From a high of 7,093 I have agressively BLOCKED spammy followers using TwitBlock.org, my new favorite tool. [I'm not sure how I got spam listed by 9 twitblock users, but I have some suspicions. Oh well. If you're in the neighborhood and would like to "whitelist me" as not spam I'd appreciate it.]
Well, my aggressive unspam blocking has resulted in a drop in my follower count to 6,870. Seems like the Tweespammers are agressive about unfollowing unfollowers. I say if you're gonna blast crap quote spam, MLM marketing messages and sexcam soliciations I think you should be blocked. Perhaps those folks can figure out who blocked them and block back?
No worries. Seems like the value of a tweet just got a little more easy to spot with Twitblocker.
Two great things about this tool.
1. It shows all your spammy followers on one screen allowing your to unfollow a lot of people at once. And the spammers are easy to spot, believe me. Especially when they are all lined up together like a police lineup.
2. As the tool gets more users and more accounts are rated as spam, the ratings will get better and the tool will be better at pulling spammers out of your flow.
Here's a sample output as TwitBlock began scanning my followers:
You can see I have not blocked sxpanel, but I am about to block Schwartz632. It's easy to spot the spammers, but TwitBlock makes it really easy to find them all in one place.
What we need perhaps is a kick ass Tweeter list. I've been wanting to build a matrix of folks I follow in different fields. Like a verification or a seal of approval for some folks I think are awesome. Starting with my very few #FF #followfriday nominations and Mr. Tweet recomendations, I'm sure I could produce a shortlist of recommendations. That will be my next task.
In the mean time keep it clean and add your account to Twitblock.org and get blocking. The twittersphere will thank you and together we can reduce the noise.
@jmacofearth
permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/twitblock-inaction
NOTE: If you think I'm spammy please let me know. I'd be happy to understand how I can provide more value for you. My motto is WIIFY (what's in it for you).
And an ON NO: In unfollowing so many peeps I just upset my follow/follower ratio and I can follow no more people. Gotta get out the wackin tool again. ARRRGGH!
See also The Twitter Way, the collected posts about Twitter and Doing Twitter Right A funny post from Mashable on the Top 25 most spammy Twitter Avatar images.
Latest Twitter Posts
- Why Everyone Wants to be Your Social Media Strategist
- Bored Tweetless: When Twitter Is Not About Conversations
- Dear Twitter Sniper: Shooting Sparks, Blanks, Hollow Points, Warm Fuzzies, Nerf Darts
- Guy Kawasaki Phone Home Your Integrity Is Calling < Ghost Tweeting Anyone?
My favorite twittertools:
Notice the last tweet was 2 days ago! For a tweeting tips service, you'd think they'd update at least hourly if not daily. Maybe they just don't have many good ideas yet. Notice the tweet is also nothing but a quote. 
Let's see two biggies: 1. no avatar; 2. random letters for name. Only tweet starts with "Make Money..." If someone would build an app that immediately unfollows and reports all tweets that begin with "Make Money..." 
Bad Twitter ID. Contains "f" and "_" to snag a real sounding name. But there's that first tweet again, with these magic words "internet marketers." And she's got "make money" in there too. Poor woman in the picture is probably a real estate agent and has nothing to do with this account. And lastly the last tweet was 21 hours ago. [Hey Twitter, could you give us a way to filter followers by "last tweeted?"] 
And the "making money" with "sexy torso" approach. This one adds "get paid" as a nice come on. So let's see, we've got SEX, HEALTH and MAKE MONEY. It's the San Diego address that really sets off the alarm bells though... (just kidding on that one) So there are two reasons these type of scammers join Twitter and follow everyone. 1. Just like spam, they believe that they can drive traffic to that "make money" or "teeth whitening" or "get out of debt now" link if you just click on it. 2. And they follow you in hopes that you will follow them back. [There's a funny consequence of Mr. 50k and his auto-follow auto-bot tool. He follows all the pornsters too. And he's SOOOO busy he doesn't even have time to look over his follower list.] And even if you don't follow them back, and I would suggest you don't unless you want a lot of their friends dropping by, they are hoping that visitors looking over your "followers" list and see their ID. You can report these abusive accounts by forwarding the tweet onto the @spam account. Apparently someone at Twitter takes that responsibility seriously. But please do BLOCK the scammers and save others from accidentally following them when they look over your stream of "followers." It may take you a bit longer to get to 100 or 1,000 followers if you are editing and blocking the scammers, but it goes with the territory. And until Twitter adds a BLOCK and REPORT AS SPAM function we'll just have to do it the old fashioned way. One follower at a time. UPDATE 8-15-09: I think my very mention of MLM in my post about TweeSpammers got me a lot of MLM related crappo followers. I woke up this morning with this smiling face along with about 15 new scammers trailing my tweets. 
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