Thanks for the analysis. However, I believe your conclusion is wrong. As @Will points out, above, the reason for this is that each of these accounts is listed in our Suggested Users list, which is now the last page of our signup process. The followers aren't fake, they're just new users -- which is why they don't have updates or profile icons.
The reason we created this feature is because lots of people sign up to Twitter but aren't following anyone, so we're trying to help get them started. This is a v 1.0 of this functionality, and we hope to make it a lot better. But I don't believe there's anything nefarious going on.
Jim Mitchem
· 10 months ago
@ev effectively used the word nefarious. Nicely done.
Karoli
· 10 months ago
Every new follower i've gotten with no avatar and a new account has been a spammer over the past few days. not sure I agree with your assessment that there's nothing nefarious going on. I think there's a good deal of gaming.
evhead
· 10 months ago
I didn't mean to imply there's *nothing* nefarious happening on Twitter at all. There is spam, which we've been combating for a while. I'm saying that that's not the reason for the sudden jump in followers on these specific accounts.
R_kat
· 10 months ago
This is interesting. I signed up about 6 mos ago for Twitter but just started really using it about a week or two ago -- and Whole Foods and TechCrunch are two profiles I started following. I would hope I'm not seen as nefarious just because I signed up with these now. ;)
JT
· 10 months ago
Thanks for explaining.
The problem with this method for recommending users is that you've created a powerlaw effect, where big users are promoted, and therefore get bigger. Because they are bigger, you keep them at the top of the list, as recommended follows, cementing their places in the top 20.
This then leads people to watch instead of converse. Twitter is great because of the conversations and short interactions, not because it's a micro broadcasting tool for media entities who already mostly have access to media.
I think you need to rethink your implementation to de-emphasize those at the top and instead help newcomers find people they really are interested in conversing with.
CampfireSteve
· 10 months ago
JT makes an excellent point here about the problem with making popular the already popular. I'm surprised the folks at Twitter didn't consider this an issue given the democratic nature of the platform. And I am not now, nor have I ever been, a bot.
susan kuhn frost
· 10 months ago
Ev: A fantastic point. Some thoughts:
-- give people a choice of following people in their local area based on bio location info (after encouraging them to fill it in...so you can recommend people near them)
-- based on bio, use a keyword search to find an initial list of suggested followers.
-- provide a quick tutorial on how to keyword search to find people to follow.
-- Purchase one of the companies that helps you use keyword searching / location matching to make this front end greeting process more robust.
Andrew Gwozdziewycz
· 10 months ago
But, on the other hand, Twitter needs a business model, and if they can build a business by giving major players another media outlet, why wouldn't they take advantage of it?
Andrew Gwozdziewycz
· 10 months ago
But, Twitter still doesnt' have a business model, so providing major players with another media outlet might not be such a bad idea....
BobbieBoy
· 10 months ago
There are always people out there that want to ruin a good thing. Twitter is in for some challenges ahead-I hope EV and crew are ready-I suspect they are.
I'd like to offer @hugnation as a "suggested follow"
jacobren
· 10 months ago
I guess I am one of those "new accounts" with no avatar ..... Mostly because I don't get it yet. Thanks for the help in adding me so I can follow along until I get my feet wet.
Barbara Kent
· 10 months ago
Hi Jacobren,
I'm in the same boat - when I opened my account it said I was following 29 people. List included CNN, BBC, John McCain. A couple of hours after that I had two people follow me. I wasn't a presence yet so I wondered if there was an auto program that identifies new accounts. Anyway, I'll follow you if you follow me. LOL My biggest challenge is this 140 limitation -- see the Twitter limerick I wrote on my page. Barbara Kent
Shane Adams
· 10 months ago
I see what you mean by this new feature giving a jump to some of the big Twitter user's names. But, as Karoli points out, 99% of my followers that have nothing on their page/links have been spammers for me. Twitter has had a history of having fake spam accounts, but over the past few days, it's had a jump. I'd agree; I believe there's some kind of gaming going on.
Ed
· 10 months ago
Here's an example: @Ev Has increased followers by ~60,000 in the past 26 days.
Also, we should all help the terrific @Spam folk {and be nice- there is a terrific person back there :)}
Boredcollegekid
· 10 months ago
Seems a far more useful suggested followers feature would be to suggest people close to the new user or suggest people who tweet about their interests, rather than suggesting random power users who probably won't interact with the new user.
Vicki
· 10 months ago
agreed. Something along the lines of, oh, any of the third party tools that provide suggestions for whom to follow. Following someone who has 60,000+ followers already isn't a good way to get involved with twitter!
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
ok, but hasn't the "suggested users" feature been around for a month? all of these users had a massive spike on the 11th. would you be willing to share the list of people so we can cross-reference?
i mean, if i were a script writer, i'd mirror the users on the twitter suggested users feature, or simply use that feature as part of my script.
and, btw, let's get some damn balance in your suggested users anyway. ;) someone on the conservative side! al gore, cnn and npr? cmon now, that's just too obvious. i know y'all are in san francisco, but damn. lol
joesaid
· 10 months ago
Maybe its just another error in twitter's database. At least this time you can delete them.
"The reason we created this feature is because ..."
azizhp
· 10 months ago
how are the suggested sites chosen? is it algorithmic somehow or just a handpicked group?
Cory
· 10 months ago
Don't you see this "Suggested Users List" as artificially inflating a select fews' follower numbers?
Will
· 10 months ago
Do you think this may be because of the recent 'Suggested Users' tool which shows all new Twitter users a list of well-known people to follow? All the aforementioned people are on that list and it only launched recently so I would imagine this is why. Also, the accounts you've mentioned seem pretty unlikely to spam IMO :)
brettbum
· 10 months ago
I saw that tweet too, great analysis and research, although if I were a person trying to essentially engage in this type of twyOps (psychological twitter warfare or something) I'd apply a little more disinformation and pick some unknown to benefit the most from the largest number of followers.
As you mention, They will probably change their script.
ModernPainter
· 10 months ago
I noticed this last night, crazy stuff. Thanks for the post, and i agree with brettbum.
vmarinelli
· 10 months ago
"twyOps"? REALLY?
Mark Aaron Murnahan
· 10 months ago
I thought I was doing OK with adding around 700 within the past ten days. Then again, I did it the "hard" way, by actually having something to say and finding interesting people to meet. I am writing a follow-up on a Twitter study (not exactly scientific) and this belongs there.
Anne
· 10 months ago
Guardian Tech is a major newspaper in the UK - only way to know if @guardiantech is a squatter is to contact them directly and ask if they have a twitter account. http://www.guardian.co.uk/
As for the 20 follower follower count in the bogus auto-scripted accounts you mentioned, I noticed this same phenomenon about a month ago - exact same pattern - 20 followers, different user names, sexy-girl pics for avatars only with the same bio in each account (so dumb).
Whoever it was that was creating these bogus accounts kept trying to follow me on Twitter using these multiple oh-so-stupid user-names, same bio, stolen sexy-girl pictures, same 20 followers in each account). I kept blocking the new follow attempts (multiple times!) and kept reporting this issue to Twitter. Eventually I got fed-up with the lack of response from Twitter and blocked all of the 20 followers appearing in these auto-generated scripted accounts and the spamming stopped.
