Comments on: The latest Twitter follow scam

By: manish pandey

manish pandey — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:43:43 +0000

I then block them at this point. I am with you in that I generally don’t care how others use twitter, and I for sure don’t care who follows me, but if you are taking up my time, making me look over your account to decide if you’re a worthwhile follower, when I’ve already decided you weren’t, well then,

By: Getting Followers On Twitter The Non-Douchebag Way » Boztopia.com

Getting Followers On Twitter The Non-Douchebag Way » Boztopia.com — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:39:51 +0000

[...] then unfollowing all of them once they’ve followed you back. Other wrong ways include the “optimization method” (I’ve seen a bunch of right-wingers do this to me), plus the various flat-out scams, [...]

By: Barbara

Barbara — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:32:51 +0000

I call these people “twitter bandits” because they steal little bits of my time and attention just to get me, and maybe some of my followers, to follow them, which is the real booty. There’s an inordinate number of “twitter experts” and “social media experts” who have been using social media just a month or two, and purchased a sytem to inflate their numbers and artificially inflate their online reputation. Over time, they’ll either all be following each other, or leave twitter altogether when the glitter of a new toy catches their attention.

By: ladymystery38

ladymystery38 — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:27:09 +0000

I just joined twitter about 2 weeks ago and Im glad I found this information. Thanks for the tip.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:50:59 +0000

It took me over a year to get 1,000 followers (and thousands of tweets), but I’m not following that many b/c I want quality relationships with other users, I want conversations & @ replies … Users who never respond to repeated tweets @ them directly, I’m usually going to unfollow them. On rare ocasions, I follow people who never say a word in return but thats b/c they have interesting things to say or “teach”

Again, I enjoy twitter for the interesting people I’ve met there. Especially the “mommy bloggers” (ugh) who are up at 2am like me & willing to chat about sick babies, fatigue, etc. Thank G-d for them, they have gotten me thru some rough patches many times over.

But I agree there should be some sort of ethical code. I don’t follow spanmers certainly, but I also don’t just follow someone b/c they followed me… TALK to me, I’ll be more likely to do so. This follow/unfollow crap is more than annoying, it’s plain rude & as you said, a game playing waste of my time.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

@Jasperblu

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:33:26 +0000

This is not new, it’s just happening i more often. People have been doing this for as long as the Twitter API has been available. It’s very effective in fact. You get roughly a 20% follow back and if your profile bio is pimping your website you can expect around a 15% page view. Not bad for 30 lines of code.

By: Karyn Romeis

Karyn Romeis — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:10:07 +0000

The mind boggles! Like Webkarnage, I don’t have enough followers to attract these, erm… mercenaries.

However, I have been garnering a lot of new followers lately. When I get a new follower, I go their bio page. If they haven’t added any kind of bio, I don’t follow them. If neither their bio nor their tweets seems to overlap with my sphere of interest, I don’t follow them. If, as someone else mentioned, I see about 2 tweets and they’re following screeds of people, I @spam them.

Over time, my list of followees is growing, too, and our conversations shift from the personal to the professional and back again with the same kind of ease as office chatter, which suits me, since I work alone. Many of my mutual followers (if that makes sense) are also Facebook friends and people I encounter at online conferences, many of us probably read each other’s blogs. In some cases, we have formed relationships that are sufficiently strong that I would invite them to my home if they were ever in this neck of the woods.

I wouldn’t dream of abusing that in search of numbers. But, then again, I’ve never really been motivated by numbers. It’s a shallow way to live.