Sunday, 8 September 2019

Use Unfollowspy on your Ailing Twitter Account

If you're a social media addict like me you've probably noticed that Twitter has died on its arse as of late- that Instagram is now a thousand times more popular and people aren't finding the need to head back to Twitter. This is a pain in the arse.

As a blogger, I rely on other people with bigger Twitter accounts to retweet links to my blog to get page views. Now, though, people have neglected those twitter accounts, not unlike those that followed them- my audience. Instagram doesn't have the ease of use that Twitter has.

Twitter has always been great for sharing links. Instagram only allows you to put a link in your bio. Links in photo updates don't work, nor do they on the story feature. Accounts with more than 10k followers have access to the 'swipe up' feature that allows links in stories that will be accessible for only 24 hours, before the story is deleted.

Hence, I still want to use Twitter but who's going to read my stuff? Who's going to retweet my links? Not many. Also, I'm assuming I'm following a massive number of now-inactive accounts. It's time for some mass-unfollowing.

I've just logged into Unfollowspy, another website offering some analysis of your Twitter account- the type of third-party site Twitter are actively working on shutting down. It allows you to sign in with your Twitter or your Soundcloud, and can offer info on either of these platforms. On Twitter it allows you 100 unfollows per day. It doesn't offer as much info as, say, Statusbrew, which was great for filtering out inactive accounts. Statusbrew allowed you (it may still do, but it currently charges) to order your results by who last tweeted the longest ago, hence showing you all the inactive accounts first. Unfollowspy has no such function. The site starts to monitor your account the moment you join, so after a few days I'm still waiting to be notified if anyone unfollows me. Perhaps I'll get used to it, but it's a poor imitation.

I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a graphic novel adaptation of the Jane Austin 'classic.' I understand there's a zany novel that came between the original and the graphic novel. Jesus Christ. I've never read the original, nor would I want to, but no amount of charming monochrome artwork or undead rotting toffs levered into the plot can mask the intolerable dullness of the original text. It's just a load of dated aristocrats trying it on with each other.

The new slant not just brings a marrying of horror and period, but a load of plot holes with it; a few 'how-would-they-know-that moments. Not a favourite.

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