With the dawning of a new TOS and tweaked ruleset on Twitter, it's evident that the spammer accounts have started to peev people off a little.  You've probably been shocked or amazed yourself at how many robotic followers you have.  Well, times are a-changing and we can all start to do something about that.  You can now scan for spammy looking accounts amongst your followers with a tool called Twitblock.

Wossitdothen?

What Twitblock does is scan your followers and give them a score based on how spammy they look.  I won't go into too many details here because it says all that on their site so there's no need for me to waste my time duplicating content just because you're lazy.  Simply put, if an account looks reasonably spam like, Twitblock will flag it for your attention and give you the opportunity to block, analyze or mark as "not spam" for each of the accounts shown.  Your clicks help towards the overall spammyness rankings of each user too which means that if a lot of people block an account its score will be higher and vice versa for thos you mark as "not spam".  Not only this but a lot of blocks will flag the account for the Twitter Gods to investigate too, ultimately leading to their demise.  How awesome is that?

Attached image "Twitblock01.jpg" (image 3) shows the top results from my first scan.  I actually ran the scan twice on account of my large follower base, removing the obvious spam accounts first and on the second run investigating the not so obvious ones manually.  Using the analyze tool as you go through is a bit of a pain because it opens a new page and when you go back it has to reload your previous results.  Definitely better to do this on a second pass.  That said, I actually found it easier to analyse the accounts manually by opening their profiles.  You should be able to see by looking at a user's tweets as to whether they should be followed, unfollowed or blocked.

Tip: As you're running through the list, you'll notice the same profile image may crop up more than once.  This is a pretty good sign that you should hit that "block" button.  (thanks @paulwebster for that hint)

Finksyooknowswun?

Another feature of the site is that you can analyse individual accounts for their spammyness.  Attached image "Twitblock02.jpg" (image 1) shows an analysis of my account @LStacey.  Make of it what you will...  :/

Unfortunately the Twitter Gods still think I'm a spammer...  You'll notice I still don't show up in search...  Oh well!  I digress...

Drum Roll Please

Anyways, everybodypeeps my final verdict is that it is well worth running this tool.  By doing so you are not only clearing out your own crap but having a positive effect on the global Twitter community too.  It's ALL GOOD!

     

Click here to download:

Twitblock_-_Winning_The_Battle.zip (270 KB)

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My AudioBoo

wefollow.com

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You should use twitter this way if you plan to do this...

As the title suggests, you are all probably wrong.  Twitter is far too new and not far enough into its evolutionary process for us to know how we should be using it as a business tool.  There are lots of these so called "social media consultants" in the twitterverse and blogosphere telling us how we should be using Twitter to get results and improve our brand identity...  Or Whatever...  What a pile of utter balls.

Twitter is on the verge of going mainstream.  When that happens (and it will happen really fast) the entire dynamic of the application and its global community will change.  I don't know how it will change and I don't believe you do either.  Please correct me if you have a crystal ball.

If you follow my twitter stream (thanks by the way) you will have noticed me harping on about follower counts lately and the fact that the number of followers is unimportant if they don't genuinely have an interest in what you're tweeting about.  This is all part and parcel of the same thing.  I'm seeing a lot of relatively new tweeters out there with ridiculous UFF ratios (updates to Followers to Following) indicating the use of what I call the followback method.  A method popular with spammers where you follow lots and lots of people and hope some will follow you back.  A lot of people are using auto follows so they are guaranteed easy meat.  You can rack up thousands in days using this tactic...  Not for much longer though.  I think people are getting wise to this now, probably because they are getting spammed into oblivion.  Eventually it will just be spammers following other spammers.  Well, we can hope I guess.

It wouldn't be right to leave you mulling this over without telling you how I use Twitter and what I get out of it.  I'm not suggesting that this is how you should use it.  I am not a "social media consultant" nor do I profess to be.

How do I go about getting followers?

I don't go out of my way to.  I don't employ any tactics.  My followers are mostly people that have found me through my content or conversation.  Sure, there are a few rogues in there but they don't hang around long.  I don't have a massive follower count but I know most of them are valuable because they are following me for what I consider to be the right reason.  My follower count is growing slowly, organically and with high value.  I like it that way.

Who do I follow?

I follow various types of people who use twitter in many different ways.  I generally follow people that interest me.  That's all really.  I tend not to follow anyone that doesn't engage unless their stream is really interesting.  I like conversation.  For me it is a huge part of what Twitter is.  More often than not I'll follow you if we get a good chat going too.  I like making friends!

Do I follow back those who follow me?

I quite often do actually but I always try to look at the profile of a new follower.  If they look spammy I don't follow back.  The first thing I generally look for is @ replies.  If there aren't any on their profile I don't consider them very social and generally won't bother.  I also look at the UFF ratio.  If they are using the followback technique, forget it!

What annoys me most on Twitter?

I hate automated DM's when you follow someone.  To me it just says "Thanks for joining my spam list, I can't be bothered to talk to you in person.  You're just a number to me".  If it spams me with a link it REALLY gets my back up.  Saying that, I always give a second chance and usually DM back to see if there's really a human there at all and if there is will they engage and win me back?  Sometimes they come back to me and save themselves.  Those that don't get binned.

So there you go.  That's pretty much Twitter and I in a nutshell.  I have nothing to sell so no agressive techniques here.  However, if I were selling something I have a feeling that could work for me too because I would have people following me that want to buy my stuff...  Something like that anyway...

Sorry about the composition and terrible construction of this post.  I have no concentration tonight whatsoever and as it is not a professional blog it doesn't matter that much so I won't lose any sleep over it.  If by some kind of miracle you got this far, thank you for reading it!  I hope it is in some way useful to you.

Comments as always are welcome and encouraged!

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