Jack Schofield
· 10 months ago
@guardiantech is a real account, though a lot of its tweets are automated news links. (Not all: someone reads and sometimes answers comments.)
There are more than 40 Guardian staff on Twitter, including me, Jemima Kiss and Charles Arthur.
Noah David Simon
· 10 months ago
the "Guardian" is probably the most disreputable newspaper that I can think of. nasty parasite of a news source. it would not surprise me if it was "Guardian"tech itself. I don't trust most media, but this one is nasty.
frodeste
· 10 months ago
Incredible and a good article.
I am surprised that this happens though. Twitter is popular and an easy targer for hackers. I think they would need a better API to stop automated account creation. Also, as long as Twitter supports a model of one-way dialog, I think this kind of misuse would be hard to stop.
@bnrbranding
· 10 months ago
@zaibatsu, @styletime & I had this conversation a couple of days ago. I took samples from 5 or 6 different profiles that all appeared on the fake accounts and did a bunch of parsing. I came up with 61 accounts all getting fake followers. Some of the accounts are not the type accounts I would have pegged as needing fake followers, so I am sure they were picked specifically to give the appearance of real accounts. Who ever wrote the script made a few key mistakes -
1. Put a throttle on it so that the numbers aren't rediculous 2. Put more accounts in to the mix including some little guys no one has ever heard of 3. Randomize the number of accounts being followed by each fake account 4. Add random clip art avatars
I noticed some of the fake accounts had a tweet or 2. It would make sense to automate some additional tweets to make the accounts look real.
Foomandoonian
· 10 months ago
All good improvements.
I like the idea of even using some basic bots to populate the accounts with a steady stream of tweets. The odd link, random re-tweet, even occasional @message to new follower could make it almost impossible to detect these fake accounts.
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
ok, i knew it was at least 50. do you have the complete list you could post here?
i think we're both on the same page re: the rest of your post.
jiznakefoo
· 10 months ago
Being relatively new to twitter, this was a revelation. I'll keep my eye out for bogus profiles! Great research!
Alex Rudloff
· 10 months ago
Very strange. I'll have to poke around the twitterholic database later. Not sure where we stand on our API limits (we typically max out twitter's 20k limit for white listers), but it shouldn't be hard to produce a list of all the bogus accounts.
Hopefully twitter hq is already on the task!
Jeff Crites
· 10 months ago
Put this another way: automated software that enables creation of unlimited (and crappy/spammy/worthless) Twitter accounts could be the issue. And if the spammy/fake accounts are automatically following the biggest 'real accounts', like Techcrunch, and those real accounts are set to auto-follow any new followers, then it makes sense that the big accounts will fatten up with all of these new, auomated accounts. My point: this is not necessarily an attempt to create an inflated follower count, as it is the proliferation of automated software created accounts spreading like a very bad disease.
@BrickandClick on Twitter
Rob Bell
· 10 months ago
I've seen these promoted a lot more very recently... auto set-up multiple accounts, auto-add, all those little 'features' that drag marketers over to the darkside under the pretence of saving time.
I'm not a programmer so this may be a dumb statement, but I note that Twitter generally tells you what client tweets are posted from - could there be an identifier that makes finding these auto-nightmares easier?
Rob
MikeFitz
· 10 months ago
"proliferation of automated software created accounts" Yes, I think this is happening.
This is a great article, but there's more going on than this.
In the last 24 hours, I've had 70 new followers -- and these followers were all 'unknowns' with over 30,000 followers each! All 'business guys' 'devoted dads' 'strategists' etc. Basically a bunch of idiots, from what i can tell, with very few tweets -- the average was about 1500 tweets total! There is no way that they have legitimately built up that many followers with the kind of tweets that quote from CNN and TSN and nothing else.
Foomandoonian
· 10 months ago
I'm not really clear on the motivation here. I doubt any of the big names being followed are involved knowingly. Perhaps, as you imply, it is just someone promoting their own liberal agenda. It would be easier to understand if they were all following 'Company X', or 'Weblog Z'.
Interesting. And great article!
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
i think the motivation is as i put it in the next to last paragraph. whoever wrote the script did it to gain followers, albeit, fake ones. meaning they are following their own account. they then follow the other "popular" accounts too so they don't stand out as being the only account gaining so many followers so quickly. that's my hypothesis. ;)
Foomandoonian
· 10 months ago
Seems fairly sound.
Incidentally, I just checked out the c0llegemom profile you used as an example. Since then, there has been an update, an avatar and location added, and a non-default background chosen. They seem to be doing a pretty thorough job.
Shirley
· 10 months ago
Good info, Thanks
linnetwoods
· 10 months ago
Lately there seem to be all sorts of activities going on involving follower numbers - I neither understand the point of increasing a following artificially (since the credibility aspect of large numbers will disappear very quickly once word spreads about these tricks) nor see how these people who are busy creating bogus followings (some with the intention of selling them later as ready-made Twitter groups) think they will get away with it for long. I am becoming sick and tired of people inventing Ponzi-type schemes and trying to infect Twitter with their nonsense. Thank you for providing a coinvenient platform for a quick rant on the topic! LOL
daltonsbriefs
· 10 months ago
Was Barack obama one of the beneficiaries Brooks?
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
it doesn't appear so.
AlohaArleen
· 10 months ago
Kudos Bayne for brining attention to the massive influx of fake followers!
I've been watching this phenomenon and studying "bot" accounts for a while. There are smart bots that will tweet, and a few can even reply! the difficulty is distinguishing the "fake" accounts from the "newbies." And, there are ALOT of newbies with all the publicity Twitter is getting!
Some examples of fast growing accounts which I believe to have many real new accounts include Rick Sanchez @RickSanchezCNN and Stephen Fry @StephenFry They encourage people to sign up for Twitter.
There may also be "fan clubs" of tweeps who create fake accounts for users such as @Zappos and @iJustine plus they have other outlets for introducing Twitter to new people. So, I am hesitant to judge too quickly.
Fact: Everything on the net is subject to "black hat" tactics for promotional purposes. Fact: Facts and numbers can be compiled to support different "findings" - even ones that are not in truth factual. Example: A blog post was written about me "proving" I use bots and programs even though I do everything manually. LOL!
I am grateful Twitter does take the time and effort to clean up as much as they do. In the end, it is up to us - the members of Twitterville to self-regulate with our choices of following and followers.
Looking forward to your future insights on this subject! Aloha, Arleen Anderson Tweet me: @AlohaArleen http://www.alohaarleen.com
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
i don't think the twitterati we know r behind this.
like i said in my post, i think it's one person, or company, using a script to gain followers for "cred" (even tho they are fake followers). they also use the script to follow all the other ppl in that group of 50ish "famous" ppl so it makes it harder to pinpoint who's behind it.
make sense?
sfernando
· 10 months ago
i don't think the evidence you advance is enough to prove your case. there could be other explanations for such increase in number of followers. such as twitter grade which listed the ppl who gained most at the top for some time . or recommendation lists . newbies with few followers will follow such ppl . i did initially when i started twitter. and some of these ppl are quite engaging whether it is @mashable or @ijustine depending on taste. perhaps a better explanation for this post is jealousy
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
hardly, you're overlooking the facts here. all 50 of these accounts spiked on the same day. there just isn't the user base to support that kinda growth on twitter. remember, all of these fake accounts were created, and instantly had the 20 followers. tens of thousands of accounts with fake names, no pictures, no updates and all following the same mix and match of the 50 accounts for 20 total followers each. i'm no mathematician, but i do know it's statistically impossible.
and if what you claimed was true, the fact that i'm 4th on twitter grader overall and in the top ten on most any other list (save for any total follower lists), would mean? that i would have the same spike? i would only if i were one of the accounts use by this script.
i'm wondering now if you're the person behind the script. lol.
