Twitter Corrects Follower & Following Counts

Recently, Twitter announced that they were cleaning out spammers and addressing "data inconsistencies". What does this mean for you, the Twitter user? You might see a significant drop in your following and follower numbers.

Did your Twitter follower count take a hit from this cleanup? Tell us.

Below you can see my modest counts pre-cleanup and post-cleanup. By the looks of it, I had 40 spam Twitter accounts following me. Excuse me while I go wash my hands:

Here is the full details from Status.Twitter:

"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."

Did you have a big drop with your Twitter account? Let us know.

There are 120 Comments. Add Yours.

Susan
July 24, 2009 at 9:49 am

While on Twitter last night I noticed my follower counts dropped on both my accounts.
TheLaurenYouLov
July 24, 2009 at 10:12 am

I dropped from 116 to 75.
KiaraKiki
July 24, 2009 at 10:14 am

i had 87 now i have 45
Derek
July 24, 2009 at 10:20 am

My follower went down 82. FML.
@itkelsey
July 24, 2009 at 10:20 am

I lost 74 followers i had 300 yesterday and now i only have 226! ugh.
lolulopez
July 24, 2009 at 10:39 am

I lost 20 followers !
Guest
July 24, 2009 at 10:57 am

I lost about 100 followers with that
Kerrabear
July 24, 2009 at 10:58 am

I lost about 60 or so. was a real shocker this morning
@kiingshalom
July 24, 2009 at 10:59 am

i lost ova 100…i waz up to 900 sumthin’an dropped to 775…wow
Tracy
July 24, 2009 at 11:02 am

haha, i lost 50+ followers. I thought i was THAT boring.
Guest
July 24, 2009 at 11:03 am

I lost 30+ followers.. and from 27 following, there are 127 people im following in a sudden.. ..!!
Mr. Glass
July 24, 2009 at 11:16 am

I lost 78 effing followers, my ego is shattered.
Tiffany Doughty
July 24, 2009 at 11:21 am

I lost 81.
Guest
July 24, 2009 at 11:49 am

I lost about 35, I think… but then I did suspect a bunch were spammer types. Doesn’t include the XXX rated people who tried to follow me whom I banned. Oh well, no biggie.
ScriptedChaos
July 24, 2009 at 12:24 pm

I lost over 100 yet I still see “suspicious followers. I think it stopped me from following some legit accts too. How did this happen?
nansen
July 24, 2009 at 12:37 pm

I lost a few hundred last night, but earlier- last week… i lost about 4K during a cleanout. They are getting things cleaned up!
- Jeremy Muncy
  July 24, 2009 at 2:07 pm
  
  4K?
  
  That’s a lot of spammy followers.
  
  –
  Jeremy Muncy
  Follow me on Twitter twitter.com/jmuncy”>@jmuncy
- Susan Coppersmith
  July 24, 2009 at 4:50 pm
  
  I didn’t lose any this time around but I did lose some last week. The good thing about it is your really losing nothing…. Just a number drop, Who’s counting
  
  See you on Twitter – http://twitter.com/suecoppersmith
  
  Susan Coppersmith
  Director of Sales iEntry, Inc
jono
July 24, 2009 at 2:51 pm

i lost 52 followers.
Joseph
July 24, 2009 at 3:05 pm

I also lost 40+ and had no idea until I read this

Thanks for the post
Jeremy Morgan
July 24, 2009 at 5:20 pm

I had over 8,000 followers, now I’m down to 7,752. Not as bad as I would figure, but still quite a few!
Nick Gagalis
July 24, 2009 at 5:47 pm

I didn’t lose any followers on my personal account, but the team I broadcast and tweet for, the Brewster Whitecaps (@CrashtheBeach) lost about 30 followers (out of about 400).
Web Design Forums
July 24, 2009 at 10:51 pm

I lost around 30 odd, typical, rather annoyed about it too.
Splinterbiz
July 24, 2009 at 10:57 pm

I wouldn’t complain that they cleaned up, though I was not expecting it either. I lost around 100 followers, but it is pretty easy to build your followers list these days, using (legit) semi-automated tools.

I first noticed about this when reading a tech news site. The article author was using big words and hysterical claims about Twitter going to die any day now. Yawn!

Twitter won’t last forever. However, I am certain it leads to a new generation with new and improved, specialized mini blogging platforms. I find it fascinating to see how such innocent tools so suddenly change the way people all over the world communicate online, even if they are not famous actors.

So far, I have only used Twitter for getting a few more visitors to my blog when I post something new, but it’s a mess right now and I’m not even sure whether I want visitors until I clean it up and find a true path to enlightenment.

Go Twitter!
Guest
July 25, 2009 at 7:30 am

I have received over 300 emails from Twitter Support about my Follow Limits. at the time I was following over 2000 and had less that 2000 followers… I have reviewed all I am Following, and unfollowed most who were not following me… Now more people follow me than I Follow………I wish the Follow Limits emails would stop! These emails started in June.. it is almost August.
- Guest
  July 25, 2009 at 7:35 am
  
  Additional information on the above comment:
  The 300 emails concerned 2 Twitter Accounts, both followed more than were followed.
Guest
July 25, 2009 at 9:40 am

I have also lost some followers recently. but i had a ratio of following and follower is almost 2:1. but today i have defollowed over 500 peoples who r not follow me.
venkat
July 25, 2009 at 11:06 am

I dropped from 455 to 375.
Helen Boyce
July 25, 2009 at 2:13 pm

Hi , I have lost about 35 followers and I know for a fact that a lot of them were not spam , I have also had at least 5 new followers not added to my twitter account .
Paula
July 26, 2009 at 6:51 am

After the cleanup, I ‘lost’ about 80 on 475 followers, but tha’t's ok if they were spammers indeed. That is just what I am not so sure of.

Although I have not found anyone missing yet (as it is also more quiet due to the holiday season) I would appreciate it as an extra service, if we could, let’s say for a week, see which names have been removed, so that we can check if not any honest accounts are missing.

Could that be an option for the next clean up?
Guest
July 26, 2009 at 7:44 am

Hi,

Is it that important to a persons self confidence that they might measure their value to society by the number of followers that they have.

There are far greater issues out there to be solved and if people spent HALF their time that is devoted to Twitter to improving the life of someone (it can be just one) then we would be on our way to solving a lot of the problems that we all face together globally.
- David - green thoughts
  July 26, 2009 at 9:09 am
  
  I like what you wrote. The virtual stuff is OK, but it can really get out of balance. Then you have millions of people all swirling around each other in an unreal world of words, while the real world continues on its path, which at this moment is not a path that looks very promising.
freeadlists
July 26, 2009 at 7:52 am

I lost about 30-40 automated account users that were following me — it’s no big deal b/c I was trying to block them anyway.
Guest
July 26, 2009 at 8:14 am

I lost almost all followers. I just startet to twitter and had 9 followers or so and i wonder how anybody could follow me as noone of them seems to know me or anything about me. Now i have just 1 follower left (the girl I know and the ollyone I also follow). So it seems the cleanup was accurate, as the followers who seems to follow anybody (for which reason ever – its a miracle to me anyhow, why anybody should be interested in what I am doing right now (sitting and writing comments in a blog or so?) or writing there (“It takes a long time to understan nothing!”) … strange…