

Do You Follow Too Many People On Twitter? Use ManageTwitter. - zemaj
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/24/manage-twitter/

======
jackowayed
I saw this a few days ago, tried it out, and found it pretty useless. (I
follow ~100 people).

Unfollowing someone because they don't follow you is stupid. In fact, many of
the most insightful tweets I see come from accounts that don't follow me,
mostly people who are to some degree high profile (@wycats (Merb/now Rails
guy), @defunkt (GitHub founder), etc.)

If someone's talkative, it's pretty obvious, and I'll either get annoyed by
their tweet volume and unfollow them after a time of dense tweets, or they're
not bothering me so it's fine.

Quiet and inactive are a horrible reasons to unfollow someone, since if
they're quiet the cost of following them is basically 0.

~~~
apike
I absolutely agree. This tool doesn't help you increase your signal to noise
ratio, which should be the real goal.

That's why I recently built this: <http://www.unladenfollow.com/> Unladen
Follow suggests people to unfollow based on how noisy they are, not whether
they follow you back. It gives you metrics about things like excessive
hashtags, links, and so on.

~~~
johns
I love this tool. A couple points of feedback. I don't mind @mentions if
they're sent to people I'm not following since I don't see them. Also, it
would be nice if you included the table headers every 50 rows because I can't
remember what each column is once they're out of view. Great tool though!

~~~
apike
Hey John, sorry I missed this comment when you first posted it. @mentions are
not counted if they are @replies for the reason you suggest. The repetition of
table headers is a good idea, though, thanks!

------
Groxx
I despise the "follow them if they're following you" mentality. It's identical
to having 10k "friends" on Facebook / MySpace. If they don't enrich your life,
are they really worth following? Is it just more noise?

It's one of the reasons I tend to like Twitter. I only get info I request,
nothing gets pushed to me that I'm not interested in (a la FB's feed). I
follow who I want because I want, and I don't want them to follow me if
they're only interested in their following count.

~~~
dasil003
Yeah it's kind of like that whole "if you're not following 1000+ people you're
not a real Twitter user" article that made the rounds a while back. Maybe if
you just want another way to kill time and procrastinate at work (as if we
don't have enough already) you should follow thousands of people on Twitter,
but if you're actually trying to get some real value out of it then it's
insane to follow that many people—unless you're a professional blogger, which
is where the self-fulfilling prophecy of Twitter hype comes from.

------
josefresco
Nice little app, I love the humorous and clever "status" updates as it
connects to your account.

Some of the metrics I'd like to see would be to highlight my best followers.
Would be nice to know who replies to me, and who retweets my stuff. Also would
be nice to change the threshold for what is considered a quiet/talkative user.

Assuming I had hundreds of people I follow, knowing the top 10/20/50 that
actually connect with me (via DM/reply/RT) would be a nice way of trimming the
'fat'.

A bot detector would be nice as well. Maybe some logic to tell if someone you
follow is using an "auto" tweet app or is tweeting the same thing over and
over.

------
zemaj
1) Spend a week building this app 2) Get an article on TechCrunch 3) Profit!
:)

Went through quite a few iterations on the design. Feedback/improvements are
certainly welcome.

~~~
jfornear
Did you make this all by yourself? I like the design. It definitely seems like
the best tool for this kind of thing.

~~~
zemaj
Yeah, I did (with the help here and there from a few people where I work).
Glad you like it. Took a stock image for the background built a simple design
and focused on making it usable. Everyone I speak to with 300+ following seems
to have an issue managing people they follow. Decided to do something about
it.

------
trevorturk
<http://friendorfollow.com/> is also pretty good for this kind of thing.

------
briansmith
> ManageTwitter requires Google Chrome Frame to run in Internet Explorer!
> Please install it from the box below.

Wow, are we really going to live through another round of "Best Viewed in
Netscape Navigator" wars?

~~~
callahad
No, because it doesn't require Chrome. It requires a modern browser. Firefox
works. Chrome and Chromium work. Safari works. Opera works. Epiphany works.
Konqueror probably works.

IE, as a platform, simply hasn't maintained parity with the state of the web.
It doesn't make sense for a small team to hobble their product or expend undue
effort for the sake of one laggard.

And hey, you don't even have to give up IE! Drop in one plugin and everything
works, transparently.

------
dchs
Great app - I think unfollowing people is the secret to improving Twitter!