TheDigitalLife
· 10 months ago
As always, an EXCELLENT post. One thing that struck me about this list were two names that may not be as suspicious, Wil Weaton and Pete Cashmore. Both were recently on TWIT and at the end of the show there is always a lot of pimping about Twitter (please follow me, please follow me!) and I just attributed it to that. But certainly several of the other on the list (Veronica, Penn, and Al) have decidedly liberal slants on everything. Very interesting.
(but if I pass you on TCOT don't go looking for bots in my followers!)
~Rick @TheDigitalLife
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
but will and pete are being followed by the same fake accounts. like i said above in my response to sfernando, it's statistically impossible for this behavior to be occurring naturally.
mashable
· 10 months ago
Hey Brooks,
Thanks for this. Obviously the most important thing to us at Mashable is to have *real* followers who enjoy the content we're supplying. I'd appreciate if you could get Twitter's attention on this issue ASAP - we're strongly opposed to automated methods and spamming.
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
of course. like i've been saying, i don't think any of our twitterati, including @mashable, are involved. y'all are just being followed also to make it harder to find the real culprit, imo.
i sent a message to @ev about it. maybe you could follow up with him too.
Jmartens
· 10 months ago
Really interesting analysis....great work.
@evhead if its due to the suggested follow list, why not add me to that list for new Twitter users!
caseyfern
· 10 months ago
Massive follower count boosts sound like the old trick of filling a circus tent with shills: It might look good to the townsfolk, but it doesn't boost the gate take.
lindseymalone
· 10 months ago
I saw those posting over the last few days and was wondering what it was about. Thanks for the research and post.
tinkertoytech
· 10 months ago
I'm a relatively new user to twitter and here as in life looking for new digi-friends along the super highway of life and twitter is the latest path to ramble on... I guess what makes it offical as something new in my life is it needed to be filtered in my mailbox, and thanks to the legit folowers and commmentors and as for the fake and flakes keep in mind that in sociology class they teach us that some 7% of us is at the undisirable part of the bell curve, leaving 93% for the rest to be acceptable and a corresponding 7% that are just excellent. STRIVE TO BE EXCELLENT and the twits and spammers will be buried in the bottom of the curve and hopefully just fall off from boredom
Sue Densmore
· 10 months ago
Greetings!
I know of some of these types of accounts. Some of them are my students and their parents! I set up some extra Twitter accounts as a way of communicating with them - for my band, my jazz band, and my parent group. I think Twitter could be a brilliant way for me to send reminders, and I can see teachers setting up accounts for their classes to tweet homework assignments in the future.
But several of my kids have not done anything beyond signing up their phones for my very occassional band/jazz band tweets, and some of my parents have not done anything beyond signing up their phones for the parent ones.
I am planning to start trying to get them to see the value of this technology. You know, with the amount of "social media [gurus, mavens, experts, use your own terms]" and "PR innovators," you'd think they were the only ones trying to maximize the potential of Twitter. Wrong! I think teachers, and churches, and others can use it wisely, as well, and I only see it growing.
Anyhow, I just wanted people to realize that not all the non-avatar bearing accounts with no bios are fake. I know some of them personally, and they are real people, not spammers.
Thanks, Sue
Steve
· 10 months ago
Might also be that Twitter is reaching critical mass and newbors tend to follow famous people. Off they don't do meaningful tweets then they likely zombies.
Adam Hill
· 10 months ago
I'm simply not understanding your argument about why this is supposed to matter:
"[More] followers means more bragging rights and the appearance of more credibility. The number of followers matters to some of us."
Maybe you just shorthanded your answer about what *really* counts in using Twitter for "business," but that description sounds an awful lot like a high school popularity contest in your post. IOW, you haven't really answered why we should care, e.g., performance hits, lost revenues. "Bragging rights" and the "appearance of credibility" don't seem to have much strength here, unless I missed something, i.e., who really cares about these "miscreants?"
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
yes, it was a very shorthanded answer. it was supposed to sound like a high school popularity contest.
John Close
· 10 months ago
I signed up yesterday and began "following" the suggested users that seemed interesting to me. This could also be a reason for the spike in followers.
Probably a mixture of both. The problem is that you get the geek of geeks at Twitter who will try to deviate from the intended use of the site. I've learned more in 2 days than I did all last month reading WIRED!
PS: Add me
nyk
· 10 months ago
uhhhh. I've heard some of these people are default follows now.
You follow them... by default... when you sign up.
@wilw tweeted a bit about it.
Sarah
· 10 months ago
I follow guardiantech and approx 50/60 others and don't have a profile pic. Doesn't mean I'm fake!
mel
· 10 months ago
While it probably doesn't account for the "big jump" in followers, don't forget Introvertwitterers -- That is, those of us who find it fascinated to listen to what other people are saying, but don't actually want to talk to anyone.
iJustine
· 10 months ago
Wow, this is an extremely inaccurate post. Perhaps you should do a little more research before you come to these ridiculous conclusions and accusations. As Ev pointed out, it's in the suggested friends list. I've been on twitter for a really long time and have helped many new users get accustomed to twitter and learn the ways. I'll continue to do so as long as they are asking questions :)
however, the spike in your, and other tweeps, counts didn't occur until 6 days ago. and it was a marked spike. as someone who has developed software, i know that there's usually a gradual uptake, not a huge spike a month after the feature is rolled out. if i were going to write a script to create bogus users, why would i ignore this feature too? i probably wouldn't.
based on everything i've seen on twitter, and what i know about software uptake, it's fairly obvious someone is gaming here. no one is blaming you. but it's happening.
steveplace
· 10 months ago
They're not gaming it yet.
It'd be cool if they had some skynet AI that controlled all the accounts so they would talk and argue with each other, and then drop in link spam every once in a while.
Are links on twitter.com dofollow? Huge SEO implications if so.
joesaid
· 10 months ago
How is it inaccurate? It's heavily rooted in data from Twitterholic. I wouldn't take it as an attack on your twitter identity. It's either 1) a very helpful post for the twiiter admins or a 2) "WOW what an interesting trend! I wonder if there is a real world cause for it?"
Just saying its caused by the suggested friends list, re-states the fallacy.
steveplace
· 10 months ago
His data is accurate (unless you can prove otherwise), but the conclusions reached are a bit of a stretch.
I'm guessing that you aren't gaming twitter; rather, it's acct's created by some blackhat guys who are probably going to start up some link spam. Could turn out to be quite an intricate network.
But the intent is most certainly not to gain twitter followers.
urlgrl
· 10 months ago
I just was showing somebody at work how to use twitter - they set up their account last week and they suddenly had 20 people that they were following (not people who were following her) when they only had selected 2 people to follow. I still have no idea how that happened - but it was a lot of people from above. Very weird and very random and I showed her how to unfollow them.
