7/18/2011
Use Twit Cleaner to Take Out Your Twitter Trash
Twit Cleaner: Fast, easy to use, perfect targeting.
Twit Cleaner is the best tool I’ve found to get rid of your spam Twitter followers – and I’ve tried them all.
Here’s what’s fantastic about Twit Cleaner.
#1. It categorizes potentially spammy followers in just the right way.
Here’s a shot of how Twit Cleaner evaluated my Twitter followers:
Too Much Trash
As you can see, Twit Cleaner breaks it down into:
- Potentially Dodgy Behavior – Nothing but links, repeating the same URLs, etc.
- Other Dodgy Behavior, Now Absent
- No Activity In Over A Month
- Not Much Interaction – Several subcategories
- All Talk, All The Time
- Little Original Content
- Not So Interesting
Notice that a whopping 31% of my followers are “potential garbage.” And this, mind you, is after I’ve done several Twit Cleaner cleanups. (Twit Cleaner, per Twitter rules, is limited to about 500 unfollows per day.)
#2. Twit Cleaner works fast, yet allows careful review.
As you can see from the screen grab at the top of this post, Twit Cleaner gives you a visual of your followers, broken down by category. All you have to do is click on an icon and Twit Cleaner unfollows. You can go bang, bang and delete hundreds in a matter of minutes, or take a more careful look. Hover over any icon, and you’ll see a pop-up that details the stats that landed it in that particular category. You can also click on the Twitter user name that appears below the icon and see the person’s Twitter profile.
Valuable Twitter Insights Learned via Twit Cleaner
- When you quantify your Twitter trash, it’s even worse than you thought. I think if I stripped down who I follow to people who truly interact, or post truly relevant information, I’d be following 300-400 people. Before Twit Cleaner I was following nearly 10,000. Those are New York garbage strike numbers.
- You’ve got to keep your Twitter account clean. I blew off seriously cleaning out my followers far too long. I figured, what harm does it do to have followers? Plus, the available cleanup tools were slow and kludgy. However – now that I’m able to view a more relevant Home stream (on HootSuite), I’m finding many more people who really interest me.
- Watch what you’re doing on Twitter. Twit Cleaner also tells you how your Twitter profile looks versus their potential-spam categories. It could be that you are showing up on somebody else’s Twit Cleaner report.
What really sold me on Twit Cleaner is when I looked at how it evaluated my profile. Although it rated me near perfect, it politely suggested I might be tending too much toward link tweets and not doing enough conversational tweeting. Twit Cleaner nailed me. I had been getting lazy about having real conversations – and it was a good wakeup call.
Give Twit Cleaner a try. Please. I think you’ll enjoy Twitter more when your community is closer to a real community. And we’ll all enjoy Twitter more if the volume of spam diminishes.
Click on this image to give Twit Cleaner a try
Note – This is an unsolicited and uncompensated blog post.
13 Responses to Use Twit Cleaner to Take Out Your Twitter Trash
Oh, so true, about less is more… But, I found the old twitter easier to evaluate whether to follow or not than the new… Off to try this out..
Hi Brad,
Thanks for sharing a great post with a great tool!
I did try it out and was amazed at the garbage I had- have just been cleaning it up all this time!
Oh awesome, Harleena.
So glad you found it helpful.
Regards
Si Dawson
[creator of Twit Cleaner]
Barabara, Harleena – curious to know how it works out for you. I was also amazed at how many out-and-out spammers had infested my Twitter account. Pretty scary.
BRILLIANT Review Brad.
I’ve never seen the details of Twit Cleaner laid out so clearly. Very nicely done.
One small note – the 500/day unfollow limit isn’t strictly Twitter policy. Their official policy is no more than 1000 follows per day, but as far as I’m aware, there’s no strict limit on unfollows.
That said, if you unfollow too much, they will look at, and possibly suspend your account. So, to keep people safe, I’ve set a limit of 500 (well below the point where they’re likely to get grumpy about it).
500/day is also a level I’ve set for the free version of Twit Cleaner.
I’m planning on offering a paid option, which will allow people to select as many as they like (so they could select 10k people off their report, if they wanted to – all in one go, rather than having to come back every day), and we’ll then safely drip-feed unfollow them over the next few weeks, at whatever rate they want (up to a max of 1000 unfollows per day – again, to keep the account safe).
Kind Regards
Si Dawson
[Twit Cleaner creator]
Si, Thanks for clarifying the 500 minimum issue. A paid version without the 500 cap could be a good thing.Ideally you’d only have to take advantage of that feature once, and use your product on a regular basis thereafter to avoid a big buildup of trash. Thanks also for commenting here, and nice work on creating such an awesome tool. I’ve been talking up Twit Cleaner on Google+ today, and a few people tried it. All have liked it so far.
Oh nice one. That’s awesome! Thank you Brad
Si
Hi Brad! Nice review! Usually I use tweepi for twitter managing but it seems that Twit Cleaner more functional. I’m going to check out. Thanks!
Hi Guys,
Great post. I have just completed a major clean up of who I follow and it has blown me away really! I followed so much junk – Especially when I first joined Twitter! The amount of spam and bot accounts is unnerving; they look like real people a lot of the time when you scan the content a bit…
I hope all’s well!
best wishes from rainy, but fun, Ireland!
Lorna
How safe is this tool if you keep to the 500 daily limit? I am concerned churning your twitter account can get you banned?
I’ve been using it for a couple months and no issues.
Hi Jim
Just to chime in on what Brad has said:
Twitter defines churning as following lots of people, waiting a few days, then unfollowing those that don’t follow back, then repeating the whole process. This is done specifically to build up a huge follower list (a largely pointless exercise, but anyway).
In my experience, 500 is a ridiculously low number, by Twitter’s standards. I would say if you were unfollowing a couple of thousand people on a regular daily basis, then Twitter might raise an eyebrow. Unfollowing everyone that is following you will generally get you noticed.
There are very distinct growth patterns observable in accounts that churn. Using Twit Cleaner can in no way create these patterns, if nothing else because only those we identify as potentially problematic will appear on your reports. In other words, it’s impossible to churn using our system (this is an intentional design decision).
In general, the key is to be sensible, minimal and calm about unfollowing. Twitter are (unlike many large companies) generally eminently reasonable.
Si Dawson
[Twit Cleaner Creator]
I use tweepi in flushing/unfollowing those twitterers who dont follow me back. I also use it to check who are those following me whom I haven’t followed back.