Unless I am a off-line friend of the ‘Twitterer’ I would like to follow, it isn’t necessary to tell me the mundane bits of their life. If the bio states they are a sports fanatic or a charity events coordinator that is what I want to read about. If something fantastic happens outside of the box I wouldn’t mind hearing about it. At the same time, If the Twitterer can somehow tie it to the main subject they cover, even better.

On another note, I am weary of receiving notification of why someone left, even if the answer is productive. I believe Qwitter useqwitter.com has caused an uproar among some because it causes “drama.” If I understand it correctly, Qwitter doesn’t tell you why someone left, just identifies the last post you made before they decided to bolt.

We already receive notifications when someone follows us. The optional field would allow someone to specify, at the time they click “FOLLOW” why they did it.

My entering assumption – most people (or organizations) are curious or have a vested interest into WHY someone follows them. It allows them to assess what works.

If I’m correct, then I’d also assume those same people would take the time to provide a reason when following someone else. Some already do that, either a public “@subbob I’m following you because” or a “D subbob: Hey, I see we have the same interests.”

But that requires two-steps – the follow action and the initiative to send a separate message. I don’t know the science behind it, but each time you put an additional obstacle in the path, it will eliminate a certain percentage of people, even if they intended to follow through.

On the other end, when someone stops following you, currently no message is sent.

“Twitter does not notify you when someone has stopped following you.”
REF: http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/14019

In my suggested implementation, that remains the same UNLESS the person specifies a reason why. That allows people a method to provide constructive feedback (if appropriate) or perhaps to give another reason.

i.e.

@Subbob is no longer following you because “your feed consists of 100% self-promotion, recommend rethinking how you interact.”

or

@Subbob is no longer following you because “I completed my project. Thanks for the assistance.”

At the risk of being long-winded (if not too late) – pseudo-code for implementation:

Just like Twitter asks “What are you doing?”, the option box would ask “Why are you following” & “Why are you stopping?”, encouraging the person to answer the question.

Follow

if [$Reason ""] then
send “$User is now following your updates on Twitter because ” + $Reason;
else
send “$User is now following your updates on Twitter.”;
end

Stop Following

if [$Reason ""]
send “$User stopped following your updates on Twitter because ” + $Reason;
end {implied “else do nothing” as it is now}

I’m sure it can be easily implemented, with the message in the form of a tweet, but I can see that being abused, whereby a DM would be preferred but how to send a DM without that person following you?

When someone new follows me, I’m always curious as to what motivated them to do so. Sometimes it’s obvious, like after I’ve just followed them. Other times it’s hard to determine.

I think it would interesting if Twitter added a field under the Follow/Unfollow button. In this optional field you could write the reason for the action.

So you’d get updates like:

[JohnSmith] is now following your updates on Twitter because “[reason specified]”

OR

[JohnSmith] is no longer following your updates on Twitter because “[reason specified]”

That would provide feedback on what worked (and didn’t work) so people could adjust accordingly.