If that large follower base (count of people following you) on Twitter gives you a high, here’s a tool that might break your heart, a little bit at least.
Most of these Twitter users are @spam
Called TwitBlock, the tool will scan profiles of everyone who follows you on Twitter and it will then prepare a list of Twitter accounts that may be fake or have been created with the sole purpose of spamming Twitter.
The tools doesn’t require you password but since it uses Twitter’s OAuth to initiate the scanning process, you can’t use TwitBlock to determine spammers that be following another Twitter user.
For my Twitter account, the tool flagged some 354 accounts (or about 6%) – a lot of these accounts are spam for sure but there are some real people (human beings) and legitimate bots in the list as well so be a little careful before you block any user. Here’s the full spam report generated by TwitBlock.
For more tools like these, check The Twitter Guide.
Hat tip: Prem Kumar Aparanji (via FB)
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/find-twitter-spam-followers/9686/
Reader Comments
Ummm… I have 33 followers… TwitBlock says 86 of them are likely spam.
Written by Jeff Jewell on 09.08.09
I just ended up with a list of people I’ve already blocked and who have already been suspended by Twitter.
Written by Sheldon (Marketing Consultant, NZ) on 09.08.09
It does require your password.
Written by Dave on 09.08.09
so even after using this we still need to take our discretion to judge if they are bots or just users who are not using twitter accounts
Written by Moksh Juneja on 09.08.09
I would do this if I didn’t already think that spambots constituted 100% of my followers.
Written by Sacha on 09.09.09