Exceptional is an app your business, career, brand and success can rely on. It’s there to save your ass when things go wrong. It’s serious and bloody useful. So it was nice for a change to build something close to useless.
Introducing Qwitter
Qwitter is a little idea I had at the start of this year. Myself and Dave hacked at it a little back then and yesterday Paul finished it. Qwitter does this and only this: it mails you when someone unfollows you on Twitter and let’s you know what you just said before they did so.
If you’re a Twitter user, you’ll understand why people would want this and if you’re not, you won’t. So Twitter users: have fun. Everyone else, sorry!
Thanks
Big shout out to Britt and Alex of Twitter who let us on their API whitelist way back when we started this project. Cheers guys!
47 Comments
Hah, nice one.
Posted by Dave Cahill at 11:35 am on 17 October, 2008.
I’m divided on this one.
I generally avoid tools like twitter karma and other unfollow notifiers. I’m inclined to let followers slip away unnoticed if thats what they want.
But, then Qwitter is different. It adds value by answering the question ‘Was it something I said??’ With Qwitter you don’t need to ask that* question any more.
Posted by Niall Larkin at 11:44 am on 17 October, 2008.
Excellent tool - But its only a start… Twitter is badly in need of a Follower Management app. Maybe it already exists somewhere.
I want to know…
- Who is following me that I amn’t following. (Could be an ommision).
- Who am I following that isn’t following me. (Screw them don’t they know who I am?)
- Who are my followings following that I should probably follow???
Twollow.com is the obvious URL.
Posted by Ant Galvin at 11:44 am on 17 October, 2008.
New to twitter but an early adoper of Qwitter makes up for it right?
Posted by Mark at 11:51 am on 17 October, 2008.
That sir is fabulous… I think it’ll be a hit.Let me know when to digg it
Can you do something (magically) for blog subscribers?
Posted by Patrick Liddy at 11:55 am on 17 October, 2008.
Awesome - I award you a 4 shamrocks Doras Award! http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitter_production/profile_images/62263458/images_1__bigger.gif
Posted by Stewart Curry at 11:56 am on 17 October, 2008.
@ant - there’s some sites that do what you are looking for
http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/ - who’s following and not follwing (but it’s not that reliable in my experience)
http://www.tweetwheel.com/ - who’s following who in your twitter circle
Posted by Stewart Curry at 12:07 pm on 17 October, 2008.
Nice one, lads!
Posted by John Ryan at 12:07 pm on 17 October, 2008.
There is already a Twitter add-on app named Qwitter, for people who are trying to stop smoking…
Posted by Name at 12:30 pm on 17 October, 2008.
I keep getting this message when I put in my own username:
“The change you wanted was rejected. Maybe you tried to change something you didn’t have access to?”
So, I can’t track myself?
Posted by Liz at 12:44 pm on 17 October, 2008.
It might crumble my self esteem and make me paranoid, but this is an excellent twitter tool nevertheless. Go Contrast team!
Posted by naomi at 12:56 pm on 17 October, 2008.
Nifty idea - love the name and poor sad waving character too. Congrats!
Posted by Janine at 1:55 pm on 17 October, 2008.
Hi Liz,
Give it a try now, we were having a couple of issues due to a massive spike in traffic, and also there was an oddity with protected updates.
Let me know if you’re still having difficulty.
Des
Posted by Des Traynor at 2:56 pm on 17 October, 2008.
Genius . . I think
Posted by Andrew Weissman at 6:53 pm on 17 October, 2008.
Hey guys, well done, great idea.
Posted by AJ at 7:21 pm on 17 October, 2008.
Some thoughts:
1. Please warn folks that Twitter notoriously “unfollows” people from time to time without any action on the follower’s part. I have had this happen to me MANY times, from both directions. Often the person who find themselves no longer followed worries that there was a reason, when the truth is, they were not “un”followed on purpose at all.
2. Gosh, I think people make too much of being followed/unfollowed. To me it’s like tuning a radio - people will change the dial if the content is not a good fit. It’s nothing personal.
3. I doubt the last thing you said ever has much to do with this. Most people manage their following/unfollowing on longer timescales and whether their interest in the person is sustained.
Just my humble opinion though…
Neat app!
Posted by Laura "Pistachio" Fitton at 7:47 pm on 17 October, 2008.
Cool…
How about an app that semantically reads your stream each month or quarter and details what type of person you are (sends you an email with the data) and suggests you might want to take a different approach? You need to chill out, you are angry most of the time, you are too negative, you Twitter way too much, etc… Possibly help to see how others view you?
Twitter therapist…
Posted by ryan s at 9:09 pm on 17 October, 2008.
Nice idea. Hasn’t worked for me so far but I like the concept.
Posted by Rich at 10:50 pm on 17 October, 2008.
I’ve had an app up and running for a couple months now called http://twitterless.com which does the same thing (using direct messages, not emails), although I’ve also focused on tracking follower statistics, history, locations, etc. (maybe more what @Ant Galvin is looking for). I like that Qwitter is very simple and guesses at which tweet may have caused the unfollowing. I’m curious to see how soon after someone stops following you that Qwitter sends the notification. Great design, btw.
Posted by Mark Nutter at 11:28 pm on 17 October, 2008.
Gruber baiting backfires?
Posted by Huissein at 1:44 am on 18 October, 2008.
Working now. Thank you.
Posted by Rich at 2:08 am on 18 October, 2008.
Do you have a privacy policy that states what you will do or not do with the email addresses you collect?
Posted by Kathleen Anderson at 2:19 am on 18 October, 2008.
What are you going to do when Twitter implements this feature themselves?
Posted by Name at 8:39 am on 18 October, 2008.
