Twitter Anti-Spam Bot Punishes Community Managers and Causes Follower Counts to Drop
Did you notice a big drop in your Twitter follower numbers yesterday? It seems that the Twitter team recently decided to step up their Twitter spammer detection, and, in typical Twitter fashion, their algorithm sent the service haywire, leading to yet another sighting of the Fail Whale while the issue was resolved. Meanwhile, Twitterers everywhere were in an uproar over their lost follower counts.
Earlier this week, ZDNet reported that many Twitter users were no longer able to add followers thanks to the new limits put in place to discourage spamming. Unfortunately, this action caused some major trouble for community managers, like Pandora's Lucia Willow, for example, who stated her case over on Get Satisfaction. In addition to Pandora, Comcast, Jet Blue, and several others were also affected. In order to add new followers, they had to delete older ones - not a good idea for those that want to stay tuned into their community.
In addition to causing problems for community managers, there were even some cases of follower limits placed on those that had a 1:1 Twitter ratio. And although Twitter has not confirmed the cause of the dropped follower counts, it's likely that the the new anti-spam bot is to blame.
As we wrote earlier this year, many companies are using Twitter for customer service, meaning that they will be following people at higher rates than regular Twitter users due to the fact that they follow back those that follow them. This is certainly a legitimate way to use the service and one that should not be punished through a blind algorithm that can't distinguish a community manager from a spammer.
While we appreciate the fact that the Twitter team is fighting the spam problem (an "ongoing battle," says Biz Stone), you would think that they would have considered this potential ramification to implementing their new pattern-detecting technology. It's almost as if Twitter themselves do not even know what would constitute someone being a spammer. If that's the case, they should ask the community for guidance before rolling out a brand new anti-spam bot.
Ironically, in the midst of these issues, a post on the Twitter Blog on Wednesday was about a new Twitter app, TwitterCounter, that lets you track the number of followers you have on Twitter.
All we can say about that is...well...this may have not been the best time to release that news.
Were you affected by the follower limits? Tell us your story in the comments (or just share your thoughts on this issue!)
Comments
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Biz lost some :)
http://www.twittercounter.com/biz
Posted by: Mathys | July 24, 2008 7:05 AM
This is a well written post, but for efficiency's sake when trying to understand the "why", I offer this:
http://twitter.com/al3x/statuses/826317860
Posted by: Todd | July 24, 2008 7:21 AM
I hope they'll make it work.
we don't want any spam at http://twithire.com
Posted by: TwitHire | July 24, 2008 7:25 AM
My Twitter account for EditMe was only created a few days ago. Even with relatively low following/follower numbers, Twitter lost most of them. I hadn't heard about the spam bot, but this post was in the Twitter status feed, which seems to offer an explanation that doesn't mention the spam bot:
http://status.twitter.com/post/43329900/updated-follower-following-counts
Posted by: Matt Wiseley | July 24, 2008 7:31 AM
When I started Twitter this morning my Followers and Following counts were 0 but the avatar gallery contained the same mug shots. No apparent affect on messages from the Following folks, but not confirmed as yet.
--rj
Posted by: Roger Jennings | July 24, 2008 7:38 AM
I have no idea about the truth of the explanation that twitter had announced for 2 times. (2. one published three hours later) because rather than count or companies i most care about people i've lost. There is no reason like a spam. This is a big "error" but they don't even try to explain it like that..
Just say everything will be ok those counts are not real time and 2 hours later counting is done..
huh... what can i say?
you just correctly count the last 15 people that left after the "error" :)
Posted by: Jnbn | July 24, 2008 8:02 AM
Friends (NOT spammers, nor behaving like spammers) new to Twitter lost 82% and 97% of their followers about 14 hours after status.twitter saying the problem would be resolved in "several" hours. Lost many people that have had conversations with, etc. These were lost only after Twitter said they were "restoring" followers. These were removed in the the process of restoring, in other words.
So there are reduced users after angry people leave. And reduced followers. This means reduced load, and presumably more uptime. It's a slash and burn tactic, sure, but Twitter has seriously had it's back to the wall. How else can they reduce the load while they rework the system? They can just say there's a new Sheriff in town and we all have to follow new rules, sorry, it's for the greater good. And they'll tell us it's our problem to restore followers using the new rules.
