Fake Twitter followers alert!

Recently we began to notice that my Twitter follower numbers were growing at an extraordinary rate. Now, who wouldn’t love to think that their tweets were so clever that they were garnering  hundreds of new followers a day? But we knew that something had to be up. We just couldn’t correlate the sudden increase to TV appearances or anything that I was doing that might have explained it. Upon closer inspection we realized that some of the new followers were legitimate, but  many of them were “bots” or fake Twitter accounts. They had no profile, followers, or activity other than following others. Unsure of what to do, we watched the numbers rise for a while, but then found that we were not alone. Others had experienced this as well.

Note, some services out there will “sell” you followers to increase your numbers using these kinds of “bots”, but I would never do that. We first started my account in 2009 because we wanted to share news and photos of my activities, but within a few years, I was totally hooked! I use Twitter because I genuinely find it informative, and like the interaction with real followers. I’m not sure why I was targeted, but here’s an excellent article from Emoderation that mirrored our experience, and gave us some great insight as to what to do. Check it out.

Attack of the fake Twitter followers

So now we’re working on culling out the fake Twitter followers, but we’ve heard that it can be an ongoing battle. Thanks so much to my real live followers, and if for some reason, you are just not active and we have blocked you, mea culpa. We’re doing our best.

Beware of fake followers, and happy tweeting!

Tags: bots, fake Twitter followers, tweet, Twitter