Let me address this straight away: I don’t personally care for
services which “help you better manage your Twitter followers,” because
they tend to be used by those attempting to game the system to increase
their perceived popularity in inorganic ways. That being said, I don’t totally hate JustUnfollow’s newly launched, completely redesigned mobile application. In fact, I might even actually start using this thing.
JustUnfollow, for those unfamiliar, is a longtime player in the
business of Twitter friend management, The company has made progress
since then – fixing that bug, obviously – plus adding support for
Instagram in January, and recently reaching some 4 million users – up
from its 1 million user milestone in August of last year.
The JustUnfollow mobile apps for iOS and Android
have been downloaded 1.7 million times since their launch last year,
aiding in this growth. And the company has now passed 1 million
Instagram users, too.
These mobile apps offer a variety of tools for managing your
followers, some of which are free, others which you can “tweet to
unlock” (I know, ugh), or you can just bite the bullet and buy a
subscription. Two paid plans are available for individuals: $4.99/year
for unlimited follows and unfollows, plus 10,000 whitelisted/blacklisted
accounts, or $24.99/year for the same, up to 5 Twitter accounts. For
businesses like social media agencies, pricing for an expanded feature
set including customer support starts at $9.99 per month up to
$199/month.
JustUnfollow reports a paid customer base of over 30,000, and while
they’re not yet talking revenue, founder Nischal Shetty notes that his
bootstraped company now has a team of 8 full-time in Navi Mubai, India,
where they’re based.
Within the application, you can view who doesn’t follow you back,
your fans, those who have both followed and unfollowed you recently,
inactive followers, your entire follower base, and more. You can also
copy others’ followers and check individual relationships for
reciprocity. And you can whitelist and blacklist users, too, as noted above.
I’m
have to admit, I’m not the target market for something like this, so
it’s a bit surprising I found it appealing. After all, I’m not super
concerned with daily comings and going of my Twitter
follower base. And I get that there are a lot of people, like me, who
are overwhelmed with the headache that regularly following and
unfollowing brings, to the point that they’ve sort of given up. In other
words, I’m not going to hold a follow or unfollow against anyone
personally, really, nor do I care to track this data every day. (If I
did, I could just use the regular emails Twitter now sends, which
include clickable buttons that let you follow back your new fans.)
But I would like to work on this kind of thing on my own time, in
batches – going back through who I should be adding back, or cleaning
out those accounts which have long ago abandoned Twitter – like old
startups who have since moved on (…e.g., to Yahoo).
Likely, what sold me on the JustUnfollow app is not the feature set –
these same tools are available all over the web, including with
competitors like FriendorFollow, for example. What makes the app
enjoyable is the features combined with the design. JustUnfollow feels
modern, is attractive, and is simple to use and understand. Enough so
that I might even start to think about managing my Twitter
following/follower base for the first time in years.
JustUnfollow is available for iOS here and Android here.
(I should point out that some users on iOS are reporting issues with
the app crashing in the App Store reviews. I didn’t experience this
problem, so your mileage may vary, as they say.)
