How much of Twitter’s trending topics are polluted by spam? How many Twitter verified accounts are there? Have you ever thought of reaching Twitter utopia: a spam-free Twitter where information and knowledge sharing are the main purposes for using Twitter? Is Twitter doing enough to protect us from spam? Would you like to find all the top 5 solutions to cutting down on Twitter spam in one place?

Thoughtpick is here to save the day!

While reading the post about Twitter closing down thousands of spam accounts, I found that it would be interesting and very beneficial if I researched the web to present you with the top 5 methods and applications which could help Twitter users cut down on incoming spam and better enjoy their overall Twitter experience.

Manual Selection: This method might be fun at the beginning yet could become a bit overwhelming especially to those following thousands of tweeps. Basically, this method entails that you monitor the activity, profile, links and tweets of those you are following and manually unfollow and block those who seem to be spammers rather than true tweeps. Things you should be well aware of when manually following and unfollowing tweeps: Be ware of suspicious-looking shortened URLS ; these could be links to viruses, pornography, trojans or spam. For example, if you see the same URL with 10 different descriptions!

; these could be links to viruses, pornography, trojans or spam. For example, if you see the same URL with 10 different descriptions! Be careful of trending topics ; spammers use those with a combination of hashtags so they would show up more often on Twitter search,

; spammers use those with a combination of hashtags so they would show up more often on Twitter search, Be ware of fake followers ; followers who will not RT you or provide you with valuable information, instead, they use their Twitter account to send our promotions to sell their services.

; followers who will not RT you or provide you with valuable information, instead, they use their Twitter account to send our promotions to sell their services. Know who you follow before you follow them and unfollow and block anyone who seems to be a spammer immediately. Tweepi.com: A new application, still in beta, for Twitter users which allows you to cleanup spam users using numbers that are able to reveal bots through various ratios such as number of tweets vs. number of RTs and the number of links per tweets. So if you’re following a few thousand people on Twitter and you noticed that many of them do not engage in conversations, never retweet anybody, or simply just ramble about nonsense stuff all day long (no links to useful content whatsoever!), Tweepi is your answer! Twerpscan.com: TwerpScan will check the number of followers of all your contacts, the number of people they are following, and then compute the ratio between those. You can easily sort the list of your contacts; display them in variable batches of 20 to 100 people; and you can follow, unfollow and/or block each contact right there on the spot— without going insane. Clean Tweets: A browser-based filter plugin that removes spam from Twitter Search. Clean Tweets is an extension for Firefox that goes through your Twitter searches, either from Twitter.com or Search.Twitter.com, and erases a majority of the spam-based ones by essentially using only two filtering rules: 1) Delete all tweets from accounts that are less than 24 hours old 2) Delete all tweets that mention three or more Twitter trending topics. TidyTweet: A real-time tool especially tailored for blog/website owners and which allows companies to syndicate Twitter content on their website or blog free from inappropriate language, users, and content. TidyTweet, which is currently in private beta, is designed around creating and managing feeds with additional customization options.

Finally, I’ll leave you with the following questions: Do you think a time will come where Twitter would be absolutely spam-free? And do you know of any other spam-cutting applications that we might have missed?

Your feedback is always appreciated. Enjoy your Twitter experience as spam-free as possible :)