Are you suspicious of those sexy avatars and “marketingbizpro” accounts following you on Twitter, but don’t have the time or inclination to block and report them one by one as they pop up?
We’ve just found a new, completely free app that will zap those bots and bad users in just one click. It’s fully customizable, so you can tell the blocker what you personally consider to be a spam account. And you can choose to simply unfollow those users, block them or report the accounts to Twitter, as well – again all with just one click. StopTweet is definitely one of the more useful apps we’ve seen lately, and it also helps us all do our part to clean up the Twitter universe.
We just tried it on an account and caught around 50 spam followers; pretty exciting, no?
Here’s how it works. You tell StopTweet what behavior you think is spammy by defining a few important parameters. The first parameter is follower-to-friend ratios, which StopTweet considers on a scale of 1 to 100%. I personally think it’s sketchy when none of the people you follow have returned the favor. I like my friends to be engaged and engaging.
Next, you tell StopTweet how many tweets you’d like your followers to have on a scale of zero to 30. This won’t work on the spambots that ping 500 people with the same “LOOK AT THIS CRAZY BRITNEY VIDEO!!1!”, but it’ll certainly get rid of inactive accounts and users who aren’t really adding much value to your network.
It works for followers and friends, and you can take one of three actions (unfollow, block or report) on the account StopTweet finds. StopTweet also comes with three convenient presets for light, medium and aggressive scans.
The app also has a tab to see your own list of spammer accounts, but we weren’t able to click through due to a possible bug in the very new app.
“We didn’t like any of the applications that were already out there. They were all too complicated for the average Twitter user,” wrote creator Joi Company, which also created Twitstatus, a keyword-based Twitter widget generator. “The application is extremely easy to use, and allows you to only block who you want to block without hassle. On top of all this, it’s free. Most of the apps we found charge a monthly or yearly fee. We do not.”
We think StopTweet is a genuinely useful app, and we recommend that you give it a shot and let us know how it works for you.