Lucretia (GeekMommy) Pruitt
· 10 months ago
Great analysis - and now? I'll point out the other method of "gaming Twitter" that is going around... Folks using Twollow to follow people with common keywords (like 'wow' and 'awesome' and 'social media') and setting them to follow up to 500 at a time - then using another service like tweetlater or socialtoo to "unfollow" those who don't follow them back within 72 hours - thereby creating a plausible enough gap that twitter doesn't notice but increasing their follower/following count by about 500-600/day - wonder who is doing it? Look at the top 200 and see which names you don't recognize at all and who wasn't there before December.
@Stuart_ONeill
· 10 months ago
On Google they appear very intertwined with Guardian Technologies. Guardian Tech themselves claim 64K followers.
Website on profile Page on @guardiantech Twitter page is www.Guardian.co.uk/technology The tech section of the newspaper. What the hell? Yet on Google it looks intertwined with Guardian Technologies.
Thought you would want to know. Of course you likely already did the same thing.
S
krissy knox
· 10 months ago
I certainly don't believe that those with large amounts of followers are creating bots to follow them. Not the average tweeter with a large amount of followers, anyway. It's called "autofollow." There's not enough time to check out each follower if you have thousands, so those with a large number of followers accept all followers and follow them if they ask. Then they weed them out later on, periodically (maybe every few weeks), when they have time. This only makes sense! There is no time to do it any other way, they do have to have a life! As far as the massive amounts of bots and bogus accounts, why wouldn't marketers who refuse to state their business, creeps, spammers, bots, and those with ulterior motives join Twitter? Of course they are joining. And they are getting autofollowed back. That's nothing to do with those with a large number of followers. You just don't have proof, and shouldn't make accusations without such.
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
it's unfortunate that you missed the point completely.
JJ
· 10 months ago
Ha, too funny, nice reply. peeps are far to quick to answer a question before hearing it (in the offline world) & I think this is the the same in the online world where they reply to something without reading/understanding it - hmmm the bailout package ring a bell anyone
chris morrell
· 10 months ago
Guardiantech is part of the Guardian newspaper on line. Many people (tens of thousands) buy and trust the Guardian,it's a long established newspaper,my Grandad read the guardian. It's now a trusted On-line resource. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology I dont doubt that "GuardianTech has a genuine following on "twitter",and why dont you just ask them? Twitter has gone literally NUTS in the U.K in the last few weeks. I had a dormant account,form a year or so back. Not really into on-line marketing myself,and just looking for interesting and fun interaction,it was pretty stale for someone outside the U.K . Not EVERYTHING is based or influenced entirely by the USA! The Guardian was one of the first "twitterers2 that i felt compelled to check out.
apackof2
· 10 months ago
And so goes the old lament..."Is nothing scared?!"
Good catch, thanks
lc
· 10 months ago
you noticed it too ... all i can say is they also mostly all point to a handful of pages selling How To Get More Followers ... and the sites all have the same look and feel of the scam pages promising folks they can make $6,000 a month working from home!
christineandco
· 10 months ago
Wow! it's like a highschool popularity contest in the ethers. I, for one, am new to twitter and didn't realize twitteree's or twitter followers were such a sign of significance and meaning. So important that one would spend their time setting up false fronts to occur more in the "in crowd"....amazing. And all this for someone you've never met nor probably will. Then again, as I said, I am new to this forum. Perhaps, there is a whole world I'm missing here. Should I now feel bad about my meager 15 followers in my short time on twitter?
Liz Colville
· 10 months ago
I'm not sure I buy this. guardiantech is the technology section of The Guardian, yet another giant behemoth tech presence on the Web, alongside Pete Cashmore and Mike Arrington. Believe me, these guys are huge, and I don't think these followers are fake.
Matt
· 10 months ago
Er, nice article but what is the point in creating fake profiles?
vn
· 10 months ago
Twitter has grown massively in the UK over the past few weeks through a lot of celebrity and press attention. It is wholly unsurprising then that Guardiantech would rise so sharply. One of the first I followed actually. I was following them before I made a profile anyway!
Bill H
· 10 months ago
Bobbie Johnson has just written a response on the Guardian website:
Just in case you hadn't got the message by now, this is one of the UK's most respected newspapers. Not many fly-by-night spammers have been issuing a print publication continuously since 1821.
I do think it says something about the lack of thoroughness in your approach that you didn't bother to click on the URL on the @guardiantech Twitter page and spend five seconds working this out. In the piece linked above, Johnson accuses you of "throwing around accusations without bothering to find out the facts". While you've no doubt done all this in good faith, I think he has a point.
Spam accounts are a problem. But I think the biggest threat to Twitter's integrity that we've seen in recent days is the Tweetergetter pyramid scheme run by @garymccaffrey. More info on that at #pyramid.
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
I said it was "worth noting". I didn't accuse them. I still think it's *worth noting*. They gained over 55k followers in a month. So back off, Mr. Internal Affairs.
What is coming to light is that a few select accounts are getting massive amounts of followers. Are all of these followers attributed to legitimate means? I say it's doubtful. If not, who's behind it? I've personally looked at many of these newly "accounts" and many of them are touting "get rich quick" links.
Let's all pay attention and find out what's going on. Prior to today, very few people knew that a certain select few were getting massive amounts of followers. Now we all know. One of the things we learned today is that Twitter needs to change its method for "suggested users".
Bill H
· 10 months ago
Brooks, I don't dispute that suspect follower numbers are worth investigating. Neither did you make any specific accusation. But you continue to imply that you suspect that something dodgy is going on.
Although I respect your wish address Twitter abuse issues, I think in this instance we have to call your methodology into question simply because you did not identify that one of the accounts you singled out for special comment was a high-profile, real world media presence that might legitimately attract lots of new followers, spammers or otherwise, in a hurry. If I were a spammer I might think that following an account like @guardiantech or @barackobama was a smart move - maybe they'll autofollow me back, building my credibility?
If you were to revise your findings in the light of this, I'd be interested to read them.
>"One of the things we learned today is that Twitter needs to change its method for "suggested users"
On the basis of this discussion, I would strongly agree.
Pam Rosengren
· 10 months ago
I don't know if this is relevant, but a controversial app named Tweetergetter was launched on 11 February. It claims to add thousands of legitimate followers to your profile without you having to follow many. It is the brainchild of 'full time internet marketer' Gary McCaffrey @garymccaffrey . Thousands of people have signed up for it. On the other hand, it has its detractors, including myself, @MikeFitzAU who did an excellent blog post on it at http://tinyurl.com/bn7hlt and @SaltyDroid who has dug up some bad background on McCaffrey.
@MikeFitzAU also discovered a small army of tweetbots used by one of McCaffrey's supporters, and is concerned about what will happen when the username-password list being obtained by Tweetergetter meets his supporter's spambots - a spamapocalypse for Twitter?
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
well, if it launched on the 11th that would surely add to the numbers. a few people have mentioned the tweetergetter app as a scam and i read about it a couple days ago, but passed it off as a spam tool.
i'll contact @MikeFitzAU and see if he has any insight with regard to tweetergetter and this situation. thanks for the heads-up about mike.
Bill H
· 10 months ago
@Pam
Thanks for flagging. There's a hashtag for the topic at #pyramid. Also, @eunmac has written a detailed analysis of the scheme at http://is.gd/jSFx.