The concept behind this service is awesome. Very useful and I’ve already passed the word around to friends.
While the idea is great, I think the domain name it lives on could use some help. With that, I wanna thank the guys at Contrast for providing me with content for my first entry at YourDomainNameSucks.com.
Please do no take offense. This site is actually a benefit to your brand.
@pixelbug
Posted by Jorge Martinez at 10:37 am on 18 October, 2008.
@Kathleen We’ll use the addresses to email you when someone leaves your followers list. Thats it.
@Name … who cares?! I don’t think they will implement it though.
Posted by Paul Campbell at 11:19 am on 18 October, 2008.
I’m excited about this, it’s something I’ve wished for for some time. Alas I haven’t gotten any emails yet even though my follower count has gone down by two - is this an issue you’re aware of?
Posted by Jesse at 12:27 pm on 18 October, 2008.
Can I ask who did the illustration on the Qwitter page?
Posted by Poolga at 4:37 pm on 18 October, 2008.
hey guys.. it doesnt seem to work for me.. i signed up in the in the morning today and i know for a fact that 2 have unfollowed me.. my id is @narayananh.. Can you guys check and let me know?
Posted by Narayanan Hariharan at 6:49 pm on 18 October, 2008.
@Narayanan — Yup, we have you, but your email address was entered as “losangeles” … I’ve updated your address, so you should see it start to work now.
Posted by Paul Campbell at 6:55 pm on 18 October, 2008.
oh! i guess i made a mistake! thanks for that! btw, its nice to know after which tweet the user unfollowed.. i’ve blogged about it if you guys still haven’t noticed.. here’s the link - http://www.techspikes.com/2008/10/unfollowing-twitter-qwitter/ !!
Posted by Narayanan Hariharan at 7:00 pm on 18 October, 2008.
Thanks, Des Traynor, it’s working for me.
Unfortunately, I’ve started getting notices of “unfollowers”…mostly companies or salespeople but a few people I was surprised at (I need a thicker skin, I think!). I’d rather know though than suddenly find someone I thought was following me wasn’t. Luckily, I get more people starting to following me than unfollowing me…I guess you can’t please everyone!
Posted by Liz at 11:10 pm on 18 October, 2008.
@topgold just got a qwitter mail marked as Spam, so I decided to check my own spam folder, and yes. Gmail is marking your emails as Spam. Just an FYI…
Posted by Ant Galvin at 12:18 pm on 20 October, 2008.
@Ant This is inevitable. Gmail filtered all my Twitter emails including follows and DMs for months before I realised.
Posted by Paul Campbell at 12:23 pm on 20 October, 2008.
How do I remove Qwitter App? I blocked a follower, then Qwitter sent me a notice that the block-head Qwit after something I said…not quite the same cause and effect. (Annoying.) There does not seem to be an opt out option???
Posted by rgw at 3:30 am on 26 October, 2008.
@rgw
Every email you receive from Qwitter includes a link that will delete your account. Just click one of them, and it’s all sorted
Des
Posted by Des Traynor at 10:56 am on 26 October, 2008.
There’s a flaw in Qwitter. It checks for followers at intervals and therefore the “After this tweet” feature shows the same tweet who would have unfollowed after different tweets. To prove this I asked my friends to unfollow after different tweets but when I did get the notification, all of them showed one single tweet. The “After this tweet” feature is a big FAIL!!
Posted by Narayanan Hariharan at 11:19 am on 26 October, 2008.
I second Laura’s third point concerning the fact that the most recent tweet poses no relevance whatsoever for the person hitting the unfollow button.
I, for example, stop following people due to lack of activity, much too many tweets, or those whom, over a certain period, have not said anything remotely interesting.
“Never judge a book by its cover” or, erm, a user by his or her last tweet?
Posted by Mihnea at 12:51 pm on 26 October, 2008.
@ Des Traynor re:rgw Thanks for pointing that out, didn’t realize the message had a post script, it fell below my screen image. I think if I were a bigger Twitter user, I would find your app invaluable. However, I am only following/followed by a couple and block the odd-bods. Thanks again! Like your site design btw.
Posted by rgw at 5:03 pm on 26 October, 2008.
Narayanan Hariharan - I’ve seen the same exact problem. I’ve got people supposedly unfollowing me after a tweet that was posted well over a month ago.
Posted by Me at 6:44 pm on 17 November, 2008.
Doesn’t work!
Posted by Valerie at 7:04 am on 11 December, 2008.
Going to get it working again?
Posted by Twitter Tips at 10:30 pm on 17 December, 2008.
It’s my Christmas project to get Qwitter working again. I’m looking forward to it!
Posted by Paul Campbell at 10:36 pm on 17 December, 2008.
For the record: Qwitter isn’t totally broken … the queue is still running, but there are so many users on it that it is completely swamped, and the 3 days work I put in to scaling it only went so far.
Posted by Paul Campbell at 10:37 pm on 17 December, 2008.
try http://twitterless.com, it’s been working for me, just follow @tless for an account
Posted by Matt at 11:00 pm on 17 December, 2008.
Yes, Twitterless is cool and Mark’s a really great guy …
Posted by Paul Campbell at 11:06 pm on 17 December, 2008.
A quick update on this. I’ve done some work on Qwitter over the last few days. Basically, the service has been creaking under many thousands of users. However, it should be working now for everyone. The one caveat of this is that it will be a lot slower for people with large follower lists. That’s all for now!
Posted by Paul Campbell at 9:29 pm on 18 January, 2009.
Well done boys. I just wanted to add that I just love your site, its fresh and clean and not over done, keep well
Posted by Wendy @ Gopher Promo at 11:23 am on 29 July, 2009.
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