Quantcast


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.

Latest Twitter Posts

My favorite twittertools:

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Feb 09 2009

Love Twitter, Hate Twitter, Poke Fun Where It Belongs @Twitter

Category: social mediajmacofearth @ 2:03 pm

Forgive me for my self indulgence here… but when you crack yourself up, sometimes you have to go with it. So yesterday on my way home from Houston [doesn't driving always conjure up the coolest ideas] I had this funny thought about all the Twitter-ific and Tweet-oriented sites popping up and this came to my mind.

twitterexpress.com started a cascade of silly twitter app jokes

And that started my mind running amok. [Not such an unusual occurence for me.]

By the end of an hour, I had registered about 10 twitter joke domains, including the hub:

twitterjoker.com - the core of twitter humor

What possessed me? What giggle bone in my brain got triggered and cost me $100+ and an hour or so of my time? Well, I was tickled.

And the final kicker was the twitter account itself. Did you know you cannot register a twitter user name with the word "twitter" in it? I did not. So I settled on @hottwiitertips [less than 24 hours to shut my tweet account down. Hmmm. I guess they are paying attention to jokers.] to bridge the concept of humor, porn, spam and smacktalk on twitter. If the page is gone, then they have thought my jokes were not funny. But I think it's too small a world for the Twitter 5 to worry about me. They've got lots bigger things to worry about. And since according to WOMMA they've got Google running scared [WTF] I am certain the joke is on me somehow.

So that's it. A fun post. No content just filler.

It's just where I am on De-Dell week #2! Happy and free as a bird on twitter.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/twitterjoker

WOMMA Article Excerpt: Does Twitter Threaten Google?

Google's ubiquitous presence in popular culture is undeniable; it's even an accepted dictionary verb now. More to the point, Google's search share is now approaching 85 percent, an unbelievably high percentage of internet search traffic.

So what might cause Google's fall from grace? Lew Moorman thinks Twitter is a legitimate threat. His reason:
Twitter has value as a niche search engine today. Who cares? No one really. But, there is more. Twitter is building a human powered search indexing engine. It is an engine that will build better results than any rules based index and has gotten millions of people super motivated to contribute for free every day (even though they don't know it).

Link to full post: http://bit.ly/twitter-vs-google

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,




social media innovation group

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

Add to Technorati Favorites

Blogged Blog Directory

Austin Interactive Marketing Association

jmacofearth's socialmedia dashboard via AllTop

99, near perfect hubspot ranking