Brooks, these are they guys we need to be gunning for!
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
yeah, I emailed @MikeFitzAU and he responded with some great information about tweetergetter.
Here's what he wrote, in part:
"I don’t have a whole lot of research data behind me but a brief history:
· TweeterGetter was launched about Feb 11.
· I was alerted to its presence on Feb 14.
· My investigation of its promoter, Gary McCaffrey, rang alarm bells.
· People were handing over their Twitter usernames and passwords to a known spammer.
· I asked Gary what he was doing with all the usernames and passwords.
· He replied saying he was only collecting usernames.
· Of course, he’s collecting ALL the usernames, not just those who Follow him. He’s not that interested in followers, except to prove the effectiveness of his scheme.
· Some people are running a mile from TweeterGetter, but many are signing-up.
· Those who sign up have pre-selected themselves as gullible. This list is a multi-level-marketer’s dream.
· Blog posts in favour of TweeterGetter were appearing.
· I left a few warning comments about password safety.
· He had 17 fake accounts which were fairly well crafted in that they had consistent photos, (generic) bios, links to (generally an organisation’s) website, even in some cases, colour schemes. Good enough to amass some followers of their own.
· The fake accounts did only two things: they reproduced items from a news feed (TechMeme, SkyNews, nytimes, msnbc, guardiantech etc) at a regular frequency and they RT’d @brucewagner every 2 hours.
· After collecting evidence and giving Mr Wagner enough rope to hang himself via a comment on my blog, his account was suspended on the 14th (15th here in Oz)
· Today, his account was reinstated, but he knows we are watching."
"Now putting 2 and 2 together with your observations, Mr Wagner’s technique may be more widespread. A massive increase in followers of news feeds starting Feb 11, could mean that Gary McCaffrey is also building his army of fake accounts ready to re-tweet his MLM spam."
Bill H
· 10 months ago
Thanks for including that information. The big problem so far is that the number of people who don't think about the potential downsides of TweeterGetter massively outweighs the number that see the danger. A couple of people have already said that McCaffrey has effectively won - at least this round - and doesn't really care if his account now gets pulled.
Myself, I wonder if Twitter let the scheme run its course so they could see what happened - perhaps @Ev can fill us in here, if he's still monitoring this thread.
BTW, @SaltyDroid has pulled up some more good background stuff on these guys. It's all available on his blog (NSFW: language.)
Viv
· 10 months ago
Some of us who follow @guardiantech are new, but the reason we don't have an avatar is we are supporting the NZ internet blackout: http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html Check it out and support us if you feel the urge.
brooksbayne
· 10 months ago
okay, some of you folks are being just plain silly now.
there was every appearance the guy managing the twitter account was associated with the space.gs website. was he? who knows? i interacted with the guy before (via dm) and after his freakout publicly: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=brooksbayne+... his freakout occurred after months of maintaining a somewhat "normal" presence.
there were so many problems with this guy and he shot up in followers really quickly too - very similar to how quickly @guardiantech gained followers.
so when i say, "i don't know know who @guardiantech is" it means something other than i don't know what the guardian tech pub is. it means there could be anyone behind the twitter account just like in the case of @astrospace.
how long has @guardiantech been on twitter? a month? and gained 60k followers. in every situation, prior to the 11th of february, this 0-60k gain would be suspect. make sense?
at this point, i feel fairly confident that @guardiantech is the real deal.
PlayMusic
· 10 months ago
Brooks, I have posted a comment on the Guardian blog response:
Although I can categorically say that GuardianTech would NOT have been behind this, I think people are coming down too hard on you considering your original post was as fair and reasonable as anyone could expect.
It seems the biggest beef is that you didn't click on their name to see who they were (a bit like a celebrity saying to someone 'Do you know who I am?') and that you accused them (which in my opinion you very clearly did not).
Don't get too sucked in with trying to defend yourself on here, it was for the benefit of the twitter community that you tried to check this out and that's enough. The debate has started, now let it run.
Ito Hiro
· 10 months ago
now lets just wait for em to start selling viagra and fake watches. haha.
Velenje
· 10 months ago
OK, Twitter, if you want to help new accounts, maybe you want to create interest groups where new members can choose from, what to follow. For example, I want to follow traders. I had hard time to find them. If I could click on "follow traders" that would help...
.
Joe Stanley
· 10 months ago
I found this article linked in a tweet from @ev last evening, and decided to follow you. I hadn't really noticed a spike in my followers up to that point. Within 12 hours of following you, I've gained at least 20 followers. What is even more strange is the fact that many of my new followers have commented on this post. None of the accounts look bogus, but I just found it odd. Is there a program that autofollows the people that have recently followed another person? Wow that was a mouthful.
@joe_stanley
chanux
· 10 months ago
So sad
Paul M
· 10 months ago
I think it is more likely this is an instance of spamming vs. inflating follower numbers. I have recently had an up-tick in spam followers, who follow me and have marketing related posts in their updates.
My guess is the spammer bots use the various key users (techcrunch, the guardian) as anchor followers - either to harvest their followers to easily find a large community to spam, or to provide credibility with the twitter community managers / community gate keeping tools.
When the spammers started about 3-4 weeks ago, I would actually check their posts and click through to their sites, so they accomplished their goal. Now, I think this is less of an issue for the community (we all are going to follow who we will follow) as it is for twitter. Twitter will start seeing some scalability issues if these spam users are not nipped in the bud - if thousands of new users come online in a few days and get updates from the most frequent updating users, then there is a lot of database replication happening. But at least they will get stress tested before hitting mainstream.
@JoeHobot
· 10 months ago
Can't say much about this but I found the way this happened. Its really easy ;) but soon enough all of the "Name Taged" twitter accounts will be suspended and deleted eventually so everything should come to normal in next few weeks.
mingyeow
· 10 months ago
Hi Brooks! Pretty interesting - we run MrTweet, and we have certainly noticed the massive increase by about 20 or so folks in an extremely short period of time. Fortunately or unfortunately for us, we have not received any "benefit" to this - we are growing at a very steady pace.
One thing to note is that Twitter's numbers are extremely inconsistent - for example, notice that our numbers did not change at all for the last 3 days, which is obviously not possible
Kelly
· 10 months ago
I parsed a bit myself. I picked one of the users getting the fake follows. I looked at the most recent follower at the time who obviously fit the trend. They are quite easy to pick out, and they are being created fast and furious. I found that 57 users were being followed in random groups of 20. I compiled the data for 18 fake users, for a total of 360 follows. Here are the followed users alphabetically:
The most frequent follow came up 11 times (other than the user I was using as my basis, who came up all 18 times based on my method). The least frequent, 2 times. I only had one at each of those levels. I really don't feel that my sample size was large enough to share those results since people tend to infer too much. I will say that guardiantech only came up 3 times for me though.
igorthetroll
· 10 months ago
I wonder if Twitter is behind this. Is Twitter creating fake accounts just to get the buz out that it is growing? Time to raise new VC money?
Twitter does like to hype their service!
vetmomof2
· 10 months ago
Interesting! Can someone show where having 20,000 followers directly correlates with an increase in business? Is it just the perception that is you have that many followers you are "better than" in something? If people contract with others based on the number of twitter, facebook, myspace etc followers rather than well reasoned research and proof of business practices, than they get what they deserve. Good or bad. Just my two cents. I never follow anyone because they have a million followers.
