@TheSourceress raised an interesting list-related question in a recent blog post touching on issues of Twitter etiquette and philosophy.  Her question: “What happens when you make a list of people who are not following you back public… and should you?”

By default, this Formulists-made list starts out “private”.  However, for the brave, there is always the option of flipping the switch to “public” which can lead to some mixed reactions. 

On one hand you have the cons of drawing people’s attention to these lists:

1)      Upsetting people who make it onto the list

Most people are not too keen on being known as someone who “doesn’t follow back”

2)      Pressuring people into following you

As @thesourceress said “Twitter’s easy opt-in, opt-out, no pressure vibe is one of it’s biggest strengths” and such a list is “fairly confrontational”.  And is someone who only follows you out of shame or awkwardness someone you really want as a follower?

The Pros

1)      Pressuring people into following you

For some people, the above question is an obvious “yes”. After all, the people who will tend to notice this list are ones already choosing to not follow you which means, they will either realize the error of their ways ;) or they will just continue to not follow you. In some cases they may even be people who would have wanted to follow you but didn’t realize they were not. In the case of @thesourceress, about 20 new people followed her as a result of this list.

 2)      Indexing your following

Depending on your approach, these people may be people you want to interact with more (in hopes they will get the message and follow back) or perhaps people you want to interact with less and possibly un-follow. In either case, this portion of your following is neatly sorted and easily accessible in a list form.

…What do we recommend?

Another Option

For now, all members of the team keep their “Don’t-Follow-Me-Back” lists private.  However, there is another option: “Filtering” your “Don’t-Follow-Me-Back” list or making a combination list of people who don’t follow back so that you only draw the attention or focus on a subset of people who don’t follow you back.

Here are a couple example ideas:

1.       People who you interacted with a certain number of times that have not followed you back

The Formula: Make a new “Custom-List” that includes people from your “Recent-Interactions” list that are on your “Don’t-Follow-Me-Back” list

2.       Locals that don’t follow you back

 The Formula: Filter “Don’t-Follow-Me-Back” list using the “Location Filter” for your city