Comments on: What are Twitter Followers Worth? <1¢

By: Roger Harris

Roger Harris — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:01:19 +0000

This is very interesting. This will just lead to people creating accounts just to be followers and earn a few cents here and there. But this misses the point of Twitter, which is to follow people who provide the most value and interest and thereby avoid cluttering your own Twitter feed.

My recommendation is that people do not bother to follow the most followed users. When someone like John McCain has 1.7 million followers, chances are his most important tweets will filter down to you via other users retweeting his stuff.

I had a conversation about this with @harvardsocial on Twitter just the other day, resulting in a blog post which was retweeted: “RT @rharris Blog post Follow Your Own Path: Tweets betwn me & @HarvardSocial about ideal # Twitter users U should follow http://ow.ly/16vGJZ”

By: Digitivity @ The Digital Life & Tools Blog

Digitivity @ The Digital Life & Tools Blog — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:37:47 +0000

Amazing how stupid people are.

What are these “proven and safe” methods for getting followers?

You can’t make (real) people follow you.

If you pay to get 1000 followers, you’ll really have gotten nothing for your money.
.-= Digitivity @ The Digital Life & Tools Blog´s last blog ..After the iPad: the Google Tablet? =-.

By: Mike Bensonn

Mike Bensonn — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:04:20 +0000

If money is exchanged for followers, it is the same as if time was exchanged for followers. Besides, Twitter as a tool for marketing will always be filled by spam. What is the difference between marketing and spam? What makes marketing more legit than spam? .-= Mike Bensonn´s last blog ..The Social Search Engine =-.

By: Kristina Allen

Kristina Allen — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:29:16 +0000

I don’t think it’s up to Twitter to make attracting legit followers attractive; if a person or company tweets solid content, legit followers will organically find their way to that information via searches and RTs. Quality of followers is more important than quantity anyway– what’s the point in having a million followers is none of them can actively engage in the conversation you’re trying to start?

By: Josh Braaten

Josh Braaten — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:07:56 +0000

I think Sean is dead-on with his reply. This is like email before people moved from the direct (spam) model to the “permission-based” model that a lot of companies are moving towards.

You only want a follower if they want to follow you. Follows of that nature may end up being worth far far more than a penny.
.-= Josh Braaten´s last blog ..Best Free Online Marketing Tips for Those Who Ask =-.

By: Sean at search engine optimisation UK

Sean at search engine optimisation UK — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:27:11 +0000

It seems foolish to allow yourself to be effectively spammed by allowing someone to sell your information to an advertiser.

It is like the email lists that were available a few years ago, not worth the time it took to download.

Thanks for doing the math and working out the true value of a Twitter follower, hopefully the people buying the contact details will come to the same conclusions and stop the trade themselves, no demand should equal no supply.

By: Clive Hawkins

Clive Hawkins — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:06:48 +0000

It seems to be a common theme that once a service or website gets popular, there are people or companies that try to make a fast buck, whether or not the end result is worth anything. It seems to be a sad and desperate attempt by Twitter users to buy followers that will have no business benefit, but at least their numbers look good!

I guess it should be buyer beware and it’s not something that Twitter could easily monitor, unless they can track unusual activity trends. Now if Google was involved…

By: David at seo-writer.com

David at seo-writer.com — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:17:38 +0000

Twitter shouldn’t have to do anything. If people are stupid enough to think that they can buy relationships and loyalty…as the saying goes, they get what they pay for.