Lina
· 10 months ago
I'm very new to Twitter, and came here several days ago. Thank you for this very valuable information. I'm going to revew each person who ia following me.
grant guthrie
· 10 months ago
While the suggested users tab has been around since mid January or so, do we know when it was added to the registration process? Was it Feb. 11 by any chance? Just a theory.
michaelroark
· 9 months ago
It would be nice if the suggested users were derived from some input interests or maybe a keyword box you had an option to fill out when signing up.
Barrie
· 9 months ago
Twitter is whacked. It's so gamed you can't trust any of the stats it spits out, and the service is so faulty it's not worth trusting.
And in the capricious courts of internet popularity, Twitter is well on the way to becoming "so yesterday", that the growing perception is being a dork just to use it.
AtticManTrader
· 9 months ago
Interesting stuff. I've been on Twitter a couple of weeks and I'm currently impressed by how sociable and honest it seems. I've not come across any unpleasantness (like some of the forums I've been contributing to for a while). I guess there was always going to come a time when people worked on ways of abusing Twitter - simply because its so powerful. I'm not entirely sure what the benefit of being followed by fake accounts actually is (maybe I'm not devious enough?) Personally, I'd like to see a tool that allows me to ask a question like "Find me all the day traders in London, that follow Mr x, have 30+ followers themselves with a follow/following ratio of between 0.7 and 1.3 - and follow them. If you wanted to build a useful list of followers, this type of functionality would be great!
Dona Bogart
· 9 months ago
Good catch Jason and good detective work Brooks!
Rosana Hemann
· 7 months ago
Brooks, you are absolutely right. @ev is wrong and did not understand how serious the matter is. Someone has really created a script that skips the captcha, creates ghosts accounts and adds 20 personalities to follow. The names are all combinations of a giant random name list, which is here: http://www.archive.org/stream/foreignserviceli1...
Two profiles in Brazil are being followed and have added 60 thousand fake followers. All of them follow the same pattern, already mentioned: 0 or 1 post, zero followers, following 20 people or so, default or sexy avatars.
This is causing a distortion in all Twitter statistics, because there are MILLIONS of ghost profiles being added. This is also changing the rankings all over the world. And generating faulty articles on newspapers.
I don`t understand why Twitter, and @ev and @jack are pretending this is not happening.
@dansalles a major programmer in Brazil has written about ir and reported it to Twitter but, so far, got no answer.
@rosana @dansalles
If any of you wish to contact us, we'll be delighted to show some more evidence on this bot adding machine.
afallison
· 6 months ago
I'm just now really getting my feet wet with disqus. I am really loving the way it integrates with twitter and the other web 2.0 social platforms. ;)
All Comments
The reason we created this feature is because lots of people sign up to Twitter but aren't following anyone, so we're trying to help get them started. This is a v 1.0 of this functionality, and we hope to make it a lot better. But I don't believe there's anything nefarious going on.
The problem with this method for recommending users is that you've created a powerlaw effect, where big users are promoted, and therefore get bigger. Because they are bigger, you keep them at the top of the list, as recommended follows, cementing their places in the top 20.
This then leads people to watch instead of converse. Twitter is great because of the conversations and short interactions, not because it's a micro broadcasting tool for media entities who already mostly have access to media.
I think you need to rethink your implementation to de-emphasize those at the top and instead help newcomers find people they really are interested in conversing with.
-- give people a choice of following people in their local area based on bio location info (after encouraging them to fill it in...so you can recommend people near them)
-- based on bio, use a keyword search to find an initial list of suggested followers.
-- provide a quick tutorial on how to keyword search to find people to follow.
-- Purchase one of the companies that helps you use keyword searching / location matching to make this front end greeting process more robust.
I'm in the same boat - when I opened my account it said I was following 29 people. List included CNN, BBC, John McCain. A couple of hours after that I had two people follow me. I wasn't a presence yet so I wondered if there was an auto program that identifies new accounts. Anyway, I'll follow you if you follow me. LOL My biggest challenge is this 140 limitation -- see the Twitter limerick I wrote on my page. Barbara Kent
Also, we should all help the terrific @Spam folk {and be nice- there is a terrific person back there :)}
i mean, if i were a script writer, i'd mirror the users on the twitter suggested users feature, or simply use that feature as part of my script.
and, btw, let's get some damn balance in your suggested users anyway. ;) someone on the conservative side! al gore, cnn and npr? cmon now, that's just too obvious. i know y'all are in san francisco, but damn. lol
"The reason we created this feature is because ..."
As you mention, They will probably change their script.
As for the 20 follower follower count in the bogus auto-scripted accounts you mentioned, I noticed this same phenomenon about a month ago - exact same pattern - 20 followers, different user names, sexy-girl pics for avatars only with the same bio in each account (so dumb).
Whoever it was that was creating these bogus accounts kept trying to follow me on Twitter using these multiple oh-so-stupid user-names, same bio, stolen sexy-girl pictures, same 20 followers in each account). I kept blocking the new follow attempts (multiple times!) and kept reporting this issue to Twitter. Eventually I got fed-up with the lack of response from Twitter and blocked all of the 20 followers appearing in these auto-generated scripted accounts and the spamming stopped.
There are more than 40 Guardian staff on Twitter, including me, Jemima Kiss and Charles Arthur.
I am surprised that this happens though. Twitter is popular and an easy targer for hackers. I think they would need a better API to stop automated account creation. Also, as long as Twitter supports a model of one-way dialog, I think this kind of misuse would be hard to stop.
1. Put a throttle on it so that the numbers aren't rediculous
2. Put more accounts in to the mix including some little guys no one has ever heard of
3. Randomize the number of accounts being followed by each fake account
4. Add random clip art avatars
I noticed some of the fake accounts had a tweet or 2. It would make sense to automate some additional tweets to make the accounts look real.
I like the idea of even using some basic bots to populate the accounts with a steady stream of tweets. The odd link, random re-tweet, even occasional @message to new follower could make it almost impossible to detect these fake accounts.
i think we're both on the same page re: the rest of your post.
Hopefully twitter hq is already on the task!
@BrickandClick on Twitter
I'm not a programmer so this may be a dumb statement, but I note that Twitter generally tells you what client tweets are posted from - could there be an identifier that makes finding these auto-nightmares easier?
Rob
See http://mike.brisgeek.com/2009/02/15/an-army-of-...
In the last 24 hours, I've had 70 new followers -- and these followers were all 'unknowns' with over 30,000 followers each! All 'business guys' 'devoted dads' 'strategists' etc. Basically a bunch of idiots, from what i can tell, with very few tweets -- the average was about 1500 tweets total! There is no way that they have legitimately built up that many followers with the kind of tweets that quote from CNN and TSN and nothing else.
Interesting. And great article!
Incidentally, I just checked out the c0llegemom profile you used as an example. Since then, there has been an update, an avatar and location added, and a non-default background chosen. They seem to be doing a pretty thorough job.
I've been watching this phenomenon and studying "bot" accounts for a while. There are smart bots that will tweet, and a few can even reply! the difficulty is distinguishing the "fake" accounts from the "newbies." And, there are ALOT of newbies with all the publicity Twitter is getting!