Posted by: Dave L | July 24, 2008 8:06 AM
btw, i still have 6 mugshots after adding 20 of my friends back
Posted by: Jnbn | July 24, 2008 8:08 AM
Lost like 40% of my followers and 30% of people I used to follow...
Heading to identi.ca :(
Posted by: Fabrice Epelboin | July 24, 2008 8:11 AM
Twitter: the only company in the world more tarded than O2 or Carphone Warehouse. God give me strength.
Posted by: me | July 24, 2008 8:16 AM
Twitter would not allow me to add any new followers for several days. Didn't matter how many times I had to refresh the screen, still received the error notice. From the day I began using Twitter (several months ago) whenever I followed anyone, I had to always refresh the screen before the screen changed to following.
Now as of last night, I lost more than 1,000 people that I was following and about 900 of my followers. Since Twitter does not even alphabetize the followers by screen names, it is very difficult to remember who you had and who you didn't have; only the numbers are easily remembered.
It would be a wonderful tool if Twitter would work with its community - make it easy to do business with them (gee does that sound suspiciously like a marketing tactic?), give us a way to easily find one of our followers (my suggestion of alphabetical order) and a unique way to back up our followers/following in case a tragedy such as this would occur again!
I love to Twitter and I hope the service comes back into full service quickly.
Posted by: Carol Deckert | July 24, 2008 8:32 AM
Perhaps Twitter hired some former Big Huge Telecomm Whose Logo Was The Death Star managers for quality assurance?
Barbara
Posted by: Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach | July 24, 2008 8:33 AM
I'm so done with twitter.
Posted by: Big Dan | July 24, 2008 8:37 AM
If twitter is not careful, they may kiss themselves goodbye, since we really do want the benefits of a twitter relationship with our customers, friends and prospects. If a bot can arbitrarily delete half your followers and not say one thing to you about it, where does that help instill confidence in the service?
Personally, I was not affected by spam on twitter, since the unfollow button is so easy to hit whenever someone stops adding value to the conversation!
I only wish twitter would tell you when people stop following you, so that you can figure out if you said something that caused the mass exodus!
Posted by: Micheal Savoie | July 24, 2008 8:38 AM
Aw come on you guys, you haven't lost any data!
It's just isn't being read and displayed correctly. I am all for teasing everyone at Obvious, but this isn't any reason to leave Twitter.
"Twitter is the Ralph Wiggum of Social Networks"
Posted by: Todd | July 24, 2008 8:40 AM
I'm not entirely convinced that the current problem is related to the attempt to stop spammers unless something went horribly awry. I save all my email and did a spot check on emails about new followers. I have found I am no longer being followed or following anyone added between 7/6 - 7/21. I don't have huge numbers so this wasn't that much work to go through. It seems as if that we were rolled back to a two week old version of the database.
Posted by: Kim Woodbridge | July 24, 2008 9:00 AM
@Todd
Twitter is the Timmy of social networks more like.
** Timmeh! **
Posted by: me | July 24, 2008 9:06 AM
WOW! This just keeps gettin' deeper and deeper. More drama than a soap opera -
I just thought Twitter did it to reduce the load on their server and cut downtime -
Posted by: MikeRogers | July 24, 2008 9:09 AM
Wow. Lost followers and following. I have worked so hard to follow people I respected and learn from. This really bites. I hope it's just a data pull mistake that will be restored. The worst part though, is not being able to directly message people who you used to be able to. This is really a bummer. My numbers were only 250 and 350. So, I don't know how I was affected by this unless the people who I was following lost me as a follower?? It's all so confusing.
Why can't they leave spam control in the hands of the Twitter users? I look at every single person I consider following to note their usage patterns. Then I decide if I want to follow them. Then, it's always in my power, if they become abusive, to "unfollow" them. Big deal, so I have to do a little leg work to "unfollow" them. It would be easier if the follower list was alphabetized, like mentioned in an earlier comment.
This is all too bad. To me, it was an excellent communication means and learning tool. I have gotten much value out of being a follower to some great industry experts, as well as aspiring marketers.
I'm not going anywhere unless they actually do force me to give up followers in order to add new followers. I won't be a party to that kind of people brokering.
Wow. Never wrote such a controversial opinion. I hope I don't get alot of flack. :) -- Wendy J. Roan
Posted by: WendyJRoan | July 24, 2008 9:18 AM
I heard about all this on Plurk from some people who were really mad about it. Some of them were even stopped from posting because they supposedly reached their limit. Wow! Not a good move on Twitter's part at all.
