I've lost several thousand followers. I know they were bots, but I still miss them :(

Even legacy MSM is picking up on this story of "lost followers" ... Chuckles, these numbers were never real to begin with!

Katy Perry was one of the biggest losers in the Great Twitter Follower Purge of 2018, losing about 2.8 million followers overnight.

[money.cnn.com...]

President Donald Trump : - 204K
President Obama: -2.4 millions

Justin Bieber: -2.7 millions

CNN: -1 million
NY Times: - 730K

etc...

I wonder about the consequences for all these "businesses" which are "selling" followers.

keyplyr: - 6.8k

keyplyr: - 6.8k

:)

It's so sad

One of the secrets to a happy life..is not to use twitter, another is not to use facebook..there are others. :))))

anyone else?

see the post above yours..

I don't see how losing thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers should upset anyone if they are not real followers. Twitter is removing "fake accounts" according to the article.

As in love - if it's real, set them free, and they will return.

_{Of course that's the only way Twitter is anything like love.}

I don't see how losing thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers should upset anyone if they are not real followers

the phrase "all things being equal" comes to mind.

There's no getting around the fact that among the many things Twitter, numbers are a huge metric. When other medias mention who tweeted what, they always include how many followers they have.

Those who are not power users of Twitter can miss the fact that Twitter can be an extremely powerful resource, if used in the right ways.

The *appearance* of presence is the single most obvious dynamic on Twitter. Big numbers is power. Big numbers increases street cred. Big numbers equals credibility (in Twitter terms.)

Example: Last year Kylie Jenner tweeted she would stop using a product and in an hour the stock fell significantly.

After I hit 50k followers, my traffic jumped and my ad revenue increased. I also sold more in-house ads and continued to do so.

I don't follow anyone. I don't spend time on Twitter at all. I just load up a flatfile of prewritten tweets in the morning and occasionally check my metrics.

But I have a lot of respect for the power of Twitter.
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Hi peterson jack and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

The *appearance* of presence is the single most obvious dynamic on Twitter. Big numbers is power. Big numbers increases street cred. Big numbers equals credibility (in Twitter terms.)

Understood and agreed, but since the effects are changing numbers for everyone, it's not like anyone lost anything that everyone else got to keep. It's more of a normalization type downsizing, like market corrections when conditions change.

I suppose it might feel as if it is a loss, but it's not, in my view. Maybe I'm the only one who views it that way. I can accept that too. ;)

Kylie Jenner..jeeeez..idiocracy 's foot in the door...don't encourage metrics that degrade civilization..

the effects are changing numbers for everyone,

Not equally.

But anyway, it's just a general statement of why the numbers are very important.

Very weird. I lost like 20K followers during this purge, maybe more.

But in the last few days our follower count is going up by the thousands per day - and I have no idea why.

When I check followers list, I don't see these new followers at the top (usually new followers are always up there)..... at least I don't see the "hundreds" added based on my overall number.

It's almost as if Twitter is adding back what it removed. I've had over 10K added in the last 5 days.

in the last few days our follower count is going up by the thousands per day - and I have no idea why.

The bots are just replacing those purged. Twitter will delete them again in the next maintenance. This cycle has been repeating itself for a couple years.

@Keyplyr, that was my first thought but if that was the case then the bots (new users) would be at the top of the "new followers" list when you click on the followers list.

I don't see hundreds of new followers popping up. Maybe 20-30 new followers per day at the top of the list, but our followers figure is going up by thousands.

I wasn't aware that new followers were chronically listed. I've never noticed that to be the case.

If so, then I guess it's a bug of some type, either that or you've gone viral.