qwitter. I’m still not certain if I see the value, or maybe becasue I’m a writer I’m very sensitive, needy and thin skinned
.
The feedback may be interesting but I’m not sure I want my tweets being driven by a sense of fear over someone following after I’ve tweeted something.
Let me think about it.
Cheers
George
@mikenichols0
It’s not as if I have followers to burn, but I have avoided using Qwitter because I simply don’t care whether someone unfollows me because of something I tweet. If I cannot be myself in Twitter for fear of someone unfollowing me, then I think I don’t need to be using Twitter at all!
@TropicThink
Meh. I’ll sign up when there’s a service that in medieval fashion treats whoever unfollowed me to a “learning experience” that helps them understand that such a mistake should never, ever, ever be repeated. And only then shall I rest.
Admittely, I did try Qwitter, but actually found it a little unreliable. I got unfollowed, but no notice. Just me?
@franswaa
Qwitter is interesting … i’ve been using it for a few months now.
1) It stinks when people stop following you – getting an email that tells you someone has stopped following you can be a bit discouraging depending on how ‘thick your skin is’
2) Although you can learn things about when someone stops following you – it’s not easy and you could go as far as saying it’s completly manual to get any real actionable data out if it
Are there any folks out there who have found real value in Qwitter? And if so, what action are you taking with people who stop following you?
@der5er
Keep in mind, if you tweet more than once a day, you still won’t know why someone quit following. Qwitter gives you the tweet that was active whenever their script ran, not necessarily the tweet that made someone quit.
@loribourne
I signed up for Qwitter a month a go or so, and it worked great at first but now it doesn’t send emails for unfollows anymore. I’ve seen a few other people tweet the same thing.
It was kind of cool while it lasted.
@jjwright85
This is a pretty cool application. I think I’m going to use it and start spying on my quitters. lol
I already use the service so I know when people are not following me anymore. That tells me that I must have done something to get people to quit. I never actually try to go back and get them to follow me again.
@loribourne
The main reason people unfollow me is because they followed me in order to get a follow back; when I don’t, they quit.
But this discussion is sorta moot, since Qwitter doesn’t actually work anymore!
@storyboardlife
I don’t know that I would be concerned about it. However, I think it’s the same as looking for those who dropped halfway through the subscribe process. I think there was a post about it. In the land of wanting to know more about what people are doing and why they are doing it…Qwitter would be another app to use.
@JesseStay
Darren, you should try out my service, SocialToo.com – we not only offer a Qwitter-like service (we send a nightly e-mail with not just your unfollows during the day, but also your followers, all accompanied by the last Tweet we recorded before the follow/unfollow), but we also auto-follow AND unfollow (without the need to set up e-mail rules like other services), auto-dm of new followers, blacklisting of followers you don’t want it to keep following (we’ll be doing much more with this in the near future), and we offer a SocialSurvey feature that lets you poll your followers and track the results of the Poll. Much more coming soon!
@gloson
I qwitted using qwitter after reading this post – (Qwitter is bad for everyone) – http://blog.seanbonner.com/2008/11/11/qwitter-is-bad-for-everyone/ . I quoted this from the post:
“My biggest problem with Qwitter, and the one that covers all the bases in one shot is that is creates drama and negativity from something that should be innocuous.”
Don’t you think, Darren?
@bklnpoet
I’m not sure what to make of this phenomenon: Every time Qwitter reports that one of my followers has left, regardless of when the follower left, it’s always the same “offensive” tweet I posted back in October: “@bethr Literalism is what atheists and fundamentalists have in common.” That tweet was a reply to @bethr’s tweet, “superstition=literal cosmology.” I doubt most of the offended ex-followers were aware of the context.
@AdsenseWench
An interesting tool, but I don’t think I want to spend this much time analyzing my tweets or necessarily know why people left. If one of my posts offended a group of people… well, they probably weren’t matches for my personality anyway. I’d hate to end up self-editing myself and second-guessing future posts out of concerns that people might leave if I offend them.
You could get a complex, or something.
@JesseStay
@gloson, here’s my take on it – these are all marketing tools. That’s our target audience at SocialToo – businesses and professionals. As a business, or even professional, it’s important to react based on logical metrics. We’re just introducing social metrics into the mix which allow you to track results based on real people, and the relationships you have with those people. Never before could you do that. Now you can know why people leave, and respond accordingly. If Guy Kawasaki sees 100 people unfollow him because he Tweeted 5 things about Alltop, he can know that’s not a good way to promote Alltop. Or, vice-versa. If he tweets 5 things about Alltop, and 200 people follow him (as compared to the 100 that unfollow), he can know he’s seeing results. It’s all about being able to track how and why people are interested in you.
@gloson
Ok, I understand. There are advantages and disadvantages of qwitter.
@sciencebase
Is qwitter still working, I’ve seen my count drop once or twice recently but didn’t get the email…
@hectorhenry17
I have it configure and its great for real.
@Jodith
Ahhh…I read the comments and realized it’s not just me it isn’t working for. I’ll stop having a complex now *laughs*.
@JustinSMV
I really like how to measure ratio results with qwitter but becoming focusing too much on why people quit following you or why they don’t like you can develop a complex and will go insane in trying to please everyone. Go back to basics and focus on your niche.
@joycloete
I use Qwitter but only for a laff. I’d rather be followed by people who *want* to hear what is on my mind. But I have a bit of a thick skin
I’ve also been wondering about the supposed quality of one’s followers. So perhaps it’s ‘good’ that random weirdo unfollowed me and the ratio of ‘weirdos’:'good quality’ followers increases?
@sherice
Qwitter’s there just to give you some insight on possibly why people quit. You shouldn’t go carrying torches and pitchforks to your follower’s houses (uh oh, think I just gave @TropicThink a great medieval idea there!). But if you use it with Twitter feeds and everyday comments, it might tell you if you’ve hit a nerve with a certain blog post or comment. Then again, you might not care… totally your decision
When I wrote the piece, I didn’t have any problem signing up or using Qwittter. It can be delayed a bit if there’s a lot of Twitter traffic, but I think that goes for a lot of Twitter services from time to time.
@LeilaPan
I signed up over a month ago but didn’t receive any up dates even though I lost some followers. I’m using Twitterless now instead…A lot of people are no longer receiving Qwitter updates.
@CoryOBrien
I tired it for a while, but ended up Qwitting Qwitter when I realized that I was starting to censor myself based on a desire to keep the followers that I had.
Instead, what I realized is that it’s important to be yourself, and that you shouldn’t worry about why someone does or does not follow you. If you’re trying to change the way that you are and the way that you want to tweet because you want to keep your follower numbers high, then those followers don’t really have a lot of value because they’re not following the real you; they following a tamed down, censored and overly-cautious version of you.
In addition, there are a number of reasons why someone might unfollow, and just knowing what tweet they left after often doesn’t give you any insight into them. Sure, if you get a huge spike of Qwits then you probably did something that pissed a few people off, but that’s not how it usually happens, and if you piss a lot of people off with a single tweet, then you probably don’t need a service to tell you what that controversial tweet was.
worked great for about a week, then it decided to qwit on me.
and there’s absolutely no contact information to be found on their website.
@crston8
I use this tool and find it invaluable.
I use twitter exclusively for social reasons. There are a great many people who use the system for everything but. No judgments, but if I say something personal that’s important to me and 27 people drop me because of it as happened to me July 4th, I want to know.
Mostly I want to know so we don’t do the whole follow unfollow dance ever again.
This systems shows you who they are. Once you see them you can then decide if you want to play their games.