Best Twitter No-Follow Application Ever

If you’re a Twitter user, and you ever log in to see a page full of one person’s tweets, all updated about a minute ago, your first reaction is probably to wonder how someone can share so much wonderful insight so quickly. I mean, come on, that’s a beautiful accomplishment.

Or maybe that person is the cave man equivelant of the information age. He bought into the hunter-gatherer routine so strongly that he thinks his RSS feeds are the stuff legends are made of. Never mind that he’s not doing any of the following:

• Writing this content
• Tweeting this content
• Reading this content

…before cramming it into your tweet-stream.

If you don’t know what Twitterfeed is, it is a “service” that allows you to subscribe to RSS (really simple syndication) feeds, usually from news organizations or blogs, and then tweet the top stories from these RSS feeds several times a day. As a blogger, both professionally and personally, I might use Twitterfeed to automatically tweet every time I publish a blog article. Like this:

Hi, friends, I wrote something else. Please come read it and tell me if I am on track or not.

Used this way, the technology makes sense. Where it goes wrong is when someone subscribes to several dozen RSS feeds and blasts them all day long using Twitterfeed. I unfollowed one guy after realizing he had tweeted 137 times in 24 hours, without ever actually participating.

I’ve made a commitment to not talk about how many Twitter followers I have. I used to look, but I realized early in my Twitter experience that it is like a lot of things. Collect enough business cards and almost all of them become worthless because it’s impossible to find exactly what you need. Same thing with Twitter accounts. The more Twitter friends you have, the less likely you are to actually read the tweet that means something. And with all of us running our mouths as hard and as fast as we can, it’s hard to hear anything. 

Back to Twitterfeed. I hate this application with a passion. 

One of my Twitter friends started his feed on May 1st with a declaration, “I’m not here to sell you anything, I’m here so we can connect … novel idea, huh? Don’t sell me anything, actually get to know me.” Three days later, he started Twitterfeed. He’s one of the unusual Twitterfeeders… he actually has tweeted a few times that day, but the ratio is beyond lopsided. 88 of 95 tweets are RSS feed non-content. I followed my own rules and give a courtesy DM explaining that I couldn’t get to know him if he drowns his own voice out with the auto-generated non-content.

No reply has been received from my Twitter friend.

Why am I calling Twitterfeed the best Twitter application ever? 

It makes deciding who NOT to follow easy.

I’m going to go remove some people from my Twitter account now.