Posted by: Lin | July 24, 2008 9:20 AM
@Todd How do you know that no data was lost? (Hoping you have inside info to back that up.) That's not been my experience/impression, but I'm hopeful that you're right.
My story...
Last night, I saw what Roger Jennings saw; bad stat counts but I was still able to see the mug shots of those I followed and read their tweets from my /home page.
Today, I had 1 follower and was following 1 person! My /home page had only my tweets. The Replies tab had the replies I'd received.
A few hours later I gave up and started adding back those I follow. Those who follow me? I'm not even sure they've noticed I'm gone yet. I've gone to some of their pages and it looks like they're still following tons of people.
Best I can tell, twitter lost the last 3 weeks of followers/following for me. Since those I follow have been with twitter actively for quite some time, they have hundreds in their lists, so I'm easily not missed by them.
I'd be thrilled to see my followers restored, but I'm not counting on it.
If I'd been using it long enough to acquire more than 20 followers I'd upset. Right now, I don't really care; I'm just sharing my story.
~Angela
Posted by: ~Angela | July 24, 2008 9:31 AM
First, in response to Kim's statement about losing followers that were added between 7/6 - 7/21. With all due respect Kim, I don't think that's the whole problem.
I've lost followers and been removed from the followers list of people that I've been following since I joined Twitter in May, yet many new folks that have started following me in just the past 2 days are still on my list.
Second, to find most of your missing followers go to http://www.mytweeple.com DO NOT choose the sync with Twitter option. It will list your followers and those you have been following in alphabetic order, but even if it says its a mutual follow you should click the avatars to be sure.
Third, I understand that Twitter is going through growing pains and trying to better the service, but since many companies use Twitter to keep in contact with their customers or offer customer support, this latest "oops" is serious to a lot of folks livelihoods.
In my opinion it is IMPOSSIBLE to "spam Twitter", because I can CHOOSE to not follow or block those that abuse the service.
If more of us blocked the spambots, instead of being concerned about the "prestige" that having a large amount of followers showing on your profile page gives to our "social reputation", we wouldn't need Twitter to take care of it for us.
Sharon McPherson
@SharonMcP
Posted by: Sharon McPherson | July 24, 2008 9:40 AM
I lost all my followers and followies, I only started using twitter like a month ago. Very annoyed to say the least!
Posted by: metaeuphoria | July 24, 2008 9:49 AM
Lost them all... :(
Posted by: Agelli | July 24, 2008 9:56 AM
I'm over twitter. It was fun for quite awhile, I tried to be supportive, wrote some neat toys, but have really soured on it the past couple of weeks. The down time in May/June did not bother me, but the random add/drop of features, the increasing rather than decreasing data quality issues have finally managed to push me away. Not to pownce, friendfeed, or the other knockoffs, just away in general.
Posted by: epc
|
July 24, 2008 10:13 AM
Lost all my followers! And I hand picked them all.
Posted by: Matt | July 24, 2008 10:20 AM
@Angela
Consult the Twitter FAQs at the following URL:
http://www.thesimpsonsquotes.com/characters/ralph-wiggum-quotes.html
Posted by: Todd | July 24, 2008 10:21 AM
Maybe twitter should of created a new feature and shown people who might of been spammers.
Posted by: Darren | July 24, 2008 10:35 AM
leaked!
twitter's new business model
http://www.simplebucket.com/p/mdm0odg
Posted by: Ace | July 24, 2008 10:41 AM
I'm a relatively new user of Twitter and only had a small handful or followers and only followed a few as well. My experience with twitter has been frustrating at best. And now, I have lost it all. Why doesn't one of the other similar services step up and wipe twitter off the map.
Posted by: Stephen Shelton
|
July 24, 2008 11:08 AM
@SharonMcP
thanks for the additional info. I don't know that it was only two weeks in July that were lost but that is the first consistency I could find with a quick check this morning. I did lose some followers in late May/early June but it was only a couple and I had no way of knowing if they maybe just decided not to follow me anymore ;-)
Posted by: Kim Woodbridge | July 24, 2008 11:44 AM
Lost 95% of our followers and the people we were following... grrr!
