If you use Twitter to “get rich quick”, “gains thousands of new followers”, or to learn “teeth whitening secrets” you might want to stop reading.
If you’re as sick of Twitter spam as I am, you’re about to get very, very excited.
The Awesome Power of a Single Tweet
On September 11, 2009 I lamented on Twitter “Someone please invent something that auto-unfollows tweets with “make money” or “gain followers.” I’d gladly pay.”
Two days later Doug Braun from Emerge 2 Digital in Waterloo Ontario, Canada emailed to say that he’d seen my tweet, and believed his company could build it. We exchanged a couple of quick notes about potential pricing and features, and I forgot all about it.
And then…..
A week or so ago, Doug emailed to say that TwitSweeper was ready for beta. Gadzooks! How much do I love social media? Plenty, when one tweet results in a software tool that improves my life (and will improve yours).
Buh Bye Spammer
TwitSweeper is incredibly simple to use. You sign up for a plan that costs between $1.59 and $8.25/month, depending upon the number of Twitter accounts and combined followers you wish to “sweep.” (In my case, 1 account and ~ 15,000 followers, so my plan is $2.42/month (There is a 17-day free trial).
You connect your Twitter account to TwitSweeper with a couple of clicks, and the sweeping begins. The system “reads” every bio, screen name, URL, and recent tweets of every one of your followers, looking for any of more than 5000 trigger phrases that indicate spam. Subsequently after this initial scan, TwitSweeper reviews each of your new followers, and periodically rescans your entire follower group to make sure they haven’t gone astray like Todd Bridges or Danny Bonaduce.
You can also scan for custom phrases that you determine, so if you want to flag any Cowboys fans or people that didn’t like Avatar, TwitSweeper can sanitize your universe.
You Hold the Sword
It’s important to note that TwitSweeper doesn’t auto-delete any of your followers (unless you want it that way). It flags them as suspect, and then sends you an email (on an interval of your choosing). Clicking a link in that message takes you to the site, where a list of all of your possibly dicey followers is waiting. A very nice feature is the option to read why a follower was flagged, and to quickly click through to view their profile on Twitter to determine whether you indeed want to dump them overboard.
After a little manual tidying, you click a button and your Twitter account unfollows the spammers. Bang!
Is TwitSweeper Right For You?
There’s no question that Twitter spam is becoming a bigger problem, and I don’t see it become less of an issue organically. In fact, TwitSweeper has a blog all about Twitter spam called The Dustpan. If you auto follow-back people that follow you (as I do), you inevitably will follow spammers. In that case, I absolutely recommend TwitSweeper as an extraordinarily easy way to rid your account of obvious ne’er-do-wells and no-good-niks.
If you have a manageable number of Twitter followers, manually decide whom to follow, and do not auto follow-back, then TwitSweeper is most likely overkill for you at this time.
For me, $2.42/month is a low, low price to pay for the Twitter version of a do-not-call list. What do you think?
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RT @jaybaer: New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam [link to post]
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RT @jaybaer New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam | | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post]
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Pretty cool. RT @jaybaer: Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post]
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RT @DaveBenjamin: Pretty cool. RT @jaybaer: Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post]
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RT @jaybaer: Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post]
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RT @jaybaer Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] Finally! I’d pay for that…
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RT @bluefinch604: RT @jaybaer Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] Finally! I’d pay for …
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I’m not paying for what @twitter should be doing! RT @jaybaer New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam [link to post]
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(((running to it now))) RT @JonAston: Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] (RT @jaybaer)
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Would you pay to keep spammers from following you? [link to post] Personally, I like the long list of fake followers. #inflatedego
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RT @JonAston: Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] (RT @jaybaer) W00T!
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RT @JonAston: Buh Bye Twitter Spammers new service does dirty work for you. [link to post] (RT @jaybaer) W00T! (I’ve been using it. FAB!)
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Sounds promising RT @jaybaer: New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam [link to post]
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RT @jaybaer: Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] (AK: NICE!!!)
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Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] via @AskAaronLee / @jaybaer
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RT @AskAaronLee Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] via @jaybaer
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RT @AskAaronLee: Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] via @jaybaer
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COOL! RT @KimMance: Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] via @AskAaronLee / @jaybaer
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Awesome! RT @KimMance Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] via @AskAaronLee / @jaybaer
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RT @jaybaer Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] good stuff!
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RT @tweetmeme New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam… hummm, less spam on twitter sounds good to me – [link to post]
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How about paying $0 for a version with ads?
I’m half-serious there. But I wouldn’t use it. I’m satisfied blocking tweeps as is.
.-= Ari Herzog@Social Media Strategies´s last blog ..On Receiving =-.
How about paying $0 for a version with ads?
