A Clean Slate

Wired Magazine recently featured a software tool called "Unfollowing.net," which allowed users to un-follow everyone on their Twitter feeds, creating a fresh start. That is, until Twitter shut the software down shortly thereafter for 'violating its terms of service.'

But the idea remains the same. While in the early-2000s-Facebook-is-so-cool-only-a-few-people-can-join phase, everyone competed to accumulate friends. Nowadays, we are much more jaded about being inundated by email spam, excessive Twitter updates, and having hundreds of Facebook friends (I admit to occaisionally seeing a status update from a 'friend' on Facebook and having to look at their profile to remind myself how I knew them).

The concept of 'spring cleaning' for our virtual world is becoming more popular, and apps/software programs are popping up to help you clean out unwanted clutter. After all, clicking on each friend to 'de-friend' them, or clicking on hundreds of individual twitter handles to stop following them can be time-consuming and tedious.

But what will this trend towards a clean slate mean for digital marketers? As people get more selective about who they follow, will they still be open to following companies or receiving emails from that store they bought something from 6 months ago?

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/07/gadgetlab_072512_whyunfollow/