TwitSweeper is a service which regularly checks your Twitter followers for undesirable, "spammy" users who are saying things like "make lots of money from home", "quit your job", "look at my sexy photos", "get free dates", etc., which is sometimes referred to as "twitter spam" or "twitter spammers".
For any such undesirable followers that it finds, it will remove those followers and block them from re-following you with their sales pitch. This can be done fully automatically, or the service can ask you to confirm the removal of the undesirable followers that it finds. You can receive an email summary of its clean-up activities if you wish, and/or review an online journal of its actions at anytime.
You may add any number of Twitter accounts to your TwitSweeper account.
Give it a try with a free trial.
TwitSweeper maintains a ever-growing library of phrases that are considered "spammy" or otherwise undesirable by most people. Phrases such as "make money fast online!", "multiple sources of passive income", "view my naked pics", "get guaranteed commission daily!", etc.
When a Twitter account is first added to TwitSweeper, it is scheduled for a full pass of all of its followers. During that initial pass, each follower's Screen Name (@screenname), Full Name, Website URL, Bio Description and their last Tweet will all be checked to see if they contain any of these undesirable phrases. If they do, then those followers will trigger an action based upon your account's level of automation (see "What Happens When it Finds Undesirable Followers").
For subsequent checks of Twitter accounts, TwitSweeper will check all new followers that have been added to the account since the last time that TwitSweeper checked the account. New followers will have the same checks done to them for undesirable phrases (e.g. the screen name, full name, bio, last tweet). Periodically TwitSweeper will also re-check all followers on each Twitter account (not just the new followers).
See how it works with a free trial.
There are three levels of automation that you can set for your TwitSweeper account as follows:
You may change your level of automation at any time by clicking the Settingslink.
You get access to the fully functioning TwitSweeper service to sweep your Twitter account(s) for spammy followers on an on going basis for 17 days.
You may also login to the TwitSweeper Dashboard at any time and check out your statistics and the Global TwitSweeper stats, your Activity Reports, confirm removals, change your Settings, etc.
You may add one or more of your Twitter accounts to TwitSweeper during the trial, or add additional Twitter accounts later.
The trial is free. You do not need a credit card to sign up for a trial.
Any time during the trial period, or after it ends, you may continue or extend your TwitSweeper service by clicking the Extend My Plan button.
Once the trial period ends, if you haven't extended your plan, then TwitSweeper will stop checking your Twitter account(s) for spammy followers.
You may login to your TwitSweeper Dashboard at any time to review your statistics and the date that your Twitter account(s) were last swept (checked) by the system.
You may also enable an email summary to be sent to you when activity has taken place on any of your Twitter account(s), subject to the level of automation set on your account.
TwitSweeper uses a dynamically adjusting algorithm to automatically schedule Twitter account checking. On average, all Twitter accounts should be checked multiple times a week. New followers are checked more frequently, possibly multiple times per day, whereas re-passes of very long, previously checked follower lists will be done less frequently.
If you enable the email summary, you will receive a periodic activity report.
When TwitSweeper finds an undesirable follower on one of your Twitter accounts, its response will be determined by your "Level of Automation" setting.
You may change your level of automation at any time by clicking the Settings link.
You may also enable the optional email summary which will periodically send you a link to the TwitSweeper Activity Report, which is a journal of changes that the system has done on your behalf, either automatically or that you have confirmed.
TwitSweeper maintains an ever-growing library of phrases that are considered <em>"spammy"</em> or otherwise undesirable by most people. Phrases such as "make money fast online!", "multiple sources of passive income", "view my naked pics!", "get guaranteed commission daily!", etc., are the types of phrases that are included in this library. Each spammy phrase in TwitSweeper's library is reviewed by a human before being added to the system. We strive to avoid "false positives" and do not use a probability assessment approach, but rather use an "exact match" approach.
When TwitSweeper checks a Twitter account, it is looking for followers that have one of these undesirable phrases in either their Screen Name (@screenname), Full Name, Website URL, Bio Description or their last Tweet.
If one of these undesirable phrases are found in one of these fields, then that follower will be queued for action based upon your TwitSweeper account's "level of automation" setting.
You may optionally add your own custom spammy phrases to enhance the search process for your account(s).
Yes you can. You may optionally add your own spammy or otherwise undesirable phrases to your TwitSweeper Settings and they will be used, in addition to the system's library of undesirable phrases, when searching your Twitter accounts (but no one else's accounts).
You only need to add your custom undesirable phrases once to your TwitSweeper settings, and they will be used for all of the Twitter accounts that you have added to TwitSweeper.