I’m half-serious there. But I wouldn’t use it. I’m satisfied blocking tweeps as is.
.-= Ari Herzog´s last blog ..On Receiving =-.
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RT @AskAaronLee Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] via @jaybaer
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What bliss!! RT @KimMance: Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] via @AskAaronLee / @jaybaer
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God bless you Jay Baer, God bless you. RT @jaybaer Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post]
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Nice! New Twitter killer bans the spam (via @jaybaer) [link to post]
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RT @KimMance: Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] via @AskAaronLee / @jaybaer
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Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you. [link to post] via @jaybaer (via @AskAaronLee)
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Say so long to Twitter spammers – new service does the dirty work for you, and its cheap. [link to post] via @jaybaer
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RT @michelfortin: New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam [link to post]
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New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam [link to post]
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[twitter] New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam | | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post]
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New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam [link to post]
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RT @clementyeung I’m getting hot just thinking abt it RT @jaybaer Buh Bye Twitter Spammers-new SVC does the dirty work4U [link to post]
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RT @clementyeung RT @jaybaer Buh Bye Twitter Spammers – new service does the dirty work for you [link to post] #twitter #twitsweeper
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I don’t see why it can’t be free. There are much better services out there that are free.
And…
If someone is spamming and I see them spam, I can unfollow, if I don’t see the spam, then hey, I don’t see the spam.
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Sorry but I think if you auto-follow then you deserve all the spammers you get! [link to post]
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RT @katiemoffat: Sorry but I think if you auto-follow then you deserve all the spammers you get! [link to post]
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RT @jaybaer thanks Jay (and Doug Braun!).. for New Twitter Killer that Bans Twitter Spam [link to post]
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Interesting…but I just manually block spammers. Not sure I’d pay to have someone do it for me. On a related note: why would you auto-follow people that follow you? Don’t you want to control who you follow?
.-= Cheryl Andonian´s last blog ..The Lawlessness Of Twitter’s Wild West =-.
I haven’t been so excited for a Twitter app…well, ever. I was getting excited just reading the post! This is a great idea. When I see someone utilizing Twitter for these “gain followers” and “make money online” schemes, ESPECIALLY when they claim to be Online Marketers and/or Social Media Experts, it makes my blood boil.
I’ll definitely be checking it out. Love the blog Jay!
It’s a cool script they built… I still have an issue with auto-follow (personally) because when you, Jason, have 14k+ that you’re following, there’s no way you can really be that involved with everybody. You may have a group or list of friends that you follow in a different column of seesmic or tweetdeck but honestly what does following that many people get you?
I had over 1400 I followed at one point and it got so convoluted I couldn’t keep up… I lost touch with a lot of what was going on with even local folks and I said F it and scaled back… was at 900 for a while and for a while now I’ve been keeping it back under 500, which is difficult but has seemed to work well thusforth. I have noticed however that my followers have seemed to cap at about 2500 and I can partially attribute that to me scaling back… and the shit that comes out of my mouth but you know lol…
I reply to all @ reply’s I get and monitor different keywords and hashtags that allow me to see those I don’t follow in certain conversations… primarily those about #phx and #wordpress / #wordcamp.
I’m hesitant to go your route and auto-follow and pay-to-prune from that. I don’t really speak or blog much like you so I don’t get that attention for that many followers but if I did I don’t think I’d have to follow all of those people back just to stay involved. I think that can better be done through commenting and proper threading and conversation per topic on blog posts and Q’s on twitter. Though people do always comment to me directly on twitter instead of leaving comments on twitpic or my blog posts, which is annoying but proves that not everybody likes using the same system as you do. And with that I retire to my work and continue kicking ass in my smaller universe on twitter
Good points, absolutely. I’ve consistently questioned and requestioned my Twitter approach, and ended up figuring that as a social media consultant, if someone wanted to follow me, the least I could do is follow them back (initially). Further, the time it took to manually check whether I wanted to follow back new followers became prohibitive, which was my initial impetus for turning on auto follow-back. I definitely don’t “know” most of my followers, and definitely don’t feel like I “need” to follow back per se, I just feel like it’s the right approach – at least for me, on Twitter. I do not have the same rules on Facebook or Linkedin, and I’m much more selective there (although thinking about a Facebook fan page to open that up a bit).
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wow RT @unmarketing RT @jaybaer New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam | | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post]
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RT @unmarketing: RT @jaybaer New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam | | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post]
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RT @jaybaer New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post]
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RT @rlseymann: RT @jaybaer New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post]
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RT New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam | | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post]
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Yes! RT @tweetmeme New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam | | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post]
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New Twitter Killer Bans the Spam – [link to post] (via @jaybaer)
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