HOW TO: Auto-Follow People on Twitter
Jon Wheatley, developer of the iPhone-ization site Interquash, doesn’t appear to sleep. His latest new app, Twollow, was developed in a mere 24 hours for $150. It’s a simple tool for auto-following people on Twitter.
Simply enter some terms that interest you, and everyone mentioning those terms will be auto-followed. A few terms are banned, Jon tells us, for obvious reasons – someone following short terms like “the” would quickly overload the system.
Mashable’s commenters ripped apart Intersquash: will Wheatley’s latest launch fair any better?
Looks like a pretty easy enough little app. Thanks for the heads up!!
That’s kind of cool. At first I thought it was strictly for auto-following those that follow you, but I see it’s for auto-following those who use certain keywords. That’s definitely preferable.
I bemoan the fact a bit that the apparent Twitter ettiquette (twittiquette? Eep) is to follow everybody who follows you. Doing so really changes the way one uses the tool, and potentially makes it a lot less useful.
Seems like a useful tool.
However, seems like a spammer’s dream. Going to take a LOT more oversight than it may be worth to deal with spammers autofollowing their target audience…
I believe there was a system set in place that only allows a maximum of 5 new followers per update.
Countdown to insane abuse of this tool. 3…2…1…
I would be a little suspicious of this site. They are infringing on Twitter’s colors, logos, and they don’t say that they are not associated with Twitter. (I’m surprised they haven’t gotten a take-down notice).
It was so worth watching the demo to hear that gorgeous accent! :)
for more of his voice http://webetalk.com/mf.mp3 rofl jon!
Fully Agree – Spam meet Twitter … Twitter meet well i guess you already meet..
The problem I think is that there’s no way he got every keyword that would cause system overload.
It’s one thing to twitter search for keywords, then chose to follow…but just adding random people to your follow list is against the culture of Twitter. I can see a brouhaha coming about this app…
I agree with the points about spammers taking full advantage of this. All they need to do is look at Twitter trends through the myriad of tools available and go for the most common content. Does seem pretty open to hacking.
And I’ll be the first to admit I’m no fan of auto-follow anyways – I like to make sure the person I’m about to follow is of interest. That means looking back at Tweets, checking out blogs, etc.
Definitely cool little tool and obviously could lead to
systemic abuse. It will be interesting to see what
happens with it. Thanks for sharing the info!
@MichaelMillman ~ Twitter
nice! now i can finally follow all the bots that start following me!
For corporate users this is obviously a pretty convenient tool to start following people automatically that talk about your brand. You still have to build the relationships but this tool does save you some time and I don’t really consider this “cheating” in any way. It’s not much different from having a feed set up on tweeted keywords relating to your brand.
In addition, it also saves community managers some time allowing them to instantly start interacting with existing or potential new customers. Instead of opening your browsers and clicking “Follow” the process is automated. Some might consider this as a non-issue but if you (for some weird reason) rely on the web interface this would indeed save you time.
/Alex
@drewie123 on Twitter
We should all add one keyword then all tweet it at the same time.
Not sure if i want that many people to follow. Last time I auto followed a few people Twitter cut my account so I could not follow or be followed
Trigeia Twinz
http://www.TrigeiaBlog.com
What’s Your Passion ?
What’s up Trigeia Twins! How goes the journey?
I’d never use an auto-follow. I personally select who to follow and who to stop following. It’s time-consuming but if you spend any amount of time on Twitter, it’s the quality of the conversation that’s important, not the number of followers or Tweets.
Seems easy-to-use (and the voice on the video is my fave part), however I can see spammers being the main users of this function.
This is interesting for a few moments. I suppose it depends on what terms you use for people to follow… but depending on the results you could be maxed out at the 2000 followers, with like 30 people following you back in no time. yay… not.
- Doc
I have made my points in the below blog article:
http://www.vator.tv/news/show/2008-11-18-how-to-auto-annoy-everyone-on-twitter
Nice, but take a look at http://socialtoo.com too.
An easy way to Auto-Follow People on Twitter, Facebook and Identi.ca
An application created in 24 hours sounds like a tool destined for _________.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Pretty risky for me, like spamming account, can twollow users twitter account be deleted ?…
I think it’s a unique idea, but it doesn’t really fit in with why Twitter exists. Getting a ton of random followers isn’t exactly what you want.
