I just got another of those dreaded automated direct messages thanking me for following them on twitter. I didn’t recall adding this person. In fact, I hadn’t added anyone in over 3 months unless I personally knew them. Could someone have found a way to force me to follow them though some back door? Not likely. Someone thinking “better late than never to thank me?” Lame, but likely. Thanks for lighting the fire under my rump to remove you and 800 more twitter jerks.
Going through my 1200+ follower list one by one, I removed anyone who mostly had:
- Marketing tweets.
- Retweeted crappy URL’s
- Tweeted some scam or ebook
- Didn’t normally tweet in English
That was good for removing about 300 of the worst offenders. Next up I went to Friend or Follow, a website that shows who is not following you back. Unlike most twitter app sites, you do not have to enter your twitter password. (never do that, please) Removing 300 of these jerks who had once followed me was very enlightening. Some I considered contacts had stopped following me. So sad! I’d like to think they stopped following me because they too cleaned up their list of followers. Right? Down to following only 650 .
I reopened tweetdeck and something very interesting was taking place. I actually recognized the people tweeting in my “All Friends” column. In the past I had hid this crap to focus on keywords or groups. No longer! But I wasn’t finished yet.
Who are these twitter whores? It was then I noticed some people did nothing but tweet all day. 95% of the noise on twitter was being made by 5% of the users. You know the type, following/followers 80k+ people. Since I don’t give a damn about famous people, chances were pretty slim one of these “twitter whores” was ever going to converse in an intelligent manner with me. So if you had 30K+ followers, and I didn’t have a very good reason for following you (like knowing who the hell you are. ie. Barack Obama) then you were removed. Knowing most of these people got their 80,000 followers by paying some service makes removing them satisfying. Think about how much time it takes to read, how many emails would fill up your inbox, or actually communicating with 1% of your followers would take if you had that many followers. Yuck. Thank you again “Friend or Follow” for making this so easy through your sorting options!
Even small time twitter pro’s suck. If every post you make has to have hashtags, then you can screw off. #spammer, #twitter_jackass, #index_me_I’m_a_douche
Unfollowing is fun! As the list got smaller, I started to read the recent tweets and profiles of those I followed. Many had their own social networking site or web design business. Other’s actually had a sense of humor in 140 characters or less. How come I never saw them on twitter then? Because all the spammers drowned them out, but no longer. I’m down to following 340 people. If only I could shed pounds as fast as I lose this twitter dead weight
No one really cares how many followers you(or I) do have or how many you (or I) do follow.
I suppose making (private) list is another way to get around noise.
I find one of my list:
http://twitter.com/nabinkm/edu
to be rich of content (for myself: thus public).
Ever cared building such list of favorite blogs?
Oh, I forgot, you hold such a high standard for quality blogging.
I have a list of quality blogs; I call them “bookmarks”. My standards of what’s quality is very high. I wish people would shoot high instead of low. Make your blog interesting, and the rest should follow.
I did the same thing recently and then finally deleted my Twitter account. Also went through Facebook and now my friends are people I actually know.
Great post.
Turnip thank-you so much for the friends or follow link. I found I had 92 non-followers and while some of them are ones I will follow anyway because of their content, the rest are now history. What the heck, they follow wait for you to follow then unfollow and that’s not cool. I really like this link so will use it a lot. I really want to follow those who are interested in what I have to say. Call me selfish that way but heck if you listen to me I’ll listen to you which is what Twitter is all about. Thanks again!
“Friend or Follow” is great for what it does. Many of these twitter services ask for your password. Never do that or you’ll find your account hacked and spam going out to your followers. Besides showing who doesn’t follow back, Friend or Follow can rank contacts by number of followers. This way you see if they are following you to stroke their ego, or actually hear what you are saying.
I went through my list of followers the other day. Just never too the time to do it for ages and then thought I should. I found a few friends I had actually been looking for. So that was nice. There were others who were interesting enough to follow back, have the same interests I do, etc. A lot were still marketing types, porn ads, and other assorted debris. It took me hours to get through back to the start of November. Mostly because my computer got really, really slow as I went to look at sites from the people I thought might be human. Anyway, it was not something I plan to do again very soon. But, it was nice finding a few friends and a few sincerely interesting people who (hopefully) thought the same about me when they added me to their own list.
I told you about Friend or Follow. You’re welcome.
Stan Hayes, Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s give him a round of applause.
Friend or Follow, Twitter Karma ( http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/ ) or Buzzom.com every unfollow/follow – tool has its own advantages and disadvantages.
At the moment i found @unfollowr and @listwatcher in Twitter. They sent you a Direct message as soon as you’ll get unfollowed or you got listed/delisted or their listname changes. At the moment my preferred way to look if i should unfollow these persons, too.
Lists are really the way to go, the amount of follower is just there to get your word out to them. I use five of my lists frequently to see what’s going on in the community and sent lots of Retweets which gains me daily 20 – 50 new followers (if they have something important to write, they get listed other ways they are buried in the other thousand followers until they retweet and get on my retweet-list
)
I am new to twitter, just joined yesterday, at the persuasion of one of my readers. Frankly, not sure what the big deal is, yet. I am still learning my way around. I have 4 followers and am following 11. And yes, I know all of them.
I went through and did the same thing. I had a Dallas Cowboys player following, and I have no idea why. I try to follow people I can keep up, otherwise there’s really no point.
Thanks for pointing out the Friend or Follow website. I’ve just trimmed 80 people from my twitter because I haven’t got a clue who they are!
I started twitter a few months ago, since then I’ve begun to love it. What started out as a hatred for Twitter it’s allowed me to network with people in my industry alot easier. News and updates happen in right away which makes for a great only app.
Hey Turnip,
really liked the tip – “Make your blog interesting, and the rest should follow.”
by d way, there is a service called gotwitr.com, where u can follow or unfollow 30 people in one go. in friendorfollow it takes a hell lot of time. i guess this service can help u save time