Comment 2 for bug 306624

I don't think it's possible mute without unfollow until now, but maybe muuter [1] it's the service for this request. Here's the explanation of muuter that it's described on its Web:

"When you mute someone here on muuter, what really happens is this: 1) We save your request on our database 2) We send a command to Twitter so you stop following that person 3) When your set time passes, we send another command to Twitter so you start following that person again."

"There's no other way to do this as of July 5th, 2009. Believe us, we thought about this long and hard."

Cheers!

Fernando C. Estrada

[1] http://muuter.com/