EasyFollowers: Why Would Anyone on Twitter Do This?
Posted on 23 July 2009, at 10:30 pm, by Judie Lipsett
Recently it seems that I’ve been getting more than a few notifications from people on my Twitter follow list that say “LOOOOK!!! If you want more followers check out this site: http://EasyFollowers.com.”
Am I the only one who finds these types of messages annoying and borderline offensive? Am I the only one who un-follows people who use these types of tools to spam their followers?
See here’s my thing…
I would like to think that the people who follow me on Twitter are doing so because they have a genuine interest in what I tweet about – whether it be what I am working on, what I am doing, or what just popped into my head. There’s never any rhyme or reason to what I post on my Twitter; what I post there is also posted on my Facebook account, because it is a snapshot of my life. Things that aren’t worthy of a blog post, but that I still want to share with my friends.
That’s why I have a personal account, as well as the Gear Diary account which sends out a tweet every time a new item is posted on this site. Half the time I won’t tweet on my personal account when I’ve posted something here, simply because I don’t want to spam people with something that they may already know if they are also subscribed to this site’s feed. And sure, sometimes I get so enthusiastic about an article or review I’ve just written that I don’t care, and I’ll tweet about it anyway. 
On my personal Twitter account, I don’t generally follow people just because they follow me; I like to follow people that I’ve met in real life, people I email regularly, people who carry on dialogues with me through Twitter, or people who comment on Gear Diary. In fact, if I get a follower who starts talking to me regularly though Twitter, I’ll make it a point to follow them back so that we can direct message and I don’t miss any of the conversation.
Maybe that’s why it bugs me to think of myself as part of a following hoard, which is exactly what happens when I see a tweet starting with “LOOOOK!!!” Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mind if someone I follow has 10 bazillion followers other than me, but I do mind if they got those followers as part of a weird pyramid scheme. I also don’t think it is cool for them to spam their followers (me!) with an advertisement every four hours, just so they can build up their numbers and I guess their bragging rights. I mean, that’s what this is all about, right? Or am I missing something?
If I follow you and you’ve started using a crap service like EasyFollowers or something similar, then you’ll probably figure out that I’ve un-followed you. That’s if you even notice that I’m gone…what with your new hoard of followers, and all. 
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July 23rd, 2009 at 11:15 pm
You’re definitely not the only one. This stuff is hugely annoying. The worst is when you follow someone and then immediately get a DM saying that kind of crap or offering some sort of general Twitter guidance, usually from someone who has been on the service for all of one day or similar. For me that’s an automatic unfollow.
July 24th, 2009 at 1:34 am
It might be about bragging rights, or it might be about amassing a big number of followers “legitimately” (i.e. slowly enough not to trigger Twitter’s anti-spam system) to spam them later. I have a rather small Twitter presence, yet I get at least one fake follower a day which exists just for the chance I might follow them back and/or click on their links to a porn affiliate site, or a “how to make money with no effort” pyramid scheme, or help them get a free iPhone by signing up five of my friends, or whatever.
The porn spammers have gotten more creative lately, too. Instead of just following a million people and dropping a link, they follow a couple hundred per fake girl’s account, and now if you visit their feed you’ll see a whole bunch of tweets designed to make the girl look real and a little bit geeky. (This week, they’re all about the Harry Potter movie and Comic-Con.) But if you look closer, you’ll see by the timestamps on the tweets they’re spammed in all at once, along with an interspersed link to a porn affiliate site. Very clever, but not quite clever enough… I wonder what they’ll try next?
July 24th, 2009 at 8:29 am
I don’t have any interest in following those sorts of folks. At first I was following a bunch of people just because they had followed me – and you quickly learn that is a bad idea.
Back then, I also felt bad about unfollowing – sort of like killing a contact on Facebook. Especially the ones who sent a couple of DM’s looking like they were normal and actually trying to be communicative. However, I quickly got over it!
Another issue – people who Tweet about a hundred times a day. As it is I have a hard time keeping up, so having a flood constantly coming in is just too much for me! I unfollowed some big name bloggers who did have interesting things but also loads of uninteresting ‘flushed twice cuz i’m nice’ sorts of tweets …