If they appear to be cool, interesting, or in my field(s). I’ll follow.

Quality over quantity

PS: any college student reading it, love to connect with you.

“I had Big Jim and Big Josh as ‘action figures’ when I was a kid. *And* the camping set. I swear these made me gay. http://tinyurl.com/ackz2k”

Kind of sad, but it’s to be expected of some.

Remember that 9 out of 10 unfollows are from spammers who only wanted to get you to follow them in the first place. Others are people who followed you but you did not follow back and that miffed them.

Although I would probably not get into the habit of bothering to ask much, it is interesting to note that the one person I asked did not answer me back (about 10 people have unfollowed me and this was one of two who were not spammers or miffed about me not following them). I found that was ruder not to answer than the unfollow. Some people fervently believe that humans don’t morally owe each other explanations for seeming to hurt their feelings. My request simply asked for advice on how not to get unfollowed. A person should be able to tactfully own-up to their public behavior if another cares about knowing (again, I am not recommending that anyone care).

There are 3 scenarios here:

1) Personal Twitter Microblog: This is where your feelings might get hurt but it should be no big deal. No real need to ask why there was an unfollow but it would be rude not to answer someone who asked why they were unfollowed (and not rude for them to ask why).

2) Corporate Twitterer: Absolutely NO excuse to even ask why there was an unfollow.

3) Political Twitterer: If you have a cause and a politician follows you and later unfollows you…or follows your opponent and won’t follow you, you have a legitimate reason to call that politician to account and/or ask others not to vote for them.