Several weeks ago my brother created a tool which he made available on TweetWagon.com that allowed a Twitter user to empty out their following list so they could start over. We called it the Twitter purge mass unfollow tool. You may be asking yourself what value this tool has as a service to Twitter. After all, it is like we were unraveling the Twittersphere right?
I thought long and hard about it, and in fact, even went to Chris to ask him to defend why we would be offering an extremely viral tool that is designed to get people to unfollow everyone they are following. It seemed to me that this was the opposite of the purpose of our site. Our goal is to get people to follow businesses in which they are interested.
However, Chris responded with a very good point. The Twittersphere has become very spammy. There was a lot of automatic following that took place for a while when “experts” were telling people that it is good Twitter etiquette to follow someone back if they follow you. A great many Twitter users used popular apps to set up and “manage” their account, setting their account to automatic follow (and what is just as bad…automatic message) any new followers. The effects of this are that Twitter contains many users both with artificially padded follower lists, as well as artificial following list. Thus, Twitter is rendered significantly ineffective.
The whole point of Twitter is to be enabled to have specific, real-time, intimate interactions with others specific Tweeple. This automatic business that began to take over Twitter was causing Twitter to be impersonal, and dare I say, artificial.
By offering a tool that allowed a Twitter user to mass unfollow all the people they are currently following, we believe we are assisting Twitter in getting back to a place where it is valuable again.
People ought to unfollow all the fake followings of people in whom they are truly uninterested, and only follow those who they truly care to. This will bring power, effectiveness, and value back to the Twittersphere.
And you can start by finding your favorite business on TweetWagon.com.
–Brian Carnesecchi