After spending 5 months at Twitterville and after witnessing hundreds of tweets and DMs (Direct Messages) telling me “How to Gain Twitter Followers”, I finally decided; why not for a change, write something on “How to Lose Twitter Followers”? How many people are on Twitter right now? Almost 19 million by the end of 2009, i.e. within next 3 months. Ever wondered why you have so few followers? It could be because; you are already doing some/most/all of the things that I am going to tell you in the paragraphs that follow! If you’re a spammer, you may not care. But if you are on a mission to quickly lose your followers and alienate your friends on Twitter, I’d recommend doing the following things:

1. Default Avatar + No Bio + Ugly looking almost blank Profile = Aye I’ve lost 10 more Followers over night.
2. More number of Following than Followers = Smell like yet another Spammer = Get more people to Unfollow (even Block) you quicker.
3. Don’t tweet anything. Just join twitter and start following others without bothering to add anything valuable (read as interesting) to your twitter stream.
4. Pack your profile with your internet guru details. Tell them that you are a geek and don’t leave them any clue to prove your claim.
5. Ignore people who talk to you. Just keep tweeting (talking to yourself like a moron).
6. Post stupid links to stupid sites all day. Don’t even bother to check those links. Just pick them up from all over the internet and start posting them on twitter.
7. Confuse twitter with blogging and feel free to go beyond 140 characters by breaking down your tweet into series of long tweets that go on and on.
8. Post that current song that you are listening to right now and earn yourself an instant unfollow from people who have Melophobia (aversion to music) or someone who just had a rough session with a bad boss.
9. Be proud of yourself for your astounding knowledge in Philosophy and keep posting quotes all day.
10. Try to get others go to your website or try selling them stuffs.
11. Why should you stand out of the herd? Participate wildly in Follow Friday and use every Friday to flood your followers with tons of #FF tweets.
12. Buy some cool tool (script) from eBay to bulk follow 1000 People today and then unfollow them the very next day.
13. Try hard to show them that you are not an introvert by tweeting 100s of times in a day, non-stop.
14. Post lot of useless tweets like, need to go to the restroom, driving on Sierra Nevada, how your cat loves 2 days old noodles, about your tulip plant that died last night or even about how drunk you are right now as you type this tweet.
15. Be anti-social. Don’t ever reply to a question that one of your followers asked because she thought you were an expert in your field (based on your self-proclamation on your profile).
16. Post lot of spam links. Lot and lot of them.
17. Use profanity on a regular basis and start swearing as many people as you can. For best results, pick a celebrity and start swearing her to make sure you get attention from her 1000s of followers (fans).
18. Send auto DMs to everyone who decides to follow you.
19. Make sure to include an affiliate Link in each of your auto DMs.
20. Constantly scream loudly at everyone by POSTING IN ALL CAPS.
21. Flood your Twitter stream with “Thank You” tweets every time someone starts following you.
22. Post Just Links; with no description whatsoever of what that link could possibly be pointing to.
23. Tweet 20 times a day asking others to Digg your latest blog post (with a link).
24. As a bonus, make sure to use “Please Retweet” as often as you can.
25. Send the same tweet 10 times a day. For best results RT yourself.
26. Don’t follow back someone who looks genuine and non-spammy.
27. Keep telling others about your “Money Making” secrets although they are making much more money online, than you.
28. Fill your twitter stream with ONLY replies to others and never post anything of your own.
29. Fill your twitter stream with ONLY retweets of others and never post anything of your own.
30. Post lot of NSFW tweets and forget that there can be lot of people who may not like them.

Still not convinced about the effectiveness of these methods to quickly lose followers and annoy your twitter friends? Okay, here is what people on twitter are saying:

Qu. What makes you UN-FOLLOW a person?

@kovshenin: Seeing twitterfeed, rss2tweet, etc in their devices (tweets?) makes me wanna unfollow. I can manage to read feeds on my own

@Moniqa: When I see the same tweet again and again and again… Or when the only tweets are replies to some other tweeter.

Top 20 Geeky Inventions

@andybird: Adverts in their posts… Grrr

@c_a_t: Spam, too many annoying updates (preachy/religious, meaningless), no longer using their product/site.

@friedbeans: When they tweet too much i.e. 30 times in a row, when they are boring, when they don’t follow back.

@HypnoticK_X: When he does not follow me back! LOL.

@DaveMinella: The phrase “please retweet” is a big one.

@Cursief: Too many tweets at once, advertisings like ‘Free Groceries’ tweets.

@davefromebow: When tweeters tweet every thing they do… I’m having breakfast, I’m asleep etc.!

@HubertGAM: I will unfollow a person if they spam or tweet things that offend me on a regular basis.

@Gorillamonk: Over RT without your own tweets, unless you’re replying via retweeting.

@katofawesome: Constant posting of links, rather than anything personal. I prefer hearing thoughts and daily happenings, rather than links.

35 Secrets of Google

What did you tweet last night to make someone unfollow you? Let us hear about your methods that you employ to annoy your twitter friends, lose your followers and to make others block you.