Top Twitter user unfollows 106,000 tweeters!

Twitter has seen an explosion of popularity recently and so old school 'follow back' rules where you always follow anyone who follows you no longer apply, in fact one user who had an auto follow rule in place recenlty decided to take action as he was missing out on many useful tweets and his DM (Direct Message) inbox was full of spam.

When Robert Scoble realised that he was following over 100,000 people, most of whom he didn't know he decided to clense his list, it isn't possible to bulk unfollow on Twitter but rather than manually accomplish the task Scoble had a script written for him.

He writes of the experience:

On Monday I unfollowed 106,000 people on Twitter. The reaction so far has been quite interesting. More than 7,000 accounts have unfollowed me back. They did that so fast that I assume they are just bots that are looking to increase their follower numbers. I knew I’d lose them, but that’s sort of why I did it. People who are following me just to get another count on their follower numbers are just plain, well, lame.

But it’s worse than that. When I unfollowed everyone all my spam just stopped. Dead. No more spam. Not since Monday. Twitter is actually quite enjoyable. Not a single DM spam. Not a single piece of spam has come through the home page.

It seems much like in real life, twitter users are beginning to realise that it's quality, not quantity that counts.