Some examples of fast growing accounts which I believe to have many real new accounts include Rick Sanchez @RickSanchezCNN and Stephen Fry @StephenFry They encourage people to sign up for Twitter.
There may also be "fan clubs" of tweeps who create fake accounts for users such as @Zappos and @iJustine plus they have other outlets for introducing Twitter to new people. So, I am hesitant to judge too quickly.
Fact: Everything on the net is subject to "black hat" tactics for promotional purposes.
Fact: Facts and numbers can be compiled to support different "findings" - even ones that are not in truth factual. Example: A blog post was written about me "proving" I use bots and programs even though I do everything manually. LOL!
I am grateful Twitter does take the time and effort to clean up as much as they do. In the end, it is up to us - the members of Twitterville to self-regulate with our choices of following and followers.
Looking forward to your future insights on this subject!
Aloha,
Arleen Anderson
Tweet me: @AlohaArleen
http://www.alohaarleen.com
like i said in my post, i think it's one person, or company, using a script to gain followers for "cred" (even tho they are fake followers). they also use the script to follow all the other ppl in that group of 50ish "famous" ppl so it makes it harder to pinpoint who's behind it.
make sense?
perhaps a better explanation for this post is jealousy
and if what you claimed was true, the fact that i'm 4th on twitter grader overall and in the top ten on most any other list (save for any total follower lists), would mean? that i would have the same spike? i would only if i were one of the accounts use by this script.
i'm wondering now if you're the person behind the script. lol.
(but if I pass you on TCOT don't go looking for bots in my followers!)
~Rick
@TheDigitalLife
Thanks for this. Obviously the most important thing to us at Mashable is to have *real* followers who enjoy the content we're supplying. I'd appreciate if you could get Twitter's attention on this issue ASAP - we're strongly opposed to automated methods and spamming.
i sent a message to @ev about it. maybe you could follow up with him too.
@evhead if its due to the suggested follow list, why not add me to that list for new Twitter users!
I know of some of these types of accounts. Some of them are my students and their parents! I set up some extra Twitter accounts as a way of communicating with them - for my band, my jazz band, and my parent group. I think Twitter could be a brilliant way for me to send reminders, and I can see teachers setting up accounts for their classes to tweet homework assignments in the future.
But several of my kids have not done anything beyond signing up their phones for my very occassional band/jazz band tweets, and some of my parents have not done anything beyond signing up their phones for the parent ones.
I am planning to start trying to get them to see the value of this technology. You know, with the amount of "social media [gurus, mavens, experts, use your own terms]" and "PR innovators," you'd think they were the only ones trying to maximize the potential of Twitter. Wrong! I think teachers, and churches, and others can use it wisely, as well, and I only see it growing.
Anyhow, I just wanted people to realize that not all the non-avatar bearing accounts with no bios are fake. I know some of them personally, and they are real people, not spammers.
Thanks,
Sue
"[More] followers means more bragging rights and the appearance of more credibility. The number of followers matters to some of us."
Maybe you just shorthanded your answer about what *really* counts in using Twitter for "business," but that description sounds an awful lot like a high school popularity contest in your post. IOW, you haven't really answered why we should care, e.g., performance hits, lost revenues. "Bragging rights" and the "appearance of credibility" don't seem to have much strength here, unless I missed something, i.e., who really cares about these "miscreants?"
Probably a mixture of both. The problem is that you get the geek of geeks at Twitter who will try to deviate from the intended use of the site. I've learned more in 2 days than I did all last month reading WIRED!
PS: Add me
You follow them... by default... when you sign up.
@wilw tweeted a bit about it.
however, the spike in your, and other tweeps, counts didn't occur until 6 days ago. and it was a marked spike. as someone who has developed software, i know that there's usually a gradual uptake, not a huge spike a month after the feature is rolled out. if i were going to write a script to create bogus users, why would i ignore this feature too? i probably wouldn't.
based on everything i've seen on twitter, and what i know about software uptake, it's fairly obvious someone is gaming here. no one is blaming you. but it's happening.
It'd be cool if they had some skynet AI that controlled all the accounts so they would talk and argue with each other, and then drop in link spam every once in a while.
Are links on twitter.com dofollow? Huge SEO implications if so.
Just saying its caused by the suggested friends list, re-states the fallacy.
I'm guessing that you aren't gaming twitter; rather, it's acct's created by some blackhat guys who are probably going to start up some link spam. Could turn out to be quite an intricate network.
But the intent is most certainly not to gain twitter followers.
Folks using Twollow to follow people with common keywords (like 'wow' and 'awesome' and 'social media') and setting them to follow up to 500 at a time - then using another service like tweetlater or socialtoo to "unfollow" those who don't follow them back within 72 hours - thereby creating a plausible enough gap that twitter doesn't notice but increasing their follower/following count by about 500-600/day - wonder who is doing it? Look at the top 200 and see which names you don't recognize at all and who wasn't there before December.
Website on profile Page on @guardiantech Twitter page is www.Guardian.co.uk/technology
The tech section of the newspaper. What the hell? Yet on Google it looks intertwined with Guardian Technologies.
Thought you would want to know. Of course you likely already did the same thing.
S
Twitter has gone literally NUTS in the U.K in the last few weeks. I had a dormant account,form a year or so back. Not really into on-line marketing myself,and just looking for interesting and fun interaction,it was pretty stale for someone outside the U.K . Not EVERYTHING is based or influenced entirely by the USA!
The Guardian was one of the first "twitterers2 that i felt compelled to check out.
Good catch, thanks
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/...
Just in case you hadn't got the message by now, this is one of the UK's most respected newspapers. Not many fly-by-night spammers have been issuing a print publication continuously since 1821.
I do think it says something about the lack of thoroughness in your approach that you didn't bother to click on the URL on the @guardiantech Twitter page and spend five seconds working this out. In the piece linked above, Johnson accuses you of "throwing around accusations without bothering to find out the facts". While you've no doubt done all this in good faith, I think he has a point.
Spam accounts are a problem. But I think the biggest threat to Twitter's integrity that we've seen in recent days is the Tweetergetter pyramid scheme run by @garymccaffrey. More info on that at #pyramid.
What is coming to light is that a few select accounts are getting massive amounts of followers. Are all of these followers attributed to legitimate means? I say it's doubtful. If not, who's behind it? I've personally looked at many of these newly "accounts" and many of them are touting "get rich quick" links.
Let's all pay attention and find out what's going on. Prior to today, very few people knew that a certain select few were getting massive amounts of followers. Now we all know. One of the things we learned today is that Twitter needs to change its method for "suggested users".
Although I respect your wish address Twitter abuse issues, I think in this instance we have to call your methodology into question simply because you did not identify that one of the accounts you singled out for special comment was a high-profile, real world media presence that might legitimately attract lots of new followers, spammers or otherwise, in a hurry. If I were a spammer I might think that following an account like @guardiantech or @barackobama was a smart move - maybe they'll autofollow me back, building my credibility?
If you were to revise your findings in the light of this, I'd be interested to read them.
>"One of the things we learned today is that Twitter needs to change its method for "suggested users"
On the basis of this discussion, I would strongly agree.
@MikeFitzAU also discovered a small army of tweetbots used by one of McCaffrey's supporters, and is concerned about what will happen when the username-password list being obtained by Tweetergetter meets his supporter's spambots - a spamapocalypse for Twitter?
i'll contact @MikeFitzAU and see if he has any insight with regard to tweetergetter and this situation. thanks for the heads-up about mike.
