Jul 24 2008

Twitter Updates Follower Counts… Twits Erupt!

By Jeremy Schoemaker 47 comments

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.

Ralph said on July 24th, 2008 at 10:38 am

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…

[Reply]
Chris Abernethy said on July 24th, 2008 at 10:40 am

I wonder why they did not build the system to omit banned accounts from follower counts initially?

[Reply]
john said on July 24th, 2008 at 10:41 am

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.

[Reply]
TEKFIRM said on July 24th, 2008 at 10:42 am

TWITTER - GOING DOWN DOWN DOWN

[Reply]
Hustle Strategy said on July 24th, 2008 at 10:54 am

i thought there was a twitter group on the show lost, and there was going to be some good content and revelations…

[Reply]
Hustle Strategy said on July 24th, 2008 at 10:55 am

must be a university thing. all the peeps i know don’t know of it.

[Reply]
ShoeMoney said on July 24th, 2008 at 10:59 am

omg speaking of lost… its not coming back until feb =(

[Reply]
big jason said on July 24th, 2008 at 11:12 am

this is all problogger’s fault. that damn social media lovein!!!!!

[Reply]
JoLynn Braley said on July 24th, 2008 at 11:22 am

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.

[Reply]
Agent Magenta said on July 24th, 2008 at 11:57 am

Hmmm -everyone seems to be obsessed with stats and counters at the moment! Does it really matter how many followers you have?

[Reply]
Agent Magenta said on July 24th, 2008 at 11:59 am

I’m a thirty something so I guess that’s why I’m not twittering.

[Reply]
twitturls said on July 24th, 2008 at 12:05 pm

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.

[Reply]
the Story Lady said on July 24th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

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

[Reply]
Bryn Youngblut said on July 24th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

If people really care THAT much then they have a problem.

[Reply]
OnlineGodfahter said on July 24th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

interesting.

[Reply]
Rekzai said on July 24th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

Aslong as I have at least one person willing to follow my sorry excuse for tweets im happy

[Reply]
Patrick said on July 24th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

Why don’t they remove spammers when they ban them??

[Reply]
Ralph said on July 24th, 2008 at 12:39 pm

Holy ass… are you serious? I swear, this show’s schedule is so f’d up.

[Reply]
Craig said on July 24th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

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?

[Reply]
Paul said on July 24th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

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

[Reply]
TEKFIRM said on July 24th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

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

[Reply]
Hustle Strategy said on July 24th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

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.

[Reply]
meethere said on July 24th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

I had the same issues
hope it gets solved soon

[Reply]
Taylor said on July 24th, 2008 at 3:35 pm

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

[Reply]
Movies said on July 24th, 2008 at 3:55 pm

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.

[Reply]
Chip said on July 24th, 2008 at 5:13 pm

I’m still not on Twitter. I don’t have the time to update it so often. Is it really that helpful?

[Reply]
seven grain salad said on July 24th, 2008 at 5:35 pm

Does Twitter have any productive uses?

[Reply]
Zak Show said on July 24th, 2008 at 6:23 pm

Twitter is going up for me, but I don’t have many followers, I just started building my list.

[Reply]
Zak Show said on July 24th, 2008 at 6:25 pm

I care about ” lost ” more than I care about Twitter.

[Reply]
Zak Show said on July 24th, 2008 at 6:27 pm

yeah, it’s a sad news as the 4th season of Prison Break.

[Reply]
Zak Show said on July 24th, 2008 at 6:41 pm

Same question here!

[Reply]
shaffir said on July 24th, 2008 at 8:24 pm

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

[Reply]
SEI Design Group said on July 24th, 2008 at 8:32 pm

Newer user and found it annoying to set up following again.

[Reply]
Enkay Blog said on July 24th, 2008 at 10:51 pm

I didn’t know of this before. Im still fairly new to twitter so I didnt notice a change.

[Reply]
Enkay Blog said on July 24th, 2008 at 10:52 pm

I think they just didn’t realize that could be an issue specially if someone has a lot of followers.

[Reply]
Dick said on July 25th, 2008 at 6:21 am

Interesting? I think this is not news to many people like it.

[Reply]
China Business Watch said on July 25th, 2008 at 10:34 am

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.

[Reply]
Wesley said on July 25th, 2008 at 5:45 pm

Twitter management is a joke.

[Reply]
Тамада said on July 25th, 2008 at 9:22 pm

very very good ))))

[Reply]
Тамада said on July 25th, 2008 at 9:23 pm

Newer user and found it annoying to set up following again.

[Reply]
Sohan said on July 25th, 2008 at 10:07 pm

Twitter management could do with some new servers too. Slow as hell for me, nothing major but their scripts deffo need optimizing.

[Reply]
Sohan said on July 25th, 2008 at 10:07 pm

Inflated numbers lol.

[Reply]
Erica DeWolf said on July 26th, 2008 at 11:16 pm

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…

[Reply]
Erica DeWolf said on July 26th, 2008 at 11:17 pm

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.

[Reply]
Goran Website said on July 27th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

people will always find a way around everything, developers cant think about it all. Spam will always be.

[Reply]
Twitter issues and spam said on July 24th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

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MyTweeple.com - Twitter Tool of the Day. » There’s a Blog in my Soup said on August 26th, 2008 at 10:57 am

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