Taking a look at TwitterCounter today (we’ll be using some of the functions in BigBrassBand) and noticed a trend in Twitter followers.
There is a very clear battle going on between Twitter and Twitter spam accounts. They join up, then Twitter whacks them. Then the cycle continues. Until it doesn’t.
Either Twitter figured out how to keep spammy followers out OR they just haven’t done it since the first of the year. What’s amazing is how consistent they were for about 3 months (or maybe more, I just don’t have data) and then it changes so immediately.
@adamwride followers in last 3 months
@balsamiq followers in last 3 months
Other’s graphs look very similar:
http://twittercounter.com/ericries/all/followers
http://twittercounter.com/gigaom/all/followers
However, for Twitter accounts that have many more followers, the graph isn’t as jagged (my guess is the proportion of spammy followers vs real followers is much less for these accounts):
http://twittercounter.com/techcrunch/all/followers
Though this account: http://twittercounter.com/cnn/all/followers contradicts that hypothesis (CNN has just a few 100k fewer accounts but still shows the jagged line graph. TechCrunch’s account is smooth with just means that TC isn’t growing as much).
Who has declared victory? Spammers or Twitter?
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Jason Cohen
How come the TwitterCounter numbers are so wrong? It shows less than half of what Twitter says:
http://twittercounter.com/asmartbear/all/followers
It does show the same effect that you're seeing.