Thanks for flagging. There's a hashtag for the topic at #pyramid. Also, @eunmac has written a detailed analysis of the scheme at http://is.gd/jSFx.
Brooks, these are they guys we need to be gunning for!
Here's what he wrote, in part:
"I don’t have a whole lot of research data behind me but a brief history:
· TweeterGetter was launched about Feb 11.
· I was alerted to its presence on Feb 14.
· My investigation of its promoter, Gary McCaffrey, rang alarm bells.
· People were handing over their Twitter usernames and passwords to a known spammer.
· I asked Gary what he was doing with all the usernames and passwords.
· He replied saying he was only collecting usernames.
· Of course, he’s collecting ALL the usernames, not just those who Follow him. He’s not that interested in followers, except to prove the effectiveness of his scheme.
· Some people are running a mile from TweeterGetter, but many are signing-up.
· Those who sign up have pre-selected themselves as gullible. This list is a multi-level-marketer’s dream.
· Blog posts in favour of TweeterGetter were appearing.
· I left a few warning comments about password safety.
· I created my own blog post. http://mike.brisgeek.com/2009/02/14/tweetergett...
· Some folks thanked me for the heads up.
· Other staunch TweeterGetter supporters attacked me vehemently. (eg @jacebarnett was remarkably ugly)
· Notably, @brucewagner suggested that what I was doing was slander.
· My investigation of Mr Wagner’s habits revealed the army of ReTweet-bots. http://mike.brisgeek.com/2009/02/15/an-army-of-...
· He had 17 fake accounts which were fairly well crafted in that they had consistent photos, (generic) bios, links to (generally an organisation’s) website, even in some cases, colour schemes. Good enough to amass some followers of their own.
· The fake accounts did only two things: they reproduced items from a news feed (TechMeme, SkyNews, nytimes, msnbc, guardiantech etc) at a regular frequency and they RT’d @brucewagner every 2 hours.
· After collecting evidence and giving Mr Wagner enough rope to hang himself via a comment on my blog, his account was suspended on the 14th (15th here in Oz)
· Today, his account was reinstated, but he knows we are watching."
"Now putting 2 and 2 together with your observations, Mr Wagner’s technique may be more widespread. A massive increase in followers of news feeds starting Feb 11, could mean that Gary McCaffrey is also building his army of fake accounts ready to re-tweet his MLM spam."
Myself, I wonder if Twitter let the scheme run its course so they could see what happened - perhaps @Ev can fill us in here, if he's still monitoring this thread.
BTW, @SaltyDroid has pulled up some more good background stuff on these guys. It's all available on his blog (NSFW: language.)
http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html
Check it out and support us if you feel the urge.
knowing guardian tech the publication isn't the same as knowing the person behind the twitter presence. does anyone remember @astrospace? http://mashable.com/2009/01/24/how-to-destroy-y...
there was every appearance the guy managing the twitter account was associated with the space.gs website. was he? who knows? i interacted with the guy before (via dm) and after his freakout publicly: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=brooksbayne+... his freakout occurred after months of maintaining a somewhat "normal" presence.
there were so many problems with this guy and he shot up in followers really quickly too - very similar to how quickly @guardiantech gained followers.
so when i say, "i don't know know who @guardiantech is" it means something other than i don't know what the guardian tech pub is. it means there could be anyone behind the twitter account just like in the case of @astrospace.
how long has @guardiantech been on twitter? a month? and gained 60k followers. in every situation, prior to the 11th of february, this 0-60k gain would be suspect. make sense?
at this point, i feel fairly confident that @guardiantech is the real deal.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/...
Although I can categorically say that GuardianTech would NOT have been behind this, I think people are coming down too hard on you considering your original post was as fair and reasonable as anyone could expect.
It seems the biggest beef is that you didn't click on their name to see who they were (a bit like a celebrity saying to someone 'Do you know who I am?') and that you accused them (which in my opinion you very clearly did not).
Don't get too sucked in with trying to defend yourself on here, it was for the benefit of the twitter community that you tried to check this out and that's enough. The debate has started, now let it run.
.
@joe_stanley
My guess is the spammer bots use the various key users (techcrunch, the guardian) as anchor followers - either to harvest their followers to easily find a large community to spam, or to provide credibility with the twitter community managers / community gate keeping tools.
When the spammers started about 3-4 weeks ago, I would actually check their posts and click through to their sites, so they accomplished their goal. Now, I think this is less of an issue for the community (we all are going to follow who we will follow) as it is for twitter. Twitter will start seeing some scalability issues if these spam users are not nipped in the bud - if thousands of new users come online in a few days and get updates from the most frequent updating users, then there is a lot of database replication happening. But at least they will get stress tested before hitting mainstream.
One thing to note is that Twitter's numbers are extremely inconsistent - for example, notice that our numbers did not change at all for the last 3 days, which is obviously not possible
afinefrenzy
agent_m
algore
anamariecox
aplusk
bbcclick
biz
bjmendelson
britney spears
brookeburke
cnnbrk
coldplay
davejmatthews
davemorin
davidgregory
davos
defamer
delloutlet
dooce
downingstreet
ev
feliciaday
fragdolls
goldman
gstephanopoulos
guardiantech
ichcheezburger
ijustine
jack
jdickerson
jetblue
jimmyfallon
jodrellbank
kevinpollak
kevinrose
lancearmstrong
mashable
mchammer
nprpolitics
nytimes
pennjillette
sacca
sarabareilles
senjohnmccain
sockington
someecards
stevenbjohnson
techcrunch
the_real_shaq
themoment
tonyrobbins
twitter
veronica
wholefoods
wilw
woot
zappos
The most frequent follow came up 11 times (other than the user I was using as my basis, who came up all 18 times based on my method). The least frequent, 2 times. I only had one at each of those levels. I really don't feel that my sample size was large enough to share those results since people tend to infer too much. I will say that guardiantech only came up 3 times for me though.
Twitter does like to hype their service!
It's so gamed you can't trust any of the stats it spits out, and the service is so faulty it's not worth trusting.
And in the capricious courts of internet popularity, Twitter is well on the way to becoming "so yesterday", that the growing perception is being a dork just to use it.
Personally, I'd like to see a tool that allows me to ask a question like
"Find me all the day traders in London, that follow Mr x, have 30+ followers themselves with a follow/following ratio of between 0.7 and 1.3 - and follow them.
If you wanted to build a useful list of followers, this type of functionality would be great!
http://www.archive.org/stream/foreignserviceli1...
Two profiles in Brazil are being followed and have added 60 thousand fake followers. All of them follow the same pattern, already mentioned: 0 or 1 post, zero followers, following 20 people or so, default or sexy avatars.
This is causing a distortion in all Twitter statistics, because there are MILLIONS of ghost profiles being added. This is also changing the rankings all over the world. And generating faulty articles on newspapers.
I don`t understand why Twitter, and @ev and @jack are pretending this is not happening.
@dansalles a major programmer in Brazil has written about ir and reported it to Twitter but, so far, got no answer.
@rosana
@dansalles
If any of you wish to contact us, we'll be delighted to show some more evidence on this bot adding machine.