Twitter has a crazy problem where its system is making your Twitter account unfollow people spontaneously. I was following over 50,000 other accounts, many that were longstanding. Now, today, as I sit here, I looked at my account @zennie62 and noticed that I went from 163,000 followers and over 50,000 following, to 133,000 followers and just 7, yes SEVEN, total followers from me.
UPDATE: Now, on Saturday, January 11th, it’s back to normal: 47,377 following, 163,145 followers.
UPDATE: Now it’s reporting 47,000 followers, and just 1,675 following me? This is nuts.
UPDATE: Twitter accounts are reporting this suspending followers problem all over the system:
"#TwitterFuckedUpFollowParty
Twitter is suspending inactive accounts"
"and ill be gone, gone tonight" – Zayn Malik pic.twitter.com/ks05sJ9d4r
— Jenny ♥ (@JennyOfficial17) January 11, 2014
That’s totally crazy.
So the first thing I did was to shut off all but the most necessary apps – so I’m down from 16 to 1.
Then I changed my password.
The next action was to check Twitter Status, but it’s not reporting any current problems.
So, I then went to just plain do a search for the issue using “sudden drop in Twitter following” as the search term. This is what I turned up: a discussion of the issue on a Twitter Developer Forums page. Take a read of the example:
Why is twitter unfollowing people on its own its been going on for weeks I’m loseing about 200 followers a day and people are not happy with me because they think I’m unfollowing them when it’s twitter who’s doing it, can you please fix this problem, it’s happening to everyone
47 weeks 4 days agoLogin to post comments
But that was 47 weeks ago.
I can’t find a thing that points to my problem. It’s not my follower count that’s suffering, but WHO I ELECT TO FOLLOW HAS BEEN WIPED OUT.
GOT THAT?
I have my following, but not people who I’m following. That’s weird.
A problem to be solved.
Meanwhile, I have to refollow a bunch of folks!
Stay tuned.
Bill Carroll