We have been asked by Twitter to stop mass unfollowing. So, of course, we will.
The official cut off date is May 21st, but we will be stopping over the next couple of days (ie, well before cut off). Our intent has always been to do the right thing by Twitter & we will continue to operate within their guidelines to the extent of our ability.
We will attempt to complete all existing unfollowing obligations before that date, although those accounts wanting 50k+ unfollowed we may just have to do as many as we can. Obviously we need to stay on the right side of Twitter, or risk having our API access removed altogether.
After that, we will still offer reports, & you'll still be able to unfollow dodgy accounts - just one at a time. We've had extensive discussions with Twitter & they have told us that unfollowing one at a time is ok with them.
At this point I can't say how much of an overlap there will be between old style (mass) & new style (one at a time) reports, so we may shift into a read only period for a while (reports but no unfollowing).
The key point right now is this: If you want to get a mass clean of your account done, I suggest doing it very soon, as we will be stopping this any day now.
I certainly hope that Twitter is going after the mass-follow apps that those spammer/dodgy accounts use as hard as they're going after the apps that those of us who use Twitter depend on so have our streams stay manageable.
Well, me too, although I have no information either way on the subject.
In general the amount of spam on Twitter has dropped drastically in the last 6mo or so, so my guess would be that they're well on top of it.
oh so sad - but understandable.
well, I think their intention is probably good - at a corporate level, but the catch is that it's just a blanket edict, so at a high level it's positive, but when it comes down to actual implementation, there's no subtlety in execution, so the net effect on the ecosystem isn't as positive as their intent.
A classic example here is that the one kind of mass action that is allowed is auto-follow (automatically following those that follow you). However, this is what is screwing up people's accounts, & leading to the need for something like Twit Cleaner in the first place. So, the positive corporate intent on high leads to a more damaged environment, not less.
Is the answer to ban auto-follow? No, of course not. Any account above a certain size will start getting hundreds, if not thousands of follows a day. Having to follow back manually would just kill Twitter. People would write it off. What's needed is a finer touch in terms of what's allowed & what's not.
From their point of view though, with a free service, insane growth, sky rocketing valuations & a need to monetize, etc, this doesn't make any business sense. It helps the ecosystem, but the payback for time & effort involved on their part, they're obviously better off spending their time elsewhere (this kind of business-before-technical reasoning also contributes to why their system is regularly so unstable).
It may not be ideal from my (or their users') point of view. But that kind of idealistic thinking also doesn't lead to the kind of business success they're experiencing.
Sad but at least you can still run the service!
*nod* exactly. Just gotta keep it as useful as possible.
Also, it's a good chance to introduce some new services, so I'll just be focussing my attentions more on that, & less on the report etc.
I only found you guys a day or so ago but your report was SO useful to me, and having you deal with the 90-odd unfollows saved me lots of time and effort. Love it, so glad you can still work with Twitter.
Sad news indeed -your service has been awesome.
Thanks David.
The reports will still be available, & I'm working like crazy to get it so you can unfollow one at a time - so while LESS efficient, things will still be functional.
It's something, at least :)
Thanks Si again and for your response.
Email sent to Si earlier "Thank You Twit Cleaner you are amazing -I already knew really who some of the timewasters were. Great Technology..you have it all at Twitter."
With FriendOrFollow unfollow mass people is possible and it's nice !
Can you please explain to me HOW? I use that service regularly, & as far as I can see, it's display only.
hey twitcleaner, do you have app to block like "Get More Followers"? i really frustated to find how to stopped it :(
I'm not sure I understand your question. If you're looking to block people though, http://twitblock.org will normally take care of your bad-guy-blocking-needs.
I want this new account cleaned, can you guys help me out who is the spammers?
Click on "scan me now" on the front page & you will get sent a report that does just that.
Too bad I just discovered you.. I have finally been able to clean out my followers list that never engaged. Wow, needless to say thanks. Granted a lot of people stopped following me which is just as well at least the people that do follow me are much more engaging. I even went as far as to send a Tweet about it " Let's take a moment of silence for everyone that has stopped following me- sayonara :) cleaning time" lol
ha ha.. excellent! & yeah, it's a funny thing.. those that stop following you back? Well, you realise they were only there for the numbers - & know what? You never ever miss them.
[ -] SORRY, AUTOMATED UNFOLLOWING IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. TWITTER STOPPED US. We are working on a streamlined manual version. [ -]
Have to say that this is tragic. Twitter really need to come up with something similar themselves, as auto following, which we as a company need to do does lead to lots and lots of spammers. Your service was a God send -. Perhaps you should persuade twitter to either buy the app from you or allow you to run it on a revenue share with them.
What a shame. It just dawned on me to clean it up, ran your fabulous report but find myself with too much administration to mass unfollow this way. Thanks for such a great effort. Still loving the report
Thanks Shannon.
What I have found can make a huge difference to your stream is just to pick the worst offenders (high volume and/or spammers) & unfollow them, even manually.
So how do we get Twitter to let us have this feature back?
Oh man, I wish I could answer that. If there was a way, I would have done it by now, I can guarantee it.
Twitter has good reasons for stopping mass unfollowing (eg, to stop people churning accounts - following then unfollowing lots of people). The difficulty from their point of view is - if they make an exception (eg for us) then they open up a massive can of worms, & people will be arguing with them like crazy. Who wants that?
The bad news is, stopping the public, above board systems like us hasn't stopped people churning particularly (although it might have slowed it a bit). People still do it like crazy - in fact, you've probably seen it done on your account.
They're in a bit of a no-win situation. Even being forced to throw the baby out with the bath water hasn't stopped the particular problems that encouraged them to do it in the first place.
Is there a way to know who has unfollowed you? I may need to correct something with my Tweets -