Tipping Pitches: Technology: Why am I Following You on Twitter?

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Monday, November 16, 2009

Technology: Why am I Following You on Twitter?



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Update: I may have figured out why this is happening. I checked my connections and noticed "TopFollowed.com" among my applications. Must have been something I added as an ignorant newbie. Guessing this is the source, but will have a better idea in the coming days since I revoked access.

I've recently begun to pay close attention to one of my stats on Twitter, and it's not my number of followers. No, once I reached 150 people I was following, I've done everything in my power to maintain that number.

In many cases, that's meant trimming the number down when I add new people. From what I've heard, there's actually some sort of social media law that supports what I'm doing. But I really can't -- and have no desire to -- follow more than 150 people at once.

Since I pay close attention to the number of people I'm following and who I'm following, anything that doesn't seem right is immediately obvious to me. Lately, I've spotted a trend.

Beginning at about midnight Central time, people will follow me. This somehow triggers an auto follow back.

Let me be clear. I do not auto-follow anyone. I have not set this up on any service. And when someone follows me during the day, it's never a problem.

But for whatever reason, I always end up following more people when I wake up in the morning than I had the night before. And it's always because there are some new followers that I now happen to be following.

People I never followed.

What is going on? I've asked the question before. I've run searches for this phenomenon. But I've never been able to figure out why it's happening.

Is there something I can do to block this activity? Is it an app that I previously used that makes me vulnerable? Or is it a weakness in Twitter that everyone is experiencing?

All I know is that it's stuff like this that makes Twitter more like Myspace than Facebook. The spam. The porn. The dirty practices.

If Twitter doesn't clean it up, people like me will eventually get fed up and leave. Just like we did with Myspace.

I've started a list of some of the people who have forced a follow. Now, I'd be surprised if it's not something dirty that they are personally doing, but at this point I have no clue what is happening. So, for now, they aren't guilty of anything. But maybe some of these names look familiar to you.

I'll continue to maintain this list going forward. Until, of course, this is fixed and the list no longer grows.

vivipineda
ExecJobSrchSltn
servicebazaar
davidligtenberg
drrobertoyoung
piblogger1
mattucee
ThomSilcox
inviteswelcome
hamlesh
tundraace
KIPL
JJJehengir
JimEverett
rpatwebb
TechboyToronto

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