Summer Cleaning For Twitter

Spring Summer Cleaning at Twitter
by Dan Korvas

It's about time. Twitter finally announced yesterday that they are going to take the time to go ahead and fix the issues with follower counts for Twitterers out there that have been easy targets of spam accounts. If you are a heavy Twitter user, you may have noticed a drop in your follower count. In a release yesterday, Twitter Status wrote:

For some time, the follower and following counts we display have been incorrect for some folks. We're soon to push a change that will address this issue. This means that the count you see in your sidebar should match what you see on your follower and following pages.
However, a consequence of this change is that follower counts will drop for some people. In particular, those with large followings may see significant changes as we correct for spam accounts and data inconsistencies. No legitimate followings should be affected"”we're just cleaning up artifacts in the system.

It is good to see that they are finally making an effort to rid accounts of these spammers, as it is quite annoying to have these follower alerts showing up in our inboxes on the daily. And if you are anything like me, you clickthrough to this new follower and realize that it is just some spammer or bot that has no real reason to be part of your following. And if you are really anything like me, you just dismiss this notification and forget to block them from following you. Honestly, whenever a new social media platform comes along you are guaranteed that annoying spammers will follow and take advantage of the system.