If you search for “lost followers” on twitter search right now you will see loads and loads of people crying about losing followers.
I got 3 emails from people this morning who said my follower count had dropped to 3900. I was like wtf last time I saw it, it was like 2500 ?!?. People are nuts about this Twitter stuff!
Twitter has confirmed there are some issues but its more related to losing people you follow. You can read the official update here
I talked to a developer there this morning via email and he said people should be ready for their follower count NOT to increase because they do not remove the spammers from the count when they ban them. The update yesterday was the first time they had tried removing the spammers from follower counts.
It will be interesting to see how it washes out.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
Images provided by ShutterStock
How I hacked your Facebook account 
9 Random Tips On Being A Successful Online Marketer 
How To Outsource Your Traffic Generation 
{ 47 comments… read them below or add one }
I have nno idea why, but I just kinda laughed at “lost followers”. I thought of like brainless, zombie things following people around aimlessly.
Alright, this was a constructive comment…
I wonder why they did not build the system to omit banned accounts from follower counts initially?
Its amazing the number of people that are on twitter. Half of all the twenty somethings I talk to use twitter more then they text now. Hopefully they get the bugs worked out.
TWITTER – GOING DOWN DOWN DOWN
i thought there was a twitter group on the show lost, and there was going to be some good content and revelations…
must be a university thing. all the peeps i know don’t know of it.
omg speaking of lost… its not coming back until feb =(
this is all problogger’s fault. that damn social media lovein!!!!!
I’ve also seen many comments in Twitter from folks who are quite upset about their # of followers – in my eyes, I’m more interested in the people I’m following than in who is following me, so I don’t want issues with side of it.
I like to meet quality, positive tweeples and converse, it’s not just a numbers game of followers to me, that’s how I look at it. It just depends on what you’re interested in…if you want to build relationships with people, or if you’re only interested in advertising your brand.
Hmmm -everyone seems to be obsessed with stats and counters at the moment! Does it really matter how many followers you have?
I’m a thirty something so I guess that’s why I’m not twittering.
On the spam front, it’d be nice if the API allowed you to report spammers. Most of the code on twitturls is there to detect and remove spam from the incoming timeline. Currently we just ban and block internally but it’d be nice to report this stuff back to the source.
quality is key, not quantity anyway. I’d rather have less people who are responsive than a pile of stalkers.
The Story Lady
twitter.com/thestorylady if you want to follow me – LOL
If people really care THAT much then they have a problem.
interesting.
Aslong as I have at least one person willing to follow my sorry excuse for tweets im happy
Why don’t they remove spammers when they ban them??
Holy ass… are you serious? I swear, this show’s schedule is so f’d up.
Seems to be like one just big popularity contest to see who can get the most followers, wouldn’t these complainers want an accurate count anyway?
Twitter was not ready for the masses when they started this thing. This is why I think they are having so many problems. Though I do not use the service I still think it is a pronominal tool. Hope it all works out for them! Good luck Tweet Tweet
on their site they mention : Be Nice to the Servers Updated July 7, 2008 , its not their fault , you guys are just not nice to the servers
I am sure they will skip a few weeks here and there… Mad Men is coming on soon though. Prison Break I guess just stopped… Their schedule is too messed up to even understand.
I had the same issues
hope it gets solved soon
I was mad that I lost who I was following .. I add people that look interesting on other peoples sites, how am I supposed to find all of them again? Now I have to go back to Shoemoney’s page and follow who he follows again
Twitter is a massive waste of time and human energy if you ask me. I feel bad for anyone misguided enough to believe it is anything more then a more annoying chat client.
I’m still not on Twitter. I don’t have the time to update it so often. Is it really that helpful?
Does Twitter have any productive uses?
Twitter is going up for me, but I don’t have many followers, I just started building my list.
I care about ” lost ” more than I care about Twitter.
yeah, it’s a sad news as the 4th season of Prison Break.
Same question here!
I had over 800 but my follower is about 2++ that’s rips but if this happen it may result in losing a lot of followers
http://gadget-junction.blogspot.com
Newer user and found it annoying to set up following again.
I didn’t know of this before. Im still fairly new to twitter so I didnt notice a change.
I think they just didn’t realize that could be an issue specially if someone has a lot of followers.
Interesting? I think this is not news to many people like it.
your question is a good one. i find Twitter has quite a lot of info noise. but it has some productive value for careful users.
Twitter management is a joke.
very very good ))))
Newer user and found it annoying to set up following again.
Twitter management could do with some new servers too. Slow as hell for me, nothing major but their scripts deffo need optimizing.
Inflated numbers lol.
I just started using Twitter- and yet its having all of these problems…contemplating moving to Plurk right away before I get all comfortable with Twitter…
I was in the same boat- had to search through my trash in my email to find out who was following me…and then they restored all my followers and all the “newer” ones I had had disappeared. Annoying.
people will always find a way around everything, developers cant think about it all. Spam will always be.
But the point is this: why does twitter care who is following me? If spammers wanna follow, let em. And, if I’m so, er, stupid that I wanna follow spammers, the choice should be mine. Ultimately, unless twitter BG checks all 18 million+ users, there is no way for them to know whom I WANT to follow and whom I don’t.
Some just have to keep trying to fix what ain’t broke…
Food for thought. Thank you, something to talk about with my brother, he’s very into this.