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Twitter Updates Follower Counts… Twits Erupt!

Posted July 24th, 2008 by Jeremy Schoemaker

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.

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49 comments. What say you?

  1. Good Comment?
    frank1569

    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…

  2. Good Comment?
    Goran Website

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

  3. Good Comment?
    Erica DeWolf

    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.

  4. Good Comment?
    Erica DeWolf

    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…

  5. Good Comment?
    Sohan

    Inflated numbers lol.

  6. Good Comment?
    Sohan

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

  7. Good Comment?
    Тамада

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

  8. Good Comment?
    Тамада

    very very good ))))

  9. Good Comment?
    Wesley

    Twitter management is a joke.

  10. Good Comment?
    China Business Watch

    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.

  11. Good Comment?
    Dick

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

  12. Good Comment?
    Enkay Blog

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

  13. Good Comment?
    Enkay Blog

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

  14. Good Comment?
    SEI Design Group

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

  15. Good Comment?
    shaffir

    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

  16. Good Comment?
    Zak Show

    Same question here!

  17. Good Comment?
    Zak Show

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

  18. Good Comment?
    Zak Show

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

  19. Good Comment?
    Zak Show

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

  20. Good Comment?
    seven grain salad

    Does Twitter have any productive uses?

  21. Good Comment?
    Chip

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

  22. Good Comment?
    Movies

    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.

  23. Good Comment?
    Taylor

    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 :-)

  24. Good Comment?
    meethere

    I had the same issues
    hope it gets solved soon :)

  25. Good Comment?
    Hustle Strategy

    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.

  26. Good Comment?
    TEKFIRM

    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

  27. Good Comment?
    Paul

    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

  28. Good Comment?
    Craig

    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?

  29. Good Comment?
    Ralph

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

  30. Good Comment?
    Patrick

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

  31. Good Comment?
    Rekzai

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

  32. Good Comment?
    OnlineGodfahter

    interesting.

  33. Good Comment?
    Bryn Youngblut

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

  34. Good Comment?
    the Story Lady

    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

  35. Good Comment?
    twitturls

    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.

  36. Good Comment?
    Agent Magenta

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

  37. Good Comment?
    Agent Magenta

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

  38. Good Comment?
    JoLynn Braley

    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.

  39. Good Comment?
    big jason

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

  40. Good Comment?
    ShoeMoney

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

  41. Good Comment?
    Hustle Strategy

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

  42. Good Comment?
    Hustle Strategy

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

  43. Good Comment?
    TEKFIRM

    TWITTER – GOING DOWN DOWN DOWN

  44. Good Comment?
    john

    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.

  45. Good Comment?
    Chris Abernethy

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

  46. Good Comment?
    Ralph

    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…

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