You may update your custom phrases at any time by clicking the Settings link and then clicking "View Optional Advanced Settings" within on the settings page.
When TwitSweeper removes an unwanted follower it does so by performing a Block within the Twitter system on your behalf. Once the Twitter system blocks the follower they're blocked for good.
When you are logged into your Dashboard of aggregrate statistics, your various Twitter accounts will be listed in the left-margin. Click any of those Twitter account names to see the stats for a specific account. To see a report of the activity on this account (e.g. a list of the removed spammy followers), just click the [Activity Report] button.
TwitSweeper has been architected from the ground up to be able to handle both very small and very large Twitter accounts (e.g. accounts with many million followers).
To be this scaleable and to also accommodate Twitter's API-Limiting thresholds (only a certain number of API invocations are allowed per hour), all examination and determination of followers is done by an always-running group of background processes.
The background system uses dynamically adjusting queue prioritization and load balancing algorithms to fairly process all requests in the queue. It ensures that large requests don't restrict the processing of smaller accounts and conversely that thousands of small in-queue accounts don't inhibit larger requests from receiving a fair share of the collective background system's resources over time. The queue processing mechanisms can handle a wide variety and combination of small, medium and/or large accounts concurrently. The system also re-queues each account for subsequent analysis of followers on a regularly recurring basis.
TwitSweeper uses an algorithm to determine when a given follower should be added to TwitSweeper's blacklist.
Inclusion in the blacklist is based upon a follower's characteristics such as how many times a given follower has triggered a removal action across all Twitter accounts that TwitSweeper is processing, over what elapsed time, etc.
Once a given follower is on the blacklist then TwitSweeper immediately queues it for removal action (subject to each user's Level of Automation) whenever that blacklisted follower is found during any future TwitSweeper processing, without performing any more searches for undesirable phrases on such blacklisted followers.
The TwitSweeper system has emerged from a successful Private Beta where a number of suggestions were provided by testers and were implemented into the system.
TwitSweeper is now in "Public Beta" which means that the public (you) are welcome to sign-up for a free trial and see what you think. We are also still open for comments and suggestions. Whenever you sign-up, you will receive a free trial period of full functionality. Give it a try!
Hey, if you happen to also have a blog and want to generate some buzz about TwitSweeper, then that's just an added bonus. Hopefully your testing experiences will be positive, but if not then we look forward to improving TwitSweeper based upon the feedback we receive from all of the beta testers.
Please let us know if you have any questions about the beta testing: support@TwitSweeper.com
(Also see the Media Room)
There is a small annual fee for TwitSweeper to perform these determinations and activities on your Twitter account(s) on an on going basis. See Pricing. But signing up for a Free Trial is, well, free and doesn't even require a credit card for the trial. You can just let your trial expire if you aren't interested in the service after trying it. There is no obligation to signing up for a free trial.
If you have signed up for a free trial and you wish to cancel the service during the trial, just let your trial expire and TwitSweeper will automatically stop providing service.
If you have subscribed to the TwitSweeper service, you may cancel the renewal of your subscription at any time and TwitSweeper will automatically stop providing service at the end of your current term.
As a side note, you may remove or add any of your Twitter accounts from/to your TwitSweeper plan at any time.
TwitSweeper's infrastructure has been designed to support multiple languages. However, initially it is only available in English. Other languages such as French, German and Spanish are planned after the public "beta" period is over and the site's content has stablized a bit.
Suggestions are very welcome! TwitSweeper is in "beta" and we are looking for suggestions, problems, bugs, typos, comments, etc.
If you have a great idea of a feature that could be added to TwitSweeper, please let us know.
If you want to suggest additional spammy strings from your own research for our consideration, please let us know.
If you have found a bug (problem) or something which doesn't perform as you think it should, please let us know.
Please use this handy form to send us your suggestions! (and Thanks!)
Is there interest in having a TwitSweeper API (Application Programming Interface) so that developers could have their own programs interact directly with the TwitSweeper system to retrieve information, confirm removals, or perform other functions?
More information about a potential API can be found here.
If you believe that an API would be beneficial, then please let us know!
Be sure to follow us, to stay updated on new TwitSweeper features and options.
@TwitSweeper
Do you think TwitSweeper is something the world should use. We would greatly appreciate a Tweet, Stumble, Digg or maybe an email to a friend.
Copyright 2009-2010 Emerge2 Digital | TwitSweeperTM is a trademark of Emerge2 Digital Inc.
