Follower management on Twitter

(Updated 8/23/14 11:17 PM EDT)
(Updated 7/13/14 6:15 PM EDT)

Why you need to do it.

In order to reduce spammy "following", Twitter has a rule that applies to all accounts which follow more than 2000 people:

Your "following" number must be no more than 10% higher than your "followers" number.

Example A: following 2001; followers 1700 ==> You will NOT be allowed to follow anyone new.
Example B: following 2001; followers 1897 ==> You are ok.
Example C: following 8700; followers 8000 ==> You are ok.

Tip [if you're unable to follow more people at this time]: my suggestion is to start unfollowing some of the people who aren't following you, and unfollowing the people who don't tweet any more, until your following number is no longer more than 10% higher than your followers number.

Tip [if you want to avoid this problem in the future]: make sure to maintain your "following" number at less than, or at least not much more than, your "followers" number, so you don't wind up having to spend a lot of time some day unfollowing people.

Tip: If there are unfollowers who you would like to follow anyway, such as celebrities, news organizations, etc., unfollow them and add them to a list so you can get their stuff without technically following them. That way they won't be skewing your following/followers ratio.

Follower management tool: the ideal

The ideal follower management tool would enable you to:

-quickly see at a glance all accounts which you are following but are not following you back, and any lists of yours on which they appear;
-check off which accounts should be unfollowed and/or removed from lists; and
-whitelist and hide those which you are willing to continue to follow even if they do not follow you back.

If you know of any such tool, please let me know. I haven't found it yet.

Follower management tools which do exist

The follower management tool I used to use was refollow.com, but that changed into something else.

The follower management tool I've been using for the last couple of months is unfollowers.com.

What's good about it is

-it loads quickly
-it has good, useful filters
-it gives you the ability to "whitelist" accounts you are going to follow even if they don't meet your normal criteria
-you can get a list of accounts you've muted or blocked

A word of advice: DON'T use any of unfollowers.com's automated functions; they could turn you into a spammer.


Other follower management tools I haven't checked out lately:

-the "Cleanup" Tool offered by tweetfindtools.com;
-who.unfollowed.me (h/t @klbkultur);
-friendorfollow.com;
-justunfollow.com (h/t @rM1L);
-Tweepi (h/t @Penny_Wyse);
-rssfriends.com (h/t MariKurisato);
-DoesFollow; 
-Twitcleaner;
-followerhub.com

[If you know of others which work well, or if any of my information has become outdated, or if you have any additional information on this evolving subject, please let me know in the Comments section, and I'll check it out. Thanks.]

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