When I logged into Twitter this morning I was happy to see that the number I was following was finally over 2000 – until I realized I didn’t follow those additional Tweeters. Just to be certain I did not follow anyone else today. My followers were sitting at 2009 this morning.
Now they are at 2018 and I didn’t follow any of those nine new Twitter users. There are three obvious potential causes:
- Twitter did it for me
- Someone has hacked my Twitter account
- Some third party tool is following people for me
Which do you think is most likely? My bet would be this one:
Twitter is auto-following Twitter users in our accounts
Why you may ask? Because it makes the most sense and they have a strong motive. Twitter could be selling followers to those willing to pay for the eyeballs. Even if they aren’t doing it now it would make sense that they may start doing this in the future.
I would love to know who those eight new people I’m following are. SocialToo (Twitter) sends me a daily email with who follows me and who unfollows me. Does anyone know of a Twitter app that can tell us?
Watch the number of Tweeters showing in Twitter following and see if it goes up when you’re not following. Then let us know. It would be very interesting to see how widespread this is.
Gail Gardner
i love socialtoo coz it of its auto-following..great app
wny would love you to read ..Glass Block Window Showers
Using Twitter for business is increasingly becoming a new trend. People feel relaxed in boosting their business through Twitter.thanks for sharing your ideas and your knowledge with the readers.
Twitter has been very helpful to my business. I have been able to link with so many people. I have new customers for my product, and I have been able to talk with the decision makers for companies just from using Twitter.
lets keep following and tweeting.
thanks for good information here.
I am sooo confused about twitter!
I am just starting to understand the difference between followers and following, but feel totally helpless on the matter. I also have noticed that our follow number has changed, but I don’t have a clue why.
I love using twitter to promote my business. One tool I found very helpful was huitter to unfollow any unmutuals. This helped me everytime I reached the 2000 mark. I am going to have to try socialtoo as well.
Hi Steve,
I wish I had know about that when I was hitting 2000 every day! What a headache that was. Once I got past it I haven’t had to unfollow anyone. There are so many Twitter apps now who can keep up with them all?
Have you tried targeting specific year, make, models for your major product offerings? That can really work in ppc and would work in organic search too. More on that in my latest post featured in CommentLuv in this reply.
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@felix Questions are always welcome here even if they are outside the current discussion. How many followers are best depends on what you’re doing with your Twitter account. It is far better to have only those followers interested in what you are Tweeting.
I have an account for @GrowMap in which I followed all the power bloggers, Internet Marketers and anyone who chooses to follow me. I consider that my power account and in it the more followers the better.
I also manage other small Twitter accounts. One is @NoBogies and in that account we only follow golfers. NoBogies is a niche site that offers great content and products for those interested in golf.
Another is @ExecGifts and in that one we follow those interested in gifts, especially Wedding Planners and printers who sell business cards (because @ExecGifts sells an enormous selection of business card holders).
It isn’t as simple as some might think to use Twitter. One researcher estimated that a Tweet only lasts about five minutes and only a very small fraction of your followers is likely to see it even if it gets retweeted.
Many more Twitter users are sophisticated enough to use Twitter search to seek out information they’re interested in. If your potential readers / clients are likely to use search so much the better for your efforts.
Check out the FriendFeed Twitter Quick Start post I did that I linked to the word GrowMap just above this comment. It contains information and links to other posts about how to follow Twitter users in a specific niche or geographic location. That will work best for most.
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I don’t know if my question will be out of the topic already: well, is there an advantage if you have thousand of twitters to follow or is just a number?
@Kai Lo It does look like SocialToo was FINALLY able to auto-follow because I finally got close enough to 2000 to get past that limit. I did turn it off.
I maintain that it is likely that Twitter will sell followers in the future. They already suggest followers to new Twitter users which will be far better for those that get suggested until Twitter lets you choose your niche.
If Twitter would let new users select their favorite niches and offer them the most active Tweeters who share about THAT they would be making an excellent step in the right direction.
For those who may be interested I linked a post to the word GrowMap above that contains more detail about making Social Networking sites more valuable.
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You didn’t get hacked. You simply signed up for something like SocialToo, and checked off auto-follow options. It might have been on auto-follow automatically. Just turn it off yourself. Twitter itself won’t force you to follow anyone.
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@Tom You CAN keep following past 2000. You just can’t go beyond 2000 until you have somewhere around 1800 followers. Until I hit 2000 I had to unfollow some to follow new followers. Since I passed 2000 I can follow everyone who follows me without doing that. (Thank goodness!)
It is the ratio that does that; however, getting past 2000 really made a difference in the time managing Twitter cost me in the @GrowMap account.
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I can’t understand why there’s a 2000 cap on twitter. They should make it so that as long as your followers/following ratio is more than 1:2 you should be able to follow whoever you want.
