Last week, we talked about one of the latest annoyances on Twitter being refollow spam - the act of a user leveraging a script to regularly follow you repeatedly, on a schedule. Since that post, Twitter has seemed to crack down on users of the practice, suspending those accounts. Now that it's safe to look at following notifications again, I checked in to a new service called Topify, which doesn't just send the text notifications that are Twitter's standard, but instead, detailed reports that show a user's avatar, their twitter statistics, and most recent tweets. The result is a more complete picture of the individual, from within your e-mail, without forcing you to go to the Twitter Web site to learn more.As you can see in the below example, when a new user follows your account, you are notified as to whether you are already following them, their followers and following data, bio link, and recent updates.
If you want to message the user, just reply to the follow e-mail. This, in theory, could enable you to set up Auto-DMs from your e-mail, should you set up a rule. (But I wouldn't encourage it)
Topify is in closed invite-only beta right now, and is the brainchild of Ouriel Ohayon and @arikfr. You can get access to Topify with the following link for louisgray.com readers: http://snurl.com/doige.
You can find out more about Topify on their blog.