Most people join Twitter and would like to see their follower numbers increase. Not so yours truly, at least not based on the last four weeks (graphic from Twittercounter):



In July, Twitter sorted out its counting procedure, which was iffy for much of 2009. A little while later, I went through my account to block and delete certain followers for spamming (there is a school of thought that says having too many spammers follow you could lead to either hacking or account deletion). Yesterday, my friend Alex in Romania introduced me to Twitblock, which rates the Tweeters in one’s account based on how much they are likely to have spammed, and I found another 30 that had to go. (My Twitblock score, meanwhile, is a very commendable 0.)
   The spam and bot problem on Twitter has got worse: on the one hand, people are more savvy about these issues and are deleting the bots, but on the other hand, these false accounts seem to make up an increasing number of Twitter followers. In my case, I seem to be finding ways to reducing the Twitter follower-number: not what I necessarily want, as Twitter is a good networking tool, but at least I am ridding myself of the phony accounts. (Contrary to expectations, my follower number has indeed dropped since the screen shot above.) Posted by Jack Yan, 04:56  permalink

comments

Post a Comment  Links to this post