How to Find Out Who Stops Following You on Twitter

Qwitter is a Twitter tool that notifies you via email when someone stops following you on Twitter. Sounds depressing, right? Back in 2008, curiosity killed the cat for thousands of Twitter users, eager to find out who was unfollowing them so they could return the favor. Even though knowing when people unfollow you was useful, it was still be kind of depressing to receive these notifications daily. Then in December 2008, the notifications stopped.

Since 2008, other Twitter tools like Friend or Follow have cropped up where users can find out who they’re following that aren’t following back. But Qwitter has come back to life.

What is Qwitter?

Qwitter is a service that sends you an email notification every time someone stops following you on Twitter. It includes their name, the last tweet you sent before the user stopped following you (which may or may not have caused the unfollow). Here’s an example:

Whatever, HuletGlass. I won’t take offense that you don’t like retweets, FourSquare, or tweets from SXSW. *Tear*

Why is Qwitter back?

The Qwitter website has this message: “We’re Back! How could we possibly quit catching QWITTERS?!? Fear not… notification emails have returned, giving us all something to look forward to during the day!”

According to a Qwitter article at TechCrunch, a company called Agora Technology has bought the application from Contrast, and will be delivering faster unfollow notifications, and without ads. A premium service will soon be available as well.

Why you should use Qwitter

Qwitter can be a pretty useful service for the following reasons:

• Learn from your mistakes. Qwitter’s notifications include the last thing you tweeted before that user stopped following you. If you get an influx of Qwitter notifications after certain types of tweets, such as those about mundane details about your meals or comments on the weather, you might consider cutting back on those types of tweets.

• Return the favor. If you’re trying to maintain a good following to follower ratio (i.e. you’re being followed by more people than you are following), you can use Qwitter to find out who is unfollowing you, so you can stop following them in return.

• Convince them to re-follow. Sometimes people will stop following people who haven’t followed them back yet. Perhaps the notification that they followed you slipped into your spam filter, or maybe you were too busy that day to follow people back. This way, if their tweets look interesting, you get a second chance to follow them back, and perhaps they will refollow you.

Why you shouldn’t use Qwitter

Qwitter got a lot of bad press back in 2008. Here’s why:

• It’s depressing. You sign up for the service, curious about why you lose followers every now and then. You receive the unfollow notification. You open the email, copy/paste their Twitter URL into your browser. You stare at their Twitter icon, wondering what you did wrong. “But… but… I retweeted you last spring!” You go back to the notification to read the last tweet you sent before they unfollowed you. It was about that last blog post you wrote, that you put so much effort into. WHY, GOD, WHY???? Ok that’s a bit overdramatic, but you get the idea.

• Unnecessary negativity. There’s enough in life to be stressed about. People unfollowing you on Twitter should be the least of your worries. I mean really, think about it. You shouldn’t care. Just focus on turning out high-quality tweets, and you’ll be getting more followers to replace the unfollowers in no time.

• It makes you overanalyze. It’s great to learn which tweets are more effective at getting retweets and followers than others, and Qwitter can help you discover that should stop tweeting about all those times you’re bored on the couch. But people will still unfollow you for whatever reason after a perfectly good tweet, so don’t overthink it, either.

Have you signed up for Qwitter? Do you think you should or shouldn’t be able to know when people stop following you on Twitter?