Temporarily Silencing Twitter Friends
Q: I have a friend whose Twitter feed goes into overdrive when he attends events. Is there a way to ignore what he's saying temporarily or do I need to just deal with it?
A: Inspired by a handful of users over the past few days who have live-Tweeted various events -- and with the news that several journalists from Connecticut were tweeting every word at a murder trial where cameras were banned by the judge -- we thought it might be helpful to put together a how-to guide for dealing with those friends who clog up your feed.There is a way for you to ignore what they're saying for only a set amount of time. You don't need to unfollow a friend and risk forgetting to start following them again. There are a couple of different services that will do all of the work for you.
After you're allowed Muuter to access your account, you can do everything that is required to, well, mute one or more of the people you follow through whichever Twitter client -- or the site itself -- that you use. A handful of easy-to-remember commands can be sent via Direct Message to Muuter, which reads through and processes them within a minute. Muuter will send a command to Twitter to unfollow the specified user or users and then a second command to re-follow them from your account after anywhere from one hour to seven full days.
Twick-Twock is a competing service that works the same way. Both use OAuth and do not require your Twitter pasword after you've given them authorization to access your account.
Tools mentioned in this entry:
More questions? View the complete Toolkit archive.