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Dec 21 2009

Gathering Twitter Followers and Jettisoning Them With Powerful Tools

It's been a few months since I started editing my follower lists with a hard blade. I was just cresting over 7,000 followers when I began massive unfollows, or layoffs as I like to call them.

jmacofearth twitter statistics

I used TwitBlock first to begin weeding the people from my Friend-stream. (Folks that I was following.) And just a few days ago I used a tool, that seemed to be FREE, called TheTwitCleaner. The first run gave me a list of over 1,000 people that I should consider unfollowing. Various criteria were used to calculate the spammy tweeters, and I had to do a lot of deslecting of peeps I wanted to keep tracking. When I finally got the list down to about 520 people, I paid, gladly, five dollars to have Mr. TwitCleaner do the work for me. Turns out he accidentally unfollowed all 1,000 people, but when I contacted him, he fixed me all up again.

I haven't been back to Twitblock for a while. But while I'm at it, might as well do a quick run and purge.

Here's the typical report back from TwitBlock:

twitblock spammy tweeters

I think it's pretty easy to see that #1, #2 and #4 are spammers. I'll have to analyze ScottMarcaccio and vbiShow. But I'm pretty sure I don't follow any "show"s.

So for today I am a bit lighter in my follower count and a ton lighter in my friends.  If I could just get Tweetdeck on my Blackberry I'd be a happy tweeter.

Please, for 2010 vow to watch what you tweet and mind the spam. Together we can clean the stream and "report and block" the baddies. Let's all be better tweeters in 2010.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/twitter-2010

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Aug 24 2009

Culling the Spammers from My Twitter Followers: TwitBlock.org Rocks!

Screen shot 2009-08-24 at 3.55.45 PM

Days later the trend continues.

Screen shot 2009-08-26 at 3.04.53 PM

I think I'm beginning to like this. Deleting spammy followers hurts my following, but once you get the hang of it, it really is fun knocking off the quote-spammers, the check-me-out-online spammers, the SEO-spammers. Heck, I think my spammer count has gone UP because I keep mentioning spam, spam, spam, spam, wonderful spam, wonderful spam. My count above, Added since yesterday: -1. Average growth per day: -20. Oh my. I was so close to 7,100! And for what? I may sink forever in a torrent of spammy tweeters. Oh whoa is me and my flock.

From a high of 7,093 I have aggressively BLOCKED spammy followers using TwitBlock.org, my new favorite tool. [I'm not sure how I got spam listed by 9 twitblock users, but I have some suspicions. Oh well. If you're in the neighborhood and would like to "whitelist me" as not spam I'd appreciate it.]

Well, my aggressive unspam blocking has resulted in a drop in my follower count to 6,870. Seems like the Tweespammers are aggressive about unfollowing unfollowers. I say if you're gonna blast crap quote spam, MLM marketing messages and sexcam solicitations I think you should be blocked. Perhaps those folks can figure out who blocked them and block back?

Screen shot 2009-08-24 at 4.20.56 PM

No worries. Seems like the value of a tweet just got a little more easy to spot with Twitblocker. Two great things about this tool.

1. It shows all your spammy followers on one screen allowing your to unfollow a lot of people at once. And the spammers are easy to spot, believe me. Especially when they are all lined up together like a police lineup.

2. As the tool gets more users and more accounts are rated as spam, the ratings will get better and the tool will be better at pulling spammers out of your flow.

Here's a sample output as TwitBlock began scanning my followers:

Screen shot 2009-08-24 at 4.41.10 PM

You can see I have not blocked sxpanel, but I am about to block Schwartz632. It's easy to spot the spammers, but TwitBlock makes it really easy to find them all in one place.

What we need perhaps is a kick ass Tweeter list. I've been wanting to build a matrix of folks I follow in different fields. Like a verification or a seal of approval for some folks I think are awesome. Starting with my very few #FF #followfriday nominations and Mr. Tweet recommendations, I'm sure I could produce a shortlist of recommendations. That will be my next task.

In the mean time keep it clean and add your account to Twitblock.org and get blocking. The twittersphere will thank you and together we can reduce the noise.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/twitblock-inaction

NOTE: If you think I'm spammy please let me know. I'd be happy to understand how I can provide more value for you. My motto is WIIFY (what's in it for you). And an ON NO: In unfollowing so many peeps I just upset my follow/follower ratio and I can follow no more people. Gotta get out the wackin tool again. ARRRGGH!

See also The Twitter Way, the collected posts about Twitter and Doing Twitter Right

A funny post from Mashable on the Top 25 most spammy Twitter Avatar images.

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future posts

A Collaborative Space: WebEx, Go-To-Meeting, Skype, Basecamp (Teaming/Meeting Tools)
Twitter Problem: How do you find enough interesting people to follow? Then how do you keep up with them?
The Agile Mind: Construction, Evolution, Care, and Feeding Instructions for Mental Flexibility

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