Now that you've been on Twitter for eons (right?), there's a good chance you're following an obscenely large number of people. But can a person really follow 1000 people? How about 10,000? The answer, of course, is no. At that point, you're not actually following each and every person's tweet anymore, you're just occasionally peeking in on a real-time stream of updates.
If you're disappointed that you let your Twitter "following" (aka "friend" list) get out of hand, there's finally a solution to clean it up that's a million times faster and easier than using Twitter.com itself. It's a new web app called Nest Unclutterer and it simplifies the process of knocking out those Twitter friends who are no longer bringing you value.
]]> In the beginning, you probably added a bunch of high-profile Twitter users to your friend list, thinking, or rather hoping, that they would follow you back and you would be able to engage in deep, meaningful one-on-one conversations with your favorite micro-celebs (or, these days, your favorite real celebs). Unfortunately, the reality was that these pico-famous Twitizens pretty much ignored your every attempt at an @ reply conversation starter and now their only purpose is to jam up your stream with their one-way broadcasts.Or perhaps you starting using one of those auto-following services like SocialToo because you thought anyone who followed you was worth following back. Wrong again, but you discovered this too late as your tweet stream filled with marketers and dubious "experts" promoting themselves, their products, and their services.
If either of these situations applies to you, then you're going to swoon over Nest Unclutterer.
This new web application lets you specify people to block based on how many people their account is following. Celebs and uber-broadcasters will follow much higher numbers of folks than your everyday Twitter user, you see. Using the Unclutterer app, you can check a box and fill in whatever number you think makes someone a one-way shouter instead of engaging Twitterer. By default, it's set at 750, but you could make it 5000 or 200 or whatever else you desire. There's just one problem with this - it needs to be more than 4-digits long, please!
You can also check a box to unfollow anyone who hasn't tweeted in more than "X" number of days. This feature basically replicates the functionality of a handful of similar Twitter apps like MyCleenr, Twitoria, and UnTweeps. Why bother following people who have abandoned the service? They aren't really interfering with your Twitter stream, sure, but you won't really know your "true" following number if you never clean these folks out. That may or may not be of importance to you, though.
Finally, the app lets you "whitelist" certain Twitter accounts from getting unfollowed or blocked, no matter what criteria gets set above. That's handy if you follow a couple of bots you want to keep around or some celebs you can't help but voyeuristically stalk.
We'd also recommend that you don't go ditching your favorite bloggers, of course. Your ReadWriteWeb team includes Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis, Phil Glockner, Jolie O'Dell, and Doug Coleman.
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