Dear Twitter, Please Stop the Following Madness
Each day I pay attention to my following on Twitter. Each and every member that follows me used to mean something. I built my following organically, by gaining favor with one follower at a time.
Not anymore. Now it’s ridiculous… auto-follow tides are being executed minute by minute. I could go on Twitter today and find a couple hundred scammers that will get you up over 10,000 followers in a matter of days. Twitter must be straining under the extraordinary weight of these numbers.
I don’t know what compels someone to cheat the numbers to get empty eyeballs. What kind of ego do you need to have to go down that road? I’m not sure but it really irritates me. My 5,000 followers used to mean something. Now I’m well over 6,000… but many of the new followers are auto-follow phonies.
These auto-follow systems must be operating external to Twitter, so it should be easy to identify and block them. Twitter should do it right now – not only to rid itself of phony inflated following counts, but to ease the strain that all these followers must be doing to impact Twitter’s performance for the rest of us who appreciate their service.
Please Twitter… do something about it! They are ruining your application.