Posted by: foodgawker | July 24, 2008 11:44 AM
Do the spammers who have a ratio like:
Following 61,541
Followers, 3
...really think their "message" is getting through to anyone? Seriously? No one is reading what they are writing. I thought spammers were supposed to be so clever.
Posted by: Todd | July 24, 2008 12:02 PM
perdi meuz colegues, como fas/!
Posted by: naoadianta | July 24, 2008 12:02 PM
In the past two days I've added 40-50 people - I'm community manager at needish.com - and had a moment of panic when I saw I'd lost many of them. It's hard to grow a start-up when one of the tools you're using randomly decides to undo the advances you've made! Glad to see it should fix itself *fingers crossed*
Posted by: Emily Williams | July 24, 2008 12:03 PM
stoners, i think, are the only valley people who function like this
Posted by: gregory | July 24, 2008 12:38 PM
I lost almost all the folks I follow overnight. I believe that this is a hiccup and twitter team is working hard on restoring the relationships.
Posted by: Vic Podcaster | July 24, 2008 12:42 PM
twitter needs a self-reset more often. keeps the noise levels down.
Posted by: dekay
|
July 24, 2008 1:04 PM
Stephen, in answer to your question, Twitter is bad, but the competitors are worse.
Posted by: Ontario Emperor
|
July 24, 2008 1:09 PM
For the last month I've been actively using Twitter and it became the centre of my networking activities. I grew to about 670 followers and was following 630 myself, so aprox a 1:1 ratio. Then I wake up this morning to find my Twitter stats to be this:
# Following: 64
# Followers: 154
If this is not fixed within the next few days I will move on to a different platform. I find it appaling that Twitter thinks their users are incapable of making the decision to follow someone back. Isn't this spam protection enough?
Posted by: Eiso Kant | July 24, 2008 1:46 PM
I just joined twitter on monday and was following 16 and followed by 9. Lost them all, although I have their avatars. I guess I'm a spammer, huh?
Posted by: Bill Hall | July 24, 2008 2:46 PM
My Followed and Following counts dropped to 0 (count 'em, zero, nada, nyet) last night. Finally reconstructed my Following list. Dunno what will happen to followed.
--rj
Posted by: Roger Jennings | July 24, 2008 3:31 PM
Since nobody else has mentioned this yet, I'll point out that Twitter is saying that there is no connection between the anti-spam bot and the problem with the Following / Followers numbers.
http://blog.twitter.com/2008/07/where-are-my-followers.html
Posted by: mdoeff.myopenid.com
|
July 24, 2008 4:00 PM
If you Google " cache:http://twitter.com/username " you might be able to get a cached version of your profile page and then can compare the following list to the list you currently have on your profile and can find missing people there.
Posted by: Holli | July 24, 2008 4:06 PM
MarsPhoenix (Nasa's Phoenix Explorer twitter account) was affected, too:
http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix/statuses/867427178
"Whoa, 3000 of you simply disppeared! It's like you dropped off Earth or something."
Posted by: Tim | July 24, 2008 5:10 PM
I appreciate some of the sympathy expressed to Twitter for their recent problems. I'm certain that they are all good, hard working people.
They problem, however, is that Twitter is valuable because of the people - NOT the service. Though many have argued that Twitter is 'free,' I'd like to point out that Twitter has raised millions in VC.
The more time I spend on Twitter, the less time I spend on any number of other sites. WE give Twitter value - not the feature set. I, as well as my network, am on Twitter because of the people. Twitter has raised and is making money based on the value we give it.
Posted by: Dan Patterson | July 25, 2008 6:46 AM
All counts have been restored and graphs look good again. TwitterCounter now also look into the future and predicts how many followers you will have tomorrow and next month.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to reliably predict whether Twitter will be up tomorrow or next month. ;-)
Posted by: Boris | July 26, 2008 7:19 AM
Surely something simple like this: http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/4_easy_ideas_to_block_twitter_spam would help...?
Posted by: Mike | July 28, 2008 9:00 AM
These stupid bots deleted lots of my posts. I am planning to drop my twitter account. How do they program these bots. While sleeping? if ($message){ func_delete(all); }
Posted by: Dizi izle | July 29, 2008 8:52 PM
It was very strange, but I can't say that I've missed out on the people that I lost. So while it's not great that my followers have gone down, I don't miss them!
Posted by: Gregor | July 31, 2008 1:32 AM