How Many Followers Did You Lose in Twitter’s Great Spam Purge?

If you’ve been noticing your Twitter follower count plummeting, don’t despair. They weren’t real tweeps anyway. It’s simply Twitter cracking down on random bots — including those pesky pornbots — and spam accounts that auto-follow people.

Twitter calls it ‘correcting’ follower and following counts. We call it the Great Twitter Spam Purge of 2009, because we like to make up mnemonic devices and clever names. If we could add a kitten logo, we would. In the meantime, from the Twitter blog comes this explanation:

For some time, the follower and following counts we display have been incorrect for some folks. 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. No legitimate followings should be affected—we’re just cleaning up artifacts in the system.

The Purge is all the buzz on Twitter, with most tweeters waxing philosophical.

ResaMichelle: Twitter did a spam purge.. consequently, we all lost a lot of followers. I think it’s worth the loss…

amylizza: I see that after the spam purge, I’m back over 200 followers. Thank you so much to all my new followers & friends. I love you all!

eggboxrobin: Thank you for the updates re spam purge, I’m appreciating the deep-clean!

littlegingerkid: Just checked: I lost 42 followers in last week’s spam purge. I thought I was good at blocking the spammers. Maybe genuine ones went too?

Despite all this peaceful, no-petitions acceptance, there are people reporting losing all of their followers — and even some who claim there are more spammers now than before the Purge.

So what should you do about all this, if anything? Use common sense, tweeps.

Here are 5 TellTale Signs Your New Follow Might Be A Spammer:

• Deliberately sexy profile picture. While there are tweeps who simply can’t hide their smokin’ hot babe-ish-ness or Absolute hunkiness no matter what photo they use, the majority have no problem posting a G-rated icon.
• No profile info at all. Before you follow someone back, you need to know at least a modicum about who they are. It’s okay, if goofy, if under Location, they say: The Universe, The Earth, Everywhere. It’s also very okay if under Location, they list: Tehran. Many tweeps switched their location to mask genuinely Iran-based tweeters during the recent elections. We also colored our profile pix green in support.
• No followers, no updates, disproportionate follows-to-followers. Sometimes this a truly a newbie — like my friend @emacdaddy4 who just signed on to Twitter. I verified that it was actually my buddy by checking her Following list and noting a mutual friend.  This method can work — but if the spammer is particularly devious, they’ll pick up an entire list.  If it looks suspicious, ask her pal directly.
• Dubious updates. Are the updates legitimate conversation, Re-tweets from people you’ve heard of, links from reputable sources? An often dead giveaway is a page full of #FollowFriday recommendations, with no comments, just @ after @ after @. These spammers are trying to provoke mass follows via #FF.
• Auto-DM (Direct Message) with spammy sales content. I am not a fan of any bot-related activity on Twitter.

Those are just some basics. Feel free to tweet me @guruofnew if you have questions or run into a rogue tweeter.

And from savvy blogger Thoughtpick comes a very useful list of The Top 5 Methods & Apps to Reduce Twitter Spam.

You Like Me! You Really Like Me! Seven Ways To Boost Your Popularity Online.

So you thought you left high school far behind? All those cliques and crowds and cool kids? The fads, the fashion, the frenzy to be popular?

Well, guess what? It’s baaaack.

But as most of you well know, in the Web 2.0 era, it’s called Social Media. And just like in high school, how someone winds up as a popular kid on the social networking sites has been largely a mystery. Until now.

Today we’re de-mystifying the puzzling path to popularity online, starting with these 7 tips:

Smile
A recent study by British psychologists proved that smiling in your profile picture may add up to more friends. What the researchers found after conducting research on Facebook was that smiling students were surrounded by others who were also smiling in small “happiness clusters.” Those who were not smiling seem to be located more peripherally in the network. After performing statistical analysis, they determined that those who smile also tend to have more friends – on average one extra friend, which is good considering that people only tend to have six close friends. Those who smiled were also more likely to be at the center of the network when compared to those who don’t. Wanna boost your popularity? Show those pearlies!

Pick the right social network for you
The sheer number of social networking sites can be daunting. But like High School, that doesn’t mean you should join everything from Chamber Singers to Student Council to Goths R Us. Visit the sites you find interesting but don’t feel pressured to sign up. If you’re networking for business, you can actually hurt your company’s online reputation if you sign up, visit once or twice, and then never return. Especially in this economy — not keeping up with your profile may leave the impression that your business has closed (or you’ve been fired.) So choose your sites carefully — not even Sally Field could be ‘really, really’ liked everywhere.

It’s nice to be important. But it’s more important to be nice.
Okay, so it’s corny. But there’s a reason we all secretly nod right along with this old adage — it’s true. Being nice to the newbie who has just tweeted for the first time and is trying to grow his Twitter account; replying with a ‘Thanks for the follow’; or commenting with an @ response is one of the secrets of being one of the popular kids on Twitter. Making a practice of automatically Following the person who Followed you (unless someone appears to be an obvious spammer) is another way to be ‘really, really liked.’

Here’s another vintage truism: Don’t worry about being interesting. Be interested instead.

We live in a world of Me Media. Every post, every tweet, every comment is all about ME, ME, ME. This is why it is so refreshing online when someone steps outside their universe and pays attention to yours. Maybe they actually read your blog and leave an insightful comment. Maybe they pick up on something you tweeted and take the conversation offline, so it can go beyond 140 characters. Maybe they listen to your job woes — and send you a link from a job post that sounds just like you.

Make your online connection more powerful — meet in person.

At the recent WOMMA Summit in Vegas, Jason Anello, Ideologist at Yahoo, talked about the power of tieing online experiences to the real world, citing the value of tapping into all our senses, especially touch. ‘We’re not seeing each other anymore’ — and even our communications, like email, are missing inflection and emotion. So when we do connect in the real world, the online bond actually strengthens. It’s not always possible to actually see your buddy in Taipei or the Dalmatian Islands in the flesh. But if you do have the chance to tweet-up, meet-up or attend events with your online friends, go for it.

Learn the (underground) rules and play by them.

Each social networking site has its own ‘underground’ rules beyond the obvious FAQs. For example, some people won’t accept a Facebook friend request if they haven’t met the Requester in person. On Twitter, some users won’t return the Follow if the Tweeter hasn’t filled out a profile or posted relevant account information. If your Facebook friend or Linkedin connection request seems to be eternally pending, this may be a tactful way of declining. (Related to ‘I’m washing my hair that night’ or ‘my cousin’s in town that weekend’ during Prom season.) Keep in mind that many users divide their social networks into personal or business and prefer not to blend the two. Your Linkedin connection may not want to check out the youtube of your pre-schooler’s star turn as as SpongeBob or your Emo alter ego on MySpace Music.

Be real.
That’s the whole point of social networking. Be a real, expressive, honest to goodness person. Don’t just shoot links, post self-serving Status updates or in general, use social networks in a way that increases the already-ballooning bogus quotient. Authenticity is the new cool.