The Uncomfortable Truth about Twitter Autofollowing: It Works

danzambonini.com

6 pointsspxdcz2 comments

Every single time I'm autofollowed I mark them as spam. I wish Twitter enforced their terms of service more strictly and these annoying people got their accounts blocked. You can even make a game of it - mention 'social media marketing' and see how many 'experts' will be autofollowing you within the hour.

"The only auto-following behavior Twitter allows is auto-follow-back (following a user after they have followed you). Automated un-following is also not permitted."

-- http://support.twitter.com/articles/76915

I wonder how many of the people following this guy back are just other bots/marketing types with an auto-follow-back option turned on?

It's interesting too that despite the author's posting of an Analytics screen shot (of visitors I take it) there is no proof that the auto following itself has brought about the spiked traffic. For all we know it could be due to the author posting spam-links in other social media platforms that has produced some mild interest.

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