Temporarily Hiding My Woeful Twitter Follower Count

December 18, 2015 3:14 PM

In a month or two, I'll be negotiating a year-long business deal which depends on the other party assuming I have a wide following (in a narrow field). Problem: my Twitter feed, for whatever reason, is miserably unpopular. How can I shield myself from the deal-chilling effect of this, without deleting the account entirely (which would be inconvenient for me)?

Rename the account to something more anon?
Hibernate it somehow and reactivate later?
Make it private, and then public again later?
Or...?

I certainly don't want to buy or otherwise angle to increase my follower count.

Again, whatever solution I implement needs to happen for a solid year.

posted by Quisp Lover to Computers & Internet (15 answers total)

Stress the other analytics that do demonstrate you have a following and have a non-defensive but smooth patter for why you and those followers aren't using Twitter as your medium (use patter only if asked). It's common to skip most forms of social media -- I have thousands of LinkedIn connections and use it daily, but see Facebook once every week or so and my Twitter followers consist of a few desultory bots.
posted by MattD at 3:28 PM on December 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

Is it true that you have a wide following in your narrow field but twitter doesn't reflect that? If it were me I think I'd just change the name on the account to be something somewhat generic and have a pat answer that you only use it for Dming your college friends or something. People tend not to dig too deep so you can spend some time either removing some tweets that you think don
t reflect well on you (if they exist) and building up some "yeah I just use this for banter" cred. Happy to banter with you on Twitter for a bit if that's helpful :)
posted by jessamyn at 3:39 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Make your twitter account private. If they dig, they might find it, but won't have any idea how many followers you have (it doesn't list the follower count if you're locked up). If they bring up your account, just say something like "yeah, had to make it private for the time being, personal reasons"... make up a stalker or ex... whatever. Chances are they won't ask, though. Seems like the easiest way to make this a non-issue.
posted by naju at 4:56 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

(In addition I would suggest anonymizing your account name)
posted by naju at 5:00 PM on December 18, 2015

Response by poster: If people can't view my follow count if the account's private, then this fixes the problem (why would i need to anon my account name?).

Question: if I make the account private, do newly approved followers see the follower count? If so, I'd need to be careful about who I approve.
posted by Quisp Lover at 5:04 PM on December 18, 2015

(it doesn't list the follower count if you're locked up)

Um, yeah it does. Log out and go to your own account. I can't see who your followers are, but I can see how many you have.
posted by desjardins at 5:20 PM on December 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

What gave them the idea that you have a lot of Twitter followers? I mean, my Snapchat follower count is a dismal n/a, because I don't have an account. I would say something about how it's not how you interact.
posted by rhizome at 5:23 PM on December 18, 2015

Response by poster: So it sounds like anonymizing or deleting are my only options for keeping outside parties from associating me with my follower count.
posted by Quisp Lover at 8:56 PM on December 18, 2015

One other thing you might consider doing is initiating an Amazon Giveaway where people have to follow you on Twitter to enter the contest. You can add hundreds of followers that way, and the only cost is what you are giving away. (Which could be anything that Amazon sells.)
posted by visual mechanic at 9:51 PM on December 18, 2015

Could you change the your bio, location, photo etc to make it seem like this Twitter account is that of somebody else with the same name? Invent a character living in say, Brisbane (unless that is where you happen to live of course), follow a bunch of Brisbane-related feeds, make a few tweets about Brisbane sports teams or traffic...
posted by Flashman at 10:04 PM on December 18, 2015

I don't know if this is the case for your field, but I would make the argument that people in this field don't use Twitter as a communication platform. Maybe they are more active on ____ (at conventions, email, facebook, etc.) that way your Twitter situation doesn't matter (as much) and you don't have to obfuscate your account.

If the people in your field are highly active on Twitter, then you probably want to build up your presence regardless of what you do for the negotiation.
posted by toomanycurls at 10:27 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Um, yeah it does. Log out and go to your own account. I can't see who your followers are, but I can see how many you have.

I stand corrected!
posted by naju at 1:20 AM on December 19, 2015

How is a wide following demonstrated in your space? Show that.

Twitter is irrelevant if Twitter is irrelevant.
posted by rr at 11:09 AM on December 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Two months is enough time to build a bit of a following, should you care to, and if in fact people in your field or interested in your topic use it. Not multi-thousands, but certainly several dozen or a few hundred.
posted by Miko at 8:31 PM on December 19, 2015

Response by poster: I really appreciate everyone's setting me straight on the many many false assumptions that led me to ask this question. I clearly didn't need what I said I needed. I thought I understood my own requirements, but I'm grateful to be disabused of that. Thanks for the tough love, all.
posted by Quisp Lover at 9:38 AM on December 20, 2015