I just unfollowed 10,000 people on Twitter and boy are my arms tired. WAKKA WAKKA.
Actually thanks to SocialToo the process was fairly painless. For $25 they’ll run a script to remove all your followers and give you a fresh start. Since I was auto-following everyone back my list had basically become useless.
Thanks to massive Twitter spam and other crap, it had become an experience much like the pop-up wars of Internets past. An endless stream of bots, questionable marketing and get rich quick scams.
I actually opened a second “secret” Twitter account so I could follow a small group of folks I really wanted to listen to. Until now that account was the primary method I used to view the site. Sneaky I know.
But now my main @percival account is once again enjoyable to use. I’ve run a few additional scripts to locate people I want to listen to, but if I missed you please let me know with an @reply msg. As long as you’re real and have something interesting to say, I’d be happy to listen.
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September 4th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Check out refollow.com btw…seriously awesome tool to manage followers. Haven’t quite come across anything as powerful yet.
September 4th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
I cut my list nearly in half earlier this week (from ~1100 to 591). I have to agree, Twitter is much more enjoyable without all the noise and political nonsense in my stream. Am I the only one who can’t stand people talking about politics non-stop? And I don’t care which side you’re on – if all you Tweet about is your uber radical political beliefs then you’re getting unfollowed from now on.
Thanks again for leaving me on your list Sean. I feel honored :)
September 4th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
@zee thanks dude
@todd ya i don’t follow any political twitters, talk about keyboard diarrhea.
September 4th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
I had no idea about SocialToo and Zee’s suggestion of refollow! I did go through the same exercise manually some time ago and got a LOT of spammers off my list. But then again, I only have hundred-some followers :)
And yes, I do have a “secret” account, I use it as more of a test bed. I’m glad to have found some cool peeps that way!
September 4th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Also check out http://tweetblocker.com/ which helps filter out some of the junk accounts that follow you.
September 4th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Thank god someone else agrees!!! I have slowly unfollowing even people I intentionally followed because they constantly spout worthlessness, all while trying to “help” me. The worst are the countless list claiming to be the top, or something I can’t miss.
Ahhhh
September 8th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Looks like your follower count took a hit too.
http://twittercounter.com/compare/seanpercival/
I noticed you tried using a secret account to manage spam. I guess that didn’t work? I was thinking of doing that.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
@andrew
Yes I took a big hit, which shows about 20% of those followers were bots, or just folks who auto unfollow anyone who unfollows them. Fine by me, rather have less followers who are actually listening.
I have the secret account to follow a small group of people, mostly folks I’ve met in real life. I also use that to announce or rant about things I don’t want to share with 10,000 (now 8,000) people.
September 10th, 2009 at 11:23 am
There is one lingering aftereffect of mass-unfollowing everyone: Twitter keeps some state around that you once followed that person. If you follow them again, you appear down in the middle of their followers list instead of at the top where a new follower would normally appear. This can cause some consternation, as it kindof looks like you unfollowed _again_.
More details here: http://jetsam.geekhold.com/inconsistent-twitter-follower-sort-ordering-n
I suspect Twitter does this deliberately. If unfollow+follow moved you to the top of the followers list, the bots would all do it to try to get more people to follow back. Bots are enough of a problem already, without letting them completely take over the service.
September 18th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
[...] Sean Percival – SocialToo will help you unsubscribe from all your twitter friends and start over for a fee [...]
October 20th, 2009 at 9:26 am
That’s the way forward, just have a private account. Even following 200 people becomes too much. You end up missing the quality tweets from the people who matter. I think it will not be long until Twitter stops multiple accounts though.
October 20th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Any day now the lists feature should roll out more widely, currently only a small number of people have it enabled in their account. Once available, people could be grouped into small lists you want to follow closely, and larger lists you just want to skim.
November 7th, 2009 at 5:21 am
I totally agree with your reason for un-following. My list actually got up to 11,000 Following and my feed was pretty much impossible to read. I’ve been cutting down the list every day by un-following certain keywords (ie. affiliate, $, etc) hoping to get it down to a reasonable number (now at 5K).
Hope you have fun enjoying Twitter again! :)
April 20th, 2010 at 1:19 am
awesome info, thxz
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thumbs ups =D