5 ms·

ManageTwitter - Fast & Easy Unfollowing

9 points by zemaj 17y ago

zemaj 17y ago
Just launched this yesterday. Managing the people I was following on twitter was always a massive pain for myself and quite a few people I talked to, so I decided to do something about it :) Went through quite a few UI iterations trying to balance ease of use & power. Feedback welcome :)
- jsdalton 17y ago
  Nice work. I showed this to a coworker, who was looking for a way to clean out a bunch of people one of our accounts follows. Unfortunately, he got an error during that initialization phase it seems to go through after login.
  - zemaj 17y ago
    Interesting. I had one other report of this so added some better error handling. Will have to log this stuff a bit more.
prawn 17y ago
Doesn't tell me enough about what it actually does before asking me for my password, so I bailed. Sorry! It searches my stream, but for what? Anything I'm looking for? Or follower-specific info? How does it manage people I follow that is different to Twitter's implementation? Does it include info like etact does for email/SMS (follower vs following, number of RTs, most recent DM)? Does it just provide more items per page? Does it provide shortcuts like "people I'm following who aren't following me" or "people who were following me, but aren't any longer"? I think you need to spell it out a lot more before you ask for a password.
- zemaj 17y ago
  It's essentially a fast interface for viewing, grouping and sorting people you follow. It shows people you follow in groups of 100 and allows you to filter by; "not following back", "inactive", "talkative" and "quiet". It allows you to filter only people who have mentioned a word in their last tweet. It allows you to instantly unfollow blocks of people (background processes actually do the talking to twitter so you don't have to wait). Also if you screw something up, it lets you undo all your unfollows :) The lack of information was a design choice. One button on the page, few distractions. The tool essentially does one thing - makes it easy to unfollow people. Admittedly trust is an issue, but I'm not sure how to compromise on that.
  - prawn 17y ago
    All I can do is give you feedback. If there was more info up front, I would've considered coughing up the password to give it a shot, but not with what's up there now. You can call it a design choice, but I can only tell you that it didn't work for me. Your second click seems a bit wasteful too? You could easily add 4-5 bullet points up front. Just checked the site again and see that you've added bullets and a screenshot - what happened to the design choice of two lines of text and a button? ;)
    - zemaj 17y ago
      Your post happened :) I did see a decrease in bounces, thanks.
      - prawn 17y ago
        Cool - I think there is a balance between too much and too little content and I think you're closer to the mark now than before. Good luck and hopefully it works out for you!
- bruceboughton 17y ago
  It doesn't ask for your password--Twitter does. It's using OAuth, not the password anti-pattern.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    With OAuth it can still access my account.
    - bruceboughton 17y ago
      Yes, it can, but it's not the same as giving your password away. 1. you can revoke access throught the Twitter settings. 2. if you use the same password for, say, you're Google account, using OAuth stops this password being revealed to the developer, so they can't access, say, your Google Payments account There's a big difference between giving the site unrestricted access to your Twitter account and giving it unrestricted access to all your accounts (if they use the same password). Let's not pretend there isn't a difference here. Anyway, the site is reasonably descriptive about the functions it offers before sending you through the OAuth process.
      - prawn 17y ago
        If the permission granted allows it to post something to my feed, that's enough of a deterrent to me. Reasonably descriptive? Was there something I missed on the two pages prior to the login request? I counted about three brief lines of text and one of them wasn't descriptive at all. Edit: Please note that when it was first posted to HN and when I viewed the site, there was no screenshot and no bullets. It was just two lines of text that didn't really explain things very well.
gyardley 17y ago
Does this publish anything to my Twitter feed? I've had services unexpectedly do this in the past, to the point where I think new Twitter-related services need a disclaimer that says "we won't publish anything to your feed without your explicit approval - we hate that stuff too."
- zemaj 17y ago
  No, it does not publish anything unless you explicitly say so (double confirm).
  - gyardley 17y ago
    Cool. I'd stick that prior to the OAuth. The UI looks terrific, and the service was easy to use. My only comment: I might evaluate 'quiet' and 'talkative' using a shorter window than 'since account creation'. Every once in a while a nice, useful-updates-only service I follow hires a community manager and then their Twitter feed goes all to hell. ManageTwitter still considers these feeds 'quiet' although they've recently become all-too-talkative.
volomike 17y ago
I don't get a good feeling about this. I checked out Melon Media and they are outside the USA, so the law for me is a little tougher in punishing them if they do wrong. Then, they are an email marketing firm, and I would be giving them vital access into my Twitter feed.
ideamonk 17y ago
I use https://filttr.com/ https://filttr.com/ :)
lsemel 17y ago
It's a good idea to avoid using trademarks (like "twitter") in your site's name.
rogermugs 17y ago
says "talking to twitter....." done... then "talking to twitter....." done... and then "talking to twitter....." done... again and again... never goes anywhere. fail.

