July 18, 2008 7:04pm
FriendFeed: Should I unsubscribe from people who don't follow me back ?
Posted by michael.twofishComments
When I came across Felix's FriendVenn, I had this advice from Duncan Riley on my mind.
I now generally unsubscribe from people who don’t follow me after some time. This isn’t immediately and you have to give people some time (I usually update my follows 2-3 times a week, so I might not reciprocate for 3-4 days) but FriendFeed is ultimately a place for “Friends.” People aren’t your friends if they are not interested in following you. Of course, I still add interesting people who pop up from time to time, but after a couple of weeks if I notice they’re not interested in me, I unsubscribe again.FriendVenn tells you three things; who you're subscribed to but who doesn't follow you, who is subscribed to you but you don't follow, and who you're reciprocally subscribed to. I went through and subscribed to all the people who subscribe to me that I hadn't got around to subscribing back (even Scoble, who I'd avoided for fear of noise, but not the one person with a private feed), and now I'm considering Duncan's advice.
These are the people who don't follow me back. Should I unsubscribe ?
- Aviv
- Benjamin Golub
- Bret Taylor
- Bwana McCall
- Christian Mohn
- Dave Winer
- David Recordon
- Franklin Pettit
- Louis Gray
- Mitchell Tsai
- Paul Buchheit
- Sarah Perez
- Simon Willison
- Tim Hoeck
- edythe
- engtech
Christian is a friend in real life, and doesn't use FriendFeed much. I've had conversations in FriendFeed and other places with a few people on the list. Some are big names who are probably unlikely to ever subscribe to me. But like Duncan says, if they're not interested in what I have to say, perhaps I should unsubscribe. I'm undecided.
[Update: the feeling is pretty overwhelming on FriendFeed, though perhaps I wasn't clear that my point is about having good quality interactions with people, and not some popularity contest.]