Tools for Following, Unfollowing and Managing Lists on Twitter

It’s been a while since SocialTimes did a round-up of the various tools that helped users manage their Twitter accounts by finding who to follow, following new people, unfollowing many people at once and organizing groups of users they follow into lists. Since our last round-up, Twitter has restricted use of its API significantly, causing several tools to shut down. No longer functional are Untweeps, Just Unfollow, Twit Cleaner, Who Follows Whom and Tweet Effect. Tweeter Karma is still functional but has had to remove its bulk unfollow tools. Twitter has earned itself a reputation for copying or buying most of the best tools that improved its service, which, early on was little more than a crude functionality to publish short blog posts publicly to the Web. But for all its professionalization, Twitter still doesn’t have a very handy way for users to find one another, keep track of who follows whom, and organize their lists. We went searching for third-party tools that make these tasks easier. Here’s what we found. Free Tools Manage Flitter allows you bulk unfollow. It displays a list of users. You check those you no longer want to follow and hit “unfollow” once. The tool also allows you to search among your followers for fake users, users who never tweet or users who tweet so much they may be hiding other content. Iunfollow.com displays lists of user names sorted by reciprocal and unreciprocal follows and allows you to click a button by each name to unfollow that user. Unfortunately, the tool doesn't import the user bios; just a link to their profile on Twitter, so you end up having to click around a fair amount. Commun.IT offers a lot of features for a free tool: It will help you find people you may want to follow based on up to three keywords. It also suggests those you may want to unfollow, based on low influencer scores and low engagement with your content. It also surfaces tweets that may deserve a reply. All of these actions can be done within Commun.IT. One downside: The algorithms were not especially sharp in our test run. Twitilist provides a graphical bulk list editor interface. You can drag and drop users you follow into the various lists you've created. Paid Tools If money's no object, there's no shortage of third-party tools to help you manage your Twitter content and connections. We hear good things about Tweet Adder, which works to schedule tweets, beef up search results and display who follows other users in addition to supporting bulk following and unfollowing. Cost: a one-time fee of $55 for a single Twitter account. SocialBro (now Audiense) also comes highly recommended, despite its cheesy name. It offers detailed analytics about your Twitter accounts in addition to list and follower management. Plans run between $6.95 and $149 a month. BrandChirp which includes monitoring tools as well as some powerful bulk follow and unfollow tools. For instance, the user can type a user ID and then follow all of the accounts that user follows by group selecting them. It costs $12 per month. SocialOomph allows you to automatically direct message and/or follow every user who opts to follow your account. It also allows you to "hide" certain tweeters without unfollowing them and some other tricky follower management techniques. It costs $36 a month. Tweepi allows you to discover and follow new users, unfollow users, find and unfollow inactive users and block followers who send spam. A premium subscription allows you to sort by Klout score, too. The service costs $7.95 to $14.95. Friend or Follow is a multi-platform dashboard that includes Twitter list management tools similar to Tweepi's. It costs between $10 and $100 a month, depending on the plan. If we've missed something, tell us in the comments and we'll add it!

Social Pro Daily

Tools for Following, Unfollowing and Managing Lists on Twitter

Twitter still doesn’t have a very handy way for users to find one another, keep track of who follows whom, and organize their lists. We went searching for third-party tools that make these tasks easier. Here’s what we found.

Cameron Scott

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Cameron Scott