Comments on: Twitter: Cleaning up Your Followers List

By: Arturs Mednis

Arturs Mednis — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:53:35 +0000

I have another problem – I blocket too many followers, and would like to unblock them. Is there any app or service, i can use for it (i need to unblock few hubdreds).

By: Tamar

Tamar — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:59:53 +0000

Thanks! Basic to the point and useful for all the new Twitter users. I find taking a few moments each day to go through all my Twitter messages works great. And I never follow everyone – just those that look interesting. Sometimes I let the odd ones follow until I get bored with them. And I think most folks out there do the same….
Thanks again ms. WritingRoads!

By: Ron

Ron — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:01:08 +0000

Hey Morris:
Actually it was me (Ron) who wrote this post and I can see his point. The Followers list is public and for someone who doesn’t know Twitter well, it’s possible it could reflect badly on him. By the way, if either of these tools requires me to enter my Twitter password, as I stated earlier I’m not using them. I won’t give out my twitter log-in information to a third-party application, period. I’ve become absolute in this regard. Twitter has to develop a way for applications to communicate with the API that doesn’t require me to enter my password.

By: Morriss Partee

Morriss Partee — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:53:14 +0000

Julie, your marketing executive is not seeing the full picture when he worries about his follower list reflecting badly on him. ANYONE who regularly uses twitter and has many followers will attract more and more of the bad/spammy/porn followers as well as good followers. So he would be no different than anyone else who uses Twitter. Why does he think he's special in this regard? While twitter tries to send an email notifying you of every new follower, email itself is a terribly spotty medium, and new followers constantly slip under the radar. At least there are tools for getting rid of bad/spammy/porn followers like Twerp Scan and LessFriends.

By: Ron

Ron — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:35:01 +0000

Just keep in mind that deleting the email doesn’t block the person. You have to click through and explicitly block them.

By: Julie

Julie — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:58:48 +0000

I love that Twitter now shows us at least a little something about our followers in the email alert that tell us they’re following us. (did you follow that?) I don’t actually have to go in and check the bikini clad girl’s twitter page, I can just delete the email and move on. Same goes for people with the Twitter handle: @makemoney or the person following 1000, with 10 followers and 2 updates.

Now if only those email alerts would show us the bios, then I’d be satisfied.

By: Ron

Ron — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:54:46 +0000

Hi Gil:
While it’s hard not to love a tool that measures the quality of followers on a douche bag index (DBI), I simply will not use a tool that requires me to enter my Twitter user name and password no matter how attractive the tool may sound.

Giving up your password to anyone (even if the site promises not to store it because “that would be dumb”) is just a bad idea in principle.

Thanks for the comment and the idea.

Ron

By: Gil Gonzalez

Gil Gonzalez — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:45:58 +0000

I have found that TweetSum is an effective tool for managing followers. I check it about once per week to see who’s following me and to determine if I want to follow them back. The informational video is cheesy/funny, but informational in terms of how to use the tool.

http://tweetsum.com/

By: Ron

Ron — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:41:02 +0000

Right. That’s a nice addition, Holly. Usually it’s pretty clear, especially with the porn. They come right out and say it or the picture is over the top porn (although usually a bit more subtle). Thanks for the comment.

By: Holly

Holly — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:22:34 +0000

How to tell a spammer:
They follow many people but have few followers.
They post few, short, vague tweets.
Their tweets are mostly links with little explanation but big claims.
“Free X Box, free computer, free WII, get thousands of followers, make thousands a year, etc.”
Their profile is vague. Their picture looks too commercial–photoshopped, too sexy.