Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
How To Gain 100 Twitter Followers a Minute
Late this evening I found the above at the top of my Twitter page – a tweet from Bernie Goldbach, my esteemed partner in expatriate crime and @topgold on Twitter.
Now, 19 minutes is a very long time in the land of the fail whale, but the man has a toddler and a full-time job and needs his sleep. So I clicked over to @Scobleizer to double-check Scoble had indeed already achieved Twitter Nirvana – and saw that he had exactly 99,999 followers.
“Oh,” I thought. “Twitter has capped follow counts at the five digit ceiling. What a good idea.” And because it is a good idea (for all kinds of reasons) I clicked Follow just to test that there was indeed a newly implemented count cap.
And there wasn’t. And I became Robert Scoble’s 100,000th follower.
That was moderately amusing for about 30 seconds. What was far more amusing is that in the 30 seconds following this:
…I picked up 100 followers.
I’m sure these followers will depart shortly, for the same reasons I’m sure I’ll eventually un-follow the mighty Scoble (see FAQ). But it was interesting to observe first hand the flood effect of a high-profile Twitterer merely mentioning a @name – particularly now, when the concept of buying Twitter followers has so many people debating the raw value of pure numbers.
For what it’s worth, I’d advise any client who asked to flush the “Twitter procurement fee” directly down the toilet and consider it money well spent in preserving their credibility.
As for my own 30 seconds of Twitter fame, I’m happy to have these new people following me – it’s always nice to see numbers go up – but I’m not going to be mailing Scoble a cheque any time soon.
The FAQ (yes, already):
1/ OMG, you weren’t following Scoble?!
No. I like Scoble just fine, but Twitter is a social space for me and I limit the number of people I follow to 125. I can’t actually track and converse with more than that – an issue Scoble himself has addressed. I generally follow people I know and people with heavy design streams. When I feel the need for a dose of Scoble, I go read his blog.
2/ Holy SHIT you use the web interface for Twitter?!
Yes. I have tried and used a ton of Twitter apps, but the problem is that they all work. They conveniently push all my tweets to me in near real-time, and I don’t want that. I prefer pull over push for Twitter because it allows me to step into the stream when I have the time and attention for it. Realistically that is several times a day – just not all day.
3/ Do you get anything for being the 100,000th?
I wouldn’t have thought so, no. Since I wasn’t raised in a barn and am not a member of Generation Entitlement, I didn’t ask. If anyone is wondering, however, I would quite like a pony.
14 Jul 2009
| In: Social Networks | Tags:scoble, twitter
Hi Sabrina, interestingly he’s down to 98,122 this morning. It seems that you were right: “I’m sure these followers will depart shortly, for the same reasons I’m sure I’ll eventually un-follow the mighty Scoble”!! It’s not all about the numbers or is it?
14.07.2009, 9:12 amSeeing how @scobleizer has shed more followers than weight, I propose we try to get him over the 100,000 hump once more with feeling.
14.07.2009, 10:57 amHi Sabrina,
One of these days you’ll get that pony. Good things come to those who wait :)
Yep I’ve noticed the @ effect esp. when I’ve been live tweeting events as @iia. Being the nosey parker that I am I’ll often make a mental note of the followers a speaker has before I mention them and then afterwards. They’ll always pick up a few. Like you I don’t know what worth people place on this but it certainly gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that I’ve helped someone feel more popular :)
Roseanne
14.07.2009, 11:35 amHi Sabrina, I have to say the FAQ (especially 2) made me laugh out loud. Sometimes the web interface is the easiest though.
14.07.2009, 12:18 pmI always find myself going back to the twitter.com as well. I find the ui clunky on all those apps. All I ever ask for is the Page Down key to work. (Though I did have tweetdeck on a third monitor which I just got rid of, definite overkill!)
I’ll follow anyone on Twitter but prefer to keep Facebook for people I actually know.
14.07.2009, 12:56 pmI find that using Twitterfox with the popups turned off minimises the distraction, but allows me to dip in when I feel like it, for what it’s worth.
14.07.2009, 8:34 pmOdd that no one has (yet) created an app that auto follows when people have a certain follower number.
15.07.2009, 1:45 amHi Sabrina,
Just came across your site (nice) on irishwebmastersforum.com
We set up a Twitter page for bepositive.ie. Have you found a successful way of gaining followers? It would be nice to find some creative people from around the world, in a positive mood of course.. Looked at different methods such as USocial, but don’t know which one to choose from..
Kind regards
15.07.2009, 10:47 amJolanda ;o)
Thanks for the great read, Sabrina. It was fun to read yet to the point. I’ll be reading YOUR tweets often! You are one of my faves :-)
19.07.2009, 8:19 pmIt’s back up to the 99,000 mark again. Followers always fluctuate but I guess it’s more noticable for those with a huge heap of followers. With him following 103,184 people how on earth can he manage what’s going on and filter out all the “nosie” of spammers!
20.07.2009, 11:28 amI hope this doesn’t overlap much with what’s already been said but I’ve been compiling data on the different techniques for the past few weeks and thought I’d share… I put everything up here: http://themetricsystem.rjmetrics.com/2009/07/21/how-to-get-twitter-followers-the-definitive-guide/
21.07.2009, 5:22 pmInteresting Indeed. Celebrity endorsement on twitter can see a really boost in followers for Charities but not often donations. However in one case it raised £7000 when Stephen Fry adopted a word http://bit.ly/PONoB
14.08.2009, 4:02 pm