We recognize auto unfollow has been an invaluable tool for many of you. I added it because when I auto-follow, some times later on those people unfollow you again. Twitter itself has a ratio limit which if you’re following over about 10% of those that are following you back, it will not let you follow anyone else. So you’re stuck waiting to be able to follow back the people that have made the kind gesture to follow you. To me it was a relationship building tool.
Twitter it seems thinks otherwise. Per their request, we have been asked to remove our automatic unfollow service by the end of the month or risk having our service disabled. They claim that auto-unfollow “perpetuates the idea that Twitter is about follower counts”. We want to respect Twitter’s request, as ultimately we are in their environment and subject to their own rules. So long as we are using their API we have to play by their rules, and I respect that.
We will continue to be able to provide the same anti-spam and anti-phishing services we have been offering, which means you will still be able to automatically unfollow those that send you spam DMs, content with spam in it, and keywords and phrases you find objectionable should you choose to do so. Our “unfollow all” service will also still remain. This service enables users to unfollow everyone they’ve ever followed before.
Starting today, we are removing the ability to enable this service from your admin preferences so as no new users can enable the service. In addition, we have removed the ability to purchase the unfollow catch up option. Starting February 1, 2010, we are disabling this service forever and you will no longer be able to automatically unfollow those that unfollow you on Twitter if you were doing so before.
We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause – we are as disappointed as you are. We are still firmly set on our original goals of automating your streams while enabling you to clean them up at the same time and focus on real relationships. All of our other services are still available and remain to be some of our most popular tools that we offer. In the meantime, if you do have issues with this, we encourage you to contact Twitter support and let them know of your use-cases for the service. From my experience Twitter does listen so long as you keep it constructive.
In the meantime, stay tuned – we have some exciting new announcements on the way between now and February!