I unfollowed @PV_at_SAP today.

Along with @outdoorrussia, @CarinaAllen and 20 others. At least, so said a tweet from @PV_at_SAP caught by my mentions column yesterday afternoon:

“@Reaburn , @outdoorrussia , @CarinaAllen and 20 others unfollowed me today ... checked by http://fllwrs.com”

An interesting way to mention someone. Of course, it was entirely possible. I do unfollow people from time to time. So I checked, and actually, I had unfollowed @PV_at_SAP the day prior, making the mention ever so slightly inaccurate.

It's not the first time I’ve unfollowed someone. But it is the first time I’ve been called out for it, and I’m not quite sure of the purpose. My guess is that “PV” wants to alert the twitterverse that someone isn’t playing by the implied reciprocity rules.

Interesting take on the purpose & use for twitter. Yes, building one's self-perceived popularity through masses of followers is one potential source of value for Twitter, though it’s not where I find value, and in all fairness, I doubt PV does either.

For me, Twitter’s value is in engaging experts, leaders & interesting people on subjects I want to learn more about, contributing to the collaborative dialogue where I can, while creating a shortcut to exceptional content for which the search cost would be too high for me to ever obtain it on my own.

Right now, I’m near the magical 2,000 twitter followers, so Twitter demands that I watch my balance of follows to followers. I’m trying to break through that mark, not because I want access to legions of potential pseudofans, but because I’m pretty certain there are more than 2,000 people out there that I’m going to find interesting, and I want to be able to find & follow them with fewer restrictions.

PV isn’t following me, and so he’s limiting my Twitter experience by hampering that objective. I also don’t find much value in his content – nothing personal, it’s just not for me.

Any customer-customer interaction can change behavior in the service environment. In this case, unfollowing PV was my way of improving my own experience, since PV wasn’t contributing to it, and actually was limiting its effectiveness.

I’m sure PV would understand. After all, his bio reads “Its all about the Customer and the Experience at SAP.” It’s a sentiment I share (it was likely a reason I chose to follow PV in the first place), and exactly what I was practicing when I unfollowed him.