I was chatting with someone recently and they were getting remotely bent out of shape over Twitter followers and mentioned that they couldn’t seem to understand how some people get so many followers.
Yes, some people are just outright popular.
Others, well, they game the system.
If you’re wondering what in the heck I’m talking about let me fill you in.
There are programs that exist that allow users to mass follow people based on location, keywords and various other requirements. Once the criteria is set they then hit the “magic” follow button and hundreds, if not thousands of people can be followed all at once.
That’s only part of the game though.
Once the mass following is done there hope is that the newly followed people will politely follow the individual in return.
After X days the mass follower will fire up the program once again and unfollow any new person they followed that didn’t follow them in return. (I guess it wasn’t true love.)
If you see someone with 19,242 followers and they are following in return 19,242 people… they are probably using this system. It’s likely the case even if there following 12,000 or 15,000 people as well. (Understand these numbers are just an example)
So, don’t be fooled and get caught up in the popularity contest… because in many instances said popularity isn’t what it may appear to be. That is, unless you are someone like @LadyGaGa.
[…] written about followers before (and how the system can be gamed) and noted that a lot of people are simply getting caught up in […]