9 points by zemaj 17y ago

zemaj 17y ago

Just launched this yesterday. Managing the people I was following on twitter was always a massive pain for myself and quite a few people I talked to, so I decided to do something about it :) Went through quite a few UI iterations trying to balance ease of use & power. Feedback welcome :)

jsdalton 17y ago
Nice work. I showed this to a coworker, who was looking for a way to clean out a bunch of people one of our accounts follows. Unfortunately, he got an error during that initialization phase it seems to go through after login.
- zemaj 17y ago
  Interesting. I had one other report of this so added some better error handling. Will have to log this stuff a bit more.

prawn 17y ago

Doesn't tell me enough about what it actually does before asking me for my password, so I bailed. Sorry! It searches my stream, but for what? Anything I'm looking for? Or follower-specific info? How does it manage people I follow that is different to Twitter's implementation? Does it include info like etact does for email/SMS (follower vs following, number of RTs, most recent DM)? Does it just provide more items per page? Does it provide shortcuts like "people I'm following who aren't following me" or "people who were following me, but aren't any longer"? I think you need to spell it out a lot more before you ask for a password.

zemaj 17y ago
It's essentially a fast interface for viewing, grouping and sorting people you follow. It shows people you follow in groups of 100 and allows you to filter by; "not following back", "inactive", "talkative" and "quiet". It allows you to filter only people who have mentioned a word in their last tweet. It allows you to instantly unfollow blocks of people (background processes actually do the talking to twitter so you don't have to wait). Also if you screw something up, it lets you undo all your unfollows :) The lack of information was a design choice. One button on the page, few distractions. The tool essentially does one thing - makes it easy to unfollow people. Admittedly trust is an issue, but I'm not sure how to compromise on that.
- prawn 17y ago
  All I can do is give you feedback. If there was more info up front, I would've considered coughing up the password to give it a shot, but not with what's up there now. You can call it a design choice, but I can only tell you that it didn't work for me. Your second click seems a bit wasteful too? You could easily add 4-5 bullet points up front. Just checked the site again and see that you've added bullets and a screenshot - what happened to the design choice of two lines of text and a button? ;)
  - zemaj 17y ago
    Your post happened :) I did see a decrease in bounces, thanks.
    - prawn 17y ago
      Cool - I think there is a balance between too much and too little content and I think you're closer to the mark now than before. Good luck and hopefully it works out for you!
bruceboughton 17y ago
It doesn't ask for your password--Twitter does. It's using OAuth, not the password anti-pattern.
- Tichy 17y ago
  With OAuth it can still access my account.
  - bruceboughton 17y ago
    Yes, it can, but it's not the same as giving your password away. 1. you can revoke access throught the Twitter settings. 2. if you use the same password for, say, you're Google account, using OAuth stops this password being revealed to the developer, so they can't access, say, your Google Payments account There's a big difference between giving the site unrestricted access to your Twitter account and giving it unrestricted access to all your accounts (if they use the same password). Let's not pretend there isn't a difference here. Anyway, the site is reasonably descriptive about the functions it offers before sending you through the OAuth process.
    - prawn 17y ago
      If the permission granted allows it to post something to my feed, that's enough of a deterrent to me. Reasonably descriptive? Was there something I missed on the two pages prior to the login request? I counted about three brief lines of text and one of them wasn't descriptive at all. Edit: Please note that when it was first posted to HN and when I viewed the site, there was no screenshot and no bullets. It was just two lines of text that didn't really explain things very well.

gyardley 17y ago

Does this publish anything to my Twitter feed? I've had services unexpectedly do this in the past, to the point where I think new Twitter-related services need a disclaimer that says "we won't publish anything to your feed without your explicit approval - we hate that stuff too."

zemaj 17y ago
No, it does not publish anything unless you explicitly say so (double confirm).
- gyardley 17y ago
  Cool. I'd stick that prior to the OAuth. The UI looks terrific, and the service was easy to use. My only comment: I might evaluate 'quiet' and 'talkative' using a shorter window than 'since account creation'. Every once in a while a nice, useful-updates-only service I follow hires a community manager and then their Twitter feed goes all to hell. ManageTwitter still considers these feeds 'quiet' although they've recently become all-too-talkative.

volomike 17y ago

I don't get a good feeling about this. I checked out Melon Media and they are outside the USA, so the law for me is a little tougher in punishing them if they do wrong. Then, they are an email marketing firm, and I would be giving them vital access into my Twitter feed.

ideamonk 17y ago

I use https://filttr.com/ https://filttr.com/ :)

lsemel 17y ago

It's a good idea to avoid using trademarks (like "twitter") in your site's name.

rogermugs 17y ago

says "talking to twitter....." done... then "talking to twitter....." done... and then "talking to twitter....." done... again and again... never goes anywhere. fail.