I've always been a huge fan of Apple products. Why? Because of their simplicity.

It takes a lot of work to get something that clean yet still intuitive.

I've always believed that the reason we have computers is to make things simpler for us. We shouldn't be burning our own cycles if we can get the machine to do it for us.

Now, I'm the first to admit that The Twit Cleaner is nowhere near that level of elegance yet, but it's an iterative process, & a high goal. I'll keep pushing towards that.

In the meantime, I've simplified the pricing.

Now, things are like this: All reports are free, as always. If you follow fewer than 2000 people, we'll auto-unfollow whoever you want for free. If you follow more than 2000 people, it's five bucks.

Yep, Five US Dollars ($5) to clean your list.

It's hard to get cleaner & simpler than that.

[Edit: Ok, that pricing has been in place for a week or so, & some interesting things have happened. For example, I had two users in the space of half an hour, each with 60k+ lists. Given that creating a report for a list of that size involves downloading many gigabytes of data & 6-12 hours of processing, I started to think "Is it really worth doing all that work, for five measly bucks?" This is even more the case when not everybody that requests a report pays, of course.

Even a list that is 20,000 people basically takes ten times as long as a 2,000 list - due to getting the lists from Twitter, downloading the data, & running the analysis. There are no real economies of scale.

So, I've adjusted the pricing (again). I still like the $5 mark, & for most people, that'll still be it. For the whales though? Above 25k users is $10, & above 50k is $20. It's still not a hell of a lot, but I feel it's a better reflection of the costs & effort involved.

We'll see how long this pricing sticks for. Everything is a work in progress, & over time I'm sure things will settle down.]

Running The Twit Cleaner is great for cutting back on public timeline spam, but what about DMs?

Here are a few tricks that work well:

1. (This is the biggie) TweetLater/SocialOomph

You wouldn't think it, but the vast majority (90+%) of auto-DMs come from users of this software.

Go here, & follow the instructions. Or, if you can't be bothered following that link, do this:

1. Follow @OptMeOut
2. When @OptMeOut follows you back, it'll DM you to let you know
3. Send a DM to @OptMeOut (anything at all, eg "Hey! Stop spamming me, thanks!")
4. Unfollow @OptMeOut (totally up to you, just keeps it private)

Voila, no more auto-DMs from Social Oomph.

2. Unfollowers.Me

Go here. Click the big blue "Add me to DND List" (DND = Do Not DM). Authenticate through Twitter. Finally, go to your Twitter connection settings & revoke access.

3. PollPidgeon.com

Go here. Click the big button "Don't send me any direct messages", allow access when Twitter asks, then go to your Twitter connection settings & revoke access.

4. blip.fm

For some reason blip hasn't set up any automated process to do this (can't think why not). However, they promise that if you email support@blip.fm with the usernames you want removed, they'll do it. If that doesn't work, just hassle @blipfm on Twitter.

5. Mafiawars

Similar to blip.fm, you'll need to send an email to tweetygame@gmail.com with your Twitter usernames.

6. Fauxlowers.com

Go here. It'll take you straight to Twitter to verify your identity, then back to their site to finish the process. Go back to your Twitter connection settings & revoke access.

This site has been pretty broken recently - the above page errored, & now when you go there, it errors again when saving your request. The good news is, if it's broken like that, it's very likely not sending out spam auto DMs. If/when they do get it sorted, the above process will work.

Just follow these instructions for any you DMs you get - or all of them in advance if you want to be proactive. I'll add to this list as I find more ways to cut back on some of the crap on Twitter.

Anything to help Twitter be more awesome.