As announced recently, TwitCleaner has now closed down. I’ve been a big fan of this site and blogged a review some years back. I found it invaluable for undertaking quick, occasional maintenance on my Twitterstream from time to time, clearing out the dead wood.
Since it’s been offline, I’ve been taking a look for alternatives. I haven’t found something that covers all the angles yet – but I’m making a start. First one I think worth sharing is the Fake Followers tool from SocialBakers. I don’t want to be following dead accounts, or following people who just retweet links or work from home scams. This tool will help you pick them up. The algorithm behind it is still being tuned, but the tool looks for the following flags:
The tool also pulls out accounts which have only 1-2 retweets on file, or have not tweeted in the last three months. I’ve given it a few runs now – each time it comes up with a list of fake/inactive accounts. It offers up the list, with the opportunity to block all. I’m not really interested in blocking people – I’m more interested in how accurate the algorithm is. In my case, I reckon it’s recommendations were about 75% accurate. Enough to help my cut out some rubbish, but not enough for me to trust it completely. Trouble is, I don’t know whether the algorithm itself is at fault – or whether the Twitter API is being less than forthcoming with the data. I know pinging the Twitter API three times with the same request will not always result in the same answer three times!
This tool might be of particular interest to those taking over a company’s Twitter account. Daft though it may sound, there are still too many companies who will measure social media success by number of followers. If previous growth has been quick, but of low quality, this might be just the thing to help explain that. As a final note of interest, I compared my personal account with Twitter’s main account – guess who has more fake twitter followers…!
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