Earlier this week, we showed you how to remove Twitter followers from your account en masse, making it easy to clear out the deadwood from your feed so that you can focus on reading tweets from the folks that matter to you the most. Today, we're going to show you what to do if you want the folks that matter to just kind of shut up for a little while. Muuter is a free service from 3 Monos Lab and Andrés Bianciotto that gives you the option to temporarily silence any number of Twitter users for as little as an hour up to as long as a week. By following this how-to guide, you'll learn how to get some much needed Twitter-based peace and quiet with no more effort than it takes to click your mouse a few times. Let's get started.
Mutter is a web-based service that can be located here. Getting started with Mutter couldn't be easier. You'll find a button prompting you to sign in with your Twitter account. If you want to experience all the joy that a little bit of peace and quiet can bring to your life, click the button and fill in your Twitter credentials.
Once you've signed in, Muuter will ask you which Twitter user it is you want to keep quiet. It also gives you the option to silence any activity related to a particular hashtag. All you need do now is pick a target. Will it be your aunt in Minnesota who can't stop talking about her last trip to Hawaii? Perhaps your boss whose enthusiasm for the Daft Punks' Tron Legacy soundtrack knows no bounds? Muuter will let you muzzle 'em both for anywhere from one hour to one blissfully silent week. Should you choose to do so, you can even send them a Direct message or public tweet to inform them that you've issued the hush order. When you're ready to do so, click the "Mute!" button. If you choose to let your target know you've silenced them, they'll receive a message from Twitter stating that you've re-added them to your followers once the duration for your gag order passes.
If everything goes according to plan, you'll be rewarded with a notification screen that sums up who it is you've silenced and for what duration. If you still see a few tweets from your targets after you've plugged their names into Muuter, don't worry: the service's website says that sometimes Twitter can be a little slow on the uptake. Before you know it, the individual's tweet will disappear from your twitter feed.
Now that you've successfully silenced someone, there's only one thing left to do: start all over again. At the top of your browser window, you'll find a tab marked Home. Click it to return to Muuter's primary interface page. Along with being able to enter in additional people that you feel could use a little quiet time, you'll also find a running record of everyone you've silenced. If they're still under a Muuter imposed gag-order you'll be able to see how long they've got left before you'll be seeing them again in your Twitter feed. There's even a Revert button to let them off the hook early.
Now that you understand the basics of using the service, it's time to become a Muuter power-user. Click on the Tools tab, located to the right of the Home tab at the top of the page. By doing so, you'll be directed to--you guessed it--the Muuter Tools and Resources page. From here, you'll learn how to mute the folks you follow on the go via specially coded Direct Messages sent to Muuter from a multitude of connected devices. It's worth mentioning that at the time this how-to was written, Muuter still considered this feature to still be in beta. Should you encounter any issues wile using it, help an already polished service become even more refined by dropping the developers a line.
If you scroll to the bottom of the Tools and Resources Page, you'll find that Muuter's development team were thoughtful enough to include a pair of bookmarklets--named Shut up and Keep quiet--that make using this simple tool even easier. The Shut up and the Keep quiet buttons can be installed to your browser by dragging them into your browser's navigation bar. Once you've installed the bookmarklets, you'll have the awesome powers of mutter available to you 24/7.
By clicking the Shut up button, you'll be able to silence anyone you follow for an arbitrary two hour period. Should you be interested in having a little bit more control over who you silence and for how long, you'll want to use the Be quit button. Clicking will give you access to Mutter's full functionality without the need to visit the service's homepage.
So what's stopping you? Go forth and Twitter bravely, safe in the knowledge that you can make the noise stop anytime you want to.
Follow this article's author, Seamus Bellamy on Twitter
