This article titled “Qwitter: was it something I tweeted?” was written by Rob Fitzpatrick, for The Guardian on Wednesday 7th July 2010 19.30 UTC

If you are interested in testing your resistance to psychic pain, may I recommend Qwitter? This is a service that emails you daily to impart who has “unfollowed” you on Twitter in the last 24 hours – who, among all the new friends you have acquired online, has decided they no longer want to read your hilarious 140-character posts. If Twitter is the bright, open heartland of limitless conversation, then Qwitter is the abandoned wheelie-bin behind the boarded-up kebab shop of failure, a place where the limitless conversation ends.

The email arrives heralded by the strapline “Your latest Twitter Qwitters!” – has there ever been a more unwelcome exclamation mark? – and your eye is immediately drawn to that day’s number. Today it was small: just one, a T-shirt company. Why was a T-shirt company following me? More to the point, what did I do to make a T-shirt company unfollow me? Losing something a step up from a spambot (an automated identity that posts malicious links) is nothing; much worse is when the rejections come in groups. Last week I lost six in a day. Six entirely (as far as I can see) unconnected people decided they could live without my sun-bleached pictures of Dulwich park and excitable Spotify recommendations. To be Qwit is to be reminded that someone has stopped listening, stopped caring. It’s as if they have, very quietly, put the phone down on you while you are still talking.

In the past I have unfollowed many people, recently jettisoning a number of blowhard wafflers, a young rapper constantly plugging his CD, and a maddeningly ponderous website editor. I’ve dropped people I have interviewed, worked with and even like, in an attempt to keep the online noise down a little. And not one of those decisions was personal – apart from maybe the website editor. I just wanted something else from my Twitter feed. So I know how ridiculous it is to feel bad about being digitally dumped. Yet this distancing still stings. What did I say? What did I do? Don’t go, you feel like shouting, tomorrow I might tweet a blurry picture of my lunch or even say something mildly amusing about a Coronation Street character.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Qwitter: was it something I tweeted? is a post from: worldwormweb

I had a short conversation with someone from the @Twitterrific twitter account, here it is.

Luckily @Twitterrific made this a new download so I can still use the old one, but that doesn’t solve my problem with custom URL shortening. I liked this app as it allowed me to see that i wasn’t missing any tweets throughout the day if @twitter goes off, like yesterday when the Federal leadership #spill was happening here in Australia. Whilst they say improvement is coming, they have stripped it right back to not much more than m.twitter.com can provide. At the end they appear to be going with Twitters new in-house URL shortening, totally leaving out those of us with custom URL’s, is this a good thing? I don’t think so.

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