JustUnfollow

Personally, I took great care for services which “help you better manage your Twitter followers,” because 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).

JustUnfollow is a longtime player in the business of Twitter friend management, having first gotten a somewhat inauspicious start when TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington wrote that "the app didn’t work properly", leading to some internal office fighting. The company has made progress since then 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.

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 reported a paid customer base of over 30,000, while they’re not yet talking revenue, founder Nischal Shetty noted that his bootstraped company now has a team of 8 in Navi Mubai, India, where they’re based.

Application gives you services, 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. You can also  -> copy others’ followers and  -> check individual relationships for reciprocity. 

I 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. 

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. Although a significant amount of complains have been reported in iOS App Store reviews.