direct messages

Updated Nov 22 2011:

I’ve been on Twitter for a few years (@DaveFowler) and I’ve always found it a pain to delete all of my DM’s in one go.

For a while the only free option to delete all direct messages on Twitter all at once was a program called Twitter Whacker but it’s no longer an option since Twitter changed its API.

This meant the easiest way to get rid of DMs was to log in to either HootSuite or TweetDeck and delete the direct messages one at a time.

It’s a pain doing it that way but it’s still better than deleting them directly from the Twitter interface which takes 3 clicks! Not fun if you’ve got 100′s of messages!

There are plenty of paid services that will do mass deleting for you, but that’s not an attractive option for most people.

So, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for another free solution and I’ve finally found it.

The Solution:

Social Oomph has a free to use tool to delete all Twitter Direct messages from your DM inbox.

All you have to do is sign up for a free account (it’s painless, I promise) and then you can delete all your messages in one go.

Here’s a screenshot of the DM delete page and you’ll notice my Twitter account name shown there.

You have the option to delete all received DMs, DM older than 7 days or DMs older than 30 days.

What it won’t do though is delete sent DMs, you still have to do those yourself.

The program schedules deletions, I have no idea what a typical turnaround time would be but all my 50 or so messages were deleted within 10 minutes.

It’s a good tool, but I confess I didn’t find the user experience particularly intuitive so here’s a quick guide…

Guide to using SocialOomph to delete DM’s

Once you’ve signed up for the account and logged in, you’ll need to link your Twitter account. You do this from the ‘Main Landing Page’

Select ‘Add A New Twitter Account’

Click the ‘Authorize Access’ button and enter your Twitter account details as requested.

You can then click ‘Direct Messages’ in the left sidebar and from the submenu click ‘Purge DM Inbox’. The rest is self explanatory.

Give it a try

Enjoy! And if you found this helpful, please Tweet it below. Thanks.

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