Also, I wouldn’t want my following to follow me through this tool, as they’re not genuinely interested in what I talk about.
Better than Intersquash (with sold for $1k so that was still a success) but not great, yet. Maybe $1.5k this time?
but they aren’t random. following users based on keywords is a way to ‘sort’ out people you might want to follow.
This is exactly what i use http://www.MyTwitterButler.com to do but from a desktop so faster than a web service (20,000 calls per hour instead of 100 api calls).
cheers,
Dean
Once you are over the “oh my god the sky will fall down” (do get over it, please), you might be able to come up with some useful scenarios beside the spamming.
Yes, of course spammers will use it, so what? We have other mechanisms for this.
I see it primarily the other way round. Put out a trackword (in your blog post, in a competition, in an announcement) and twollow that trackword. Throw out a question and people to answer right away once you follow them. And as @drewie123 said, for brands it is invaluable if they can track certain keywords specifically.
Seeing Liz’ comment I am reminded back of the days of blogging, when the first business bloggers arrived, which had vastly different needs and interests than the ‘normal bloggers’. And that is fine. Just dont confuse your wishes and needs with what everybody else is needing or wanting.
Although I know for sure that this tool would be abused, still it would be worth to use it for experimental purposes in order to find out following and other behaviors of twitterers.
I for one wants there to be some sort of a recommendation system in twitter where by twitter recommends a new person or persons depending upon his current list of followers. Just like we have recommendations for products and so on.
What if I am already following someone on twitter and they tweet with one of my twollow keywords… will it send them another notice?
It is not working properly for me… I have a few words as keywords, non of which are as common as the, or, a, of, etc… and it’s not auto following people for 3 of them… lame. needs work.
For me http://socialtoo.com/ works fine.
I love it, and I love ur accent, it's cool x D
This sounds kinda cool but after I signed up it didn’t follow anyone. Will I please get any help.
Mohammad Afaq
Free Website Traffic
Use FlashTweet to bulk follow!
Seems like a neat tool, but it is not exactly quick to update your account. Maybe I need more patience.
I think socialtoo.com is much better than this. They have lots of useful features.
I dont use auto follow but i know many people who do and they are happy with the result.
My two cents is that twitter is a “use it as you like”
I am going to start doing some auto follow tests. It’s the kind of thing that will help me find people, groups and organizations I wouldn’t otherwise find.
It’s the kind of thing that can actually connect allot of people.
For many bloggers using twitter is the most ethical way of building interactions with their blog. I try and encourage people to use Twitter and WordPress integration to find interested readers, members and clients.
In my view this is much better than trying to co-opt the search engines. Besides this is web 2.5 ;-) people have the choice to follow or not and can also maintain their privacy.
I may be showing my age here but i remember discussions about maintaining restrictions of the www to non-commercial use and wether or not to allow attachments with email.
Imagine where we would all be today if those systems had stuck to their original purpose / design, Still using catalogues to order cd’s via mail i suspect.
Live and let follow I say
Personally i think it is better just to ask. ;-) speaking of which follow me: TweetWP
Hm not a huge fan of auto following. Don't get great results.. I wrote about it here:
http://www.infiniden.com/blog/?p=49
Lemme know what you think? Do you think mass following is good or bad?
Great tool. Keep it up
It seems to be a smart tool.
Congrats
If you understand the difference between using a web app and a desktop app then you might want to check out http://www.MyTwitterButler.com
Does the same as Twollow in that it can auto follow twitter users based on 4 keywords per account (can run multiple accounts at the same time) but is run from a desktop so you dont need to hand over your user name and passsword.
Cheers,
Dean
Amazing toll and easy to use :)
the app is great and all…until it stops working randomly…and then you try to get help from customer support…and then you get ignored repeatedly…and then you never hear back…and then you cancel your account and just write a similar (very simple) script yourself to do the same job….
love,
-annoyed
thanks for share
http://rohfun.com/blog/
nice tool but it is not free again,it is a paid tools
There is just so much to learn on the web and every day there is something new! What a wonderful time to be alive and have a brain.
Just seems like it is all spammy…like myspace friend adder…I guess they dont have to follow you, but still….why would you need to follow MASS amounts of people with one click?