The 5 best Twitter unfollow apps and why you need to use them
This is a post by Novel Publicity President, Emlyn Chand/ On Quick Tips Fridays, you’ll find short and sweet articles with advice about social media, blogging, and sometimes even writing. My intent is to draw focus to special tricks of which you may not have been previously aware. Every Friday, I’ll give you something new to think about, something quick and easy. I’ll tell you why you should consider doing it and how. That’s it. Quick tips on Friday: Quick Tip Fridays.
This week’s tip is…
Why you sometimes need to unfollow tweeps and the 5 best apps to help you do it
Why you want to do this…
At first glance, unfollowing may seem to be a slap in the face of the free-spirited, open-communication platform that is our beloved Twitter. I assure you there are instances when unfollowing tweeps becomes necessary for enhancing your Twitter experience.
While it is absolutely not okay to follow people in order to get them to follow you back and then unfollow them so that you can sneakily increase your follower-following ratio, it is okay to unfollow for other reasons.
You may choose to unfollow someone because:
- they never tweet, ever
- they tweet content that is offensive or irritating
- they only tweet an RSS feed or sale pitches and never interact with anyone
- they tweet in a language you don’t speak
- they tweet so much that your entire stream is filled with their guppies
Also as you amass more and more followers, you’ll soon realize that Twitter has a follow-wall, which means you can’t follow more than 2,000 users until you have at least 1,820 followers. This is a bit complicated, but basically, this is the deal: t o prevent spamming, Twitter has set a wall at 2,000. Once you near it, you will only be able to follow the number of people who follow you plus 10%. If you continue to follow people who fit the above categories or who don’t follow you back (and aren’t interesting enough to warrant your continued following), you won’t be able to follow any new tweeps—this can be incredibly limiting!
How to do it…
In no particular order, here are my 5 favorite Twitter unfollow apps (please note that each header is also a link to the unfollow app's site):
TweetAdder
UPDATE! I know I said I wouldn't choose favorites, but two things changed my mind. In the 3 1/2 years since I first wrote this article, it's received over 65,000 hits and continues to generate quite a bit of traffic each and every day, which means people clearly need help culling their Twitter following. Also, I've been using the same app for the past three years quite happily, and since discovering it, I haven't had to rely on any others, nor do I have to devote very much time to keeping my tweet stream clean and pretty. If a paid app is an option for you, you should seriously check out TweetAdder. Yes, this is an affiliate link, but I can also promise that you will love this software. If you'd prefer not to go the paid route, then check out the other great options below.
ManageFlitter
The site is a bit busy, but its functionality is superb. It sorts your followers into those who don't follow back, those who tweet more than 5 times per day or less than once per day, those who have never tweeted, and those who don't have a customized profile image. All very handy!
Untweeps
Another good way to sort through those you follow. This app will find users who have been inactive for a specified time period (at least 15 days). You can unfollow with an easy click, straight on the app–no need to open a separate window and go to the Twitter main site.
TwitCleaner
*The developer got frustrated with Twitter and its API and closed his app. Check out his blog though–it's great!
Fabulous! Absolutely best way to sort through the users you follow. It runs a quick and easy report and then lets you know which users: put too many @'s in one tweet too often, post nothing but links, post the same tweet too many times, have been inactive for over a month, are “snobs” that hardly follow anyone back, have little original content and most retweets, and those that average more than 50 tweets per day. You can also see how your account appears to others–an incredibly useful tool!
JustUnfollow
Simply the quickest and easiest way to unfollow people. You can unfollow 50 users per day with a simple series of clicks; you can also whitelist users that you do not wish to unfollow. The advanced user account has unlimited unfollows, priority unfollow (which means that the system hides the tweeps with the highest likelihood of following you back).
Emlyn Chand was born with a fountain pen grasped firmly in her left hand (true story). Novel Publicity's mascot is a Sun Conure, thanks to her obsession with birds–and she gets to decide anyway since she is the company's founder and president. Although her first novel Farsighted won the prestigious Writer's Digest Self-Published Novel of the Year award in 2012 for the YA category, she now writes most of her fiction under her “real” name, Melissa Storm. Learn more or connect with her (or her Sun Conure, Ducky!) on either of her author websites: www.emlynchand.com or www.melstorm.com. You can also friend her on Facebook, tweet with her @novelpublicity, or send her an email via [email protected].
