Why you're not as popular on Twitter as you thought

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 24 Jul 2009 at 13:27

Millions of Twitter users will have woken up this morning to find they're less popular than they were yesterday.

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Many users of the micro-blogging site regard their number of followers as a badge of honour. However, a clean up of the Twitter database has resulted in many users waking up today with far fewer followers than they had yesterday.

"For some time, the follower and following counts we display have been incorrect for some folks," the company explains on the Twitter Status page. "We're soon to push a change that will address this issue. This means that the count you see in your sidebar should match what you see on your follower and following pages."

"However, a consequence of this change is that follower counts will drop for some people. In particular, those with large followings may see significant changes as we correct for spam accounts and data inconsistencies."

Several of the Twitter users PC Pro is following have reported significant drops in follower numbers overnight.

However, most of the major celebrity Twitter accounts appear to be largely unaffected, according to the stats published by Twitscoop, although it may be that the revised counts are yet to register.

Read our Top 10 Tech Celebs feature in this month's PC Pro, on sale now