Twitter can be a blessing or a burden. The social media phenom has the power to keep its users in touch with friends old and new, track the movements of their favorite celebrities and keep abreast of world-changing events as they happen. That's the blessing. The burden of the service is being inundated with spam robot accounts programmed to send you more tweets than you can bear, finding masses of unwanted followers added to your account and trying to navigate through the quagmire of messages polluting your twitter feed as the result of both. For all the benefits Twitter brings us, no one needs that sort of pain.

Fortunately, there's a number of excellent services out there that will help you to restore sanity to Tweet-loving life. In this how-to, we're going to show you the best way to shake off the scores of unwanted followers and freeloaders you may have collected with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Step One: Unfollow Your Non-Followers

Untwitted is a simple, free web application that allows you to stop following twitter users who lack the manners to follow you back. Using it couldn't be easier: Just sign into Untwitted as you would your Twitter account, and the service will serve up all of the people you're following who aren't following you. Once that's done, you can dispose of them as you see fit.

Step Two: Thin Out The Herd

If your habit of following anyone who's ever tweeted something remotely witty or interesting has gotten out of hand, theUnfollowed is a service you're going to want to turn to. theUnfollowed not only allows you to do unfollow massive numbers of Twitter accounts all at once, it will also show you who's decided that they no longer want to follow you.

Step Three: Kill Them All and Let God Sort Them Out

If you feel you can live with yourself after indiscriminately mowing down between 10 and 2000 of the people you once cared enough about to follow, then say hello to UnTwollow. This deadly web application doesn't care which of the accounts you follow it cuts down. Just tell UnTwollow how many twitter accounts you want to do away with and sent it on its murderous way.

Be forewarned: As Untwollow's homepage emphasizes, the application will give no quarter to the accounts you follow, systematically unfollowing the number of Twitter users that you specify. If you care about any of the accounts that you currently follow, think twice before unleashing this powerful free application on your Twitter account.

Follow this article's author, Seamus Bellamy on Twitter