@Dennis You may want to consider alternatives to AdSense. Yes, they do have a ton of searches; however, they also want to be exclusive (read the TOS carefully).
And we already know that they suspend blogs without giving any specific reason. I still haven’t come across any instances where appealing made any difference or they even gave a real reason.
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Not only thst, but you must update the policy whether you are using the new service or not.
I don’t personally care just yet, as I am not currently using adsense anywhere. If/when I do, I’ll just install a clean policy from the get-go.
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@Dennis I assure you that most people would never notice. Anyone following as many as I do would be challenged to figure out who they followed for you.
BTW, did you see that ALL AdSense users must update their privacy policies by April 8, 2009? I can’t remember if I saw a comment from you on that post of Sire’s or not.
I would think if twitter started auto following, there would be such a backlash they’d find out fast it is not in the best interest.
Be on the lookout for an upcoming post where I’ll be looking for opinions on twitter apps. 🙂
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Do You Charge For Blog Reviews?
@Brian I’m waiting until I can tell for sure one way or the other. It is complicated in my GrowMap account because the number I am following stays at their artificial maximum limit. I’ll start writing down the numbers I’m following and see if it creeps up even with Social Too turned off.
Yes there are dozens of third party Twitter apps. The ones I use most often are Tweetburner, Twurl, SocialToo and FriendorFollow. I especially like Tweetburner because I can see how popular particular Tweets are.
Did you check out the Twitter FriendFeed Quick Start post? I’ve linked it at the top of this comment to make it easy for you to find.
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Hi Growmap, I’m fairly new too Twitter but I really like it. It looks like it’s been a couple of days so have you figured out if Twitter is auto-following yet?
It looks like everyone likes socialtoo.com so I’ll check that out. I haven’t heard of it before now. There are so many Twitter tools it’s overwhelming to know what to try. I would like a tool that sends a ‘thank you for following’ but I’m not sure what to use.
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@Jesse Thanks for coming by with answers so quickly. It definitely could have been Social Too; however, I still think this is coming (Twitter selling followers) if it isn’t already here.
Yes, they do eventually suspend them. If I weren’t stuck at the limit I wouldn’t care if they were following. Since I am I want to keep those slots available for following real followers.
@Lara Welcome to GrowMap. Yes, Social Too is valuable to me mostly because of the Twitter limits. I use it to unfollow those who unfollow me to free up room for new followers. I just changed the settings to automatically do that for me.
I also use FriendorFollow for the same purpose: to make room to follow new followers. Since you’re in Web Design and SEO you’ll appreciate that we’re a dofollow blog. Feel free to add links to any related posts you may have in similar posts here.
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Hi,
I am also using socialtoo.com for twitter account automization, It’s really awesome tool we can automate almost every thing. i.e scheduling tweets, @replies, automatically following our followers.
I love this tool…
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@Jesse I located the option to turn off auto-following primarily because even though I like the idea:
1) I want to find out if that IS why my following jumped
and
2) I block followers who are SPAMmers and I have to know who the new followers ARE and look at their profiles to find that out.
I may turn it back on once I verify it was Social Too who followed them for me. It would be great if you could add a section to the daily emails indicating who we follow manually and who Social Too follows for us. That way we can review them and block the SPAM.
I just checked my latest followers and blocked these three:
tinaroom, bmbjnico, SherylS142. For those who wonder what my criterion are for blocking Twitter users here they are:
1) They’re following far more than follow them
2) Their profile goes to a sales page
If you want to eliminate some you may already be following look for images of scantily clad women (and sometimes men). The often use numbers in their user names.
@Jesse Yes I’m talking about that account; however, every day I have tons of new followers that I can’t follow until I unfollow some first (because of the 2000 limit).
It could be that passing that limit has allowed SocialToo to follow some of them. I have never noticed it autofollowing before. Could the Social Too setting have changed? (I haven’t changed it manually.)
What happens if Social Too can’t autofollow because of the Twitter limits? Does it only try once and quit or does it keep trying?
1) I’m 90% sure that is why your friend numbers jumped.
2) We’ll have some more features hopefully soon which will enable you to more selectively, in bulk, choose who you want to follow and weed out spammers. We’ll also integrate more of this into the automated processes as well. I find that by the time we catch most of those, Twitter suspends the accounts anyways.
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Yes, it wasn’t following because of the 2,000 limit. It stays on regardless if it can follow people or not, but as soon as it can follow people again it will start following again.
Jesse Stay’s last blog post..Stop the Robots With @endautodms
Is this for your GrowMap account? I’m noticing you have auto-follow enabled through SocialToo – this is an option when you sign up and under your preferences. To turn it off you can uncheck the box. That’s probably why you followed those 9 new followers.
Jesse Stay
CEO, SocialToo.com