Why did my Twitter tweet-count suddenly jump by 8,000?
January 20, 2010 1:45 AM Subscribe
Why did my Twitter count suddenly jump by 8,000?
When I started Twitter about a years ago, my Tweet-to-Follower ratio was about one-to-one. When they added the re-tweet feature to my Twitter stream, that ratio dropped to about 3 to 2. Yesterday I had about 3.3K tweets, now it says about 11.3K. It's been hovering around 3,000+ for weeks now. Why the sudden jump? Is is possible that this was caused by a hacker getting into my account, or are a lot of Twitter users experiencing this?
My has remained the same for a while, definitely change your password!
posted by ellieBOA at 2:42 AM on January 20, 2010
posted by ellieBOA at 2:42 AM on January 20, 2010
Cna't you just look at your own Twitter feed and see if there is a load of Spam been posted by "yourself" in the last couple of days?
posted by mary8nne at 3:56 AM on January 20, 2010
posted by mary8nne at 3:56 AM on January 20, 2010
Do you mean the number of followers you have or the number of posts (tweets) that you have made?
Have you actually Made 8000 posts in a year or so? thats over a hundred a day?
posted by mary8nne at 3:57 AM on January 20, 2010
Have you actually Made 8000 posts in a year or so? thats over a hundred a day?
posted by mary8nne at 3:57 AM on January 20, 2010
I haven't experienced a similar jump - I just crossed 5k about as expected.
Looking at what I assume is your Twitter stream, it doesn't look like you've been hacked - unless all those quote retweets aren't your doing. Retweets do count towards your tweet count, so maybe you've just been retweeting a LOT?
(Twitter is having capacity issues this morning, so it may be difficult to actually get to the site.)
posted by Remy at 5:08 AM on January 20, 2010
Looking at what I assume is your Twitter stream, it doesn't look like you've been hacked - unless all those quote retweets aren't your doing. Retweets do count towards your tweet count, so maybe you've just been retweeting a LOT?
(Twitter is having capacity issues this morning, so it may be difficult to actually get to the site.)
posted by Remy at 5:08 AM on January 20, 2010
Best answer: I just looked at twittercounter.com's view of the same account, and it showed 3700 tweets or so, but with a negative count for Jan 20. After clicking update, the total jumped to 11353, two thirds of which were posted on Jan 20.
Extrapolating from the numbers I see for Jan 19, it's likely that the lower number is the number of tweets you've written yourself, and the higher the total number, including retweets. You do retweet things a lot, after all, so you shouldn't be surprised that it sums up quickly :)
The simplest explanation for the glitch is that some bug in their statistics system caused it to ignore your retweets, and when they fixed that, all those ended up being counted against the same day (that, or a broken batch job).
posted by effbot at 6:16 AM on January 20, 2010
Extrapolating from the numbers I see for Jan 19, it's likely that the lower number is the number of tweets you've written yourself, and the higher the total number, including retweets. You do retweet things a lot, after all, so you shouldn't be surprised that it sums up quickly :)
The simplest explanation for the glitch is that some bug in their statistics system caused it to ignore your retweets, and when they fixed that, all those ended up being counted against the same day (that, or a broken batch job).
posted by effbot at 6:16 AM on January 20, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks so much, effbot, you're probably right, although I didn't think I RT'd THAT much!
I guess I have quite an addiction.
Thanks so much for your help. I was kind of worried about that. It feels better to know the answer.
Now I can use that site to find my own answers!
Take care!
posted by SociologistTina at 3:34 PM on January 20, 2010
I guess I have quite an addiction.
Thanks so much for your help. I was kind of worried about that. It feels better to know the answer.
Now I can use that site to find my own answers!
Take care!
posted by SociologistTina at 3:34 PM on January 20, 2010
Response by poster: UPDATE: My Tweet count is back to normal! Somewhere in the 3K range...
I like that a lot better!
Still, thanks so much!
posted by SociologistTina at 1:17 AM on January 25, 2010
I like that a lot better!
Still, thanks so much!
posted by SociologistTina at 1:17 AM on January 25, 2010
Response by poster: PS: You were right, it seems that all those extra Tweets could be accounted for by that RT feature. Or so it seems.
posted by SociologistTina at 1:23 AM on January 25, 2010
posted by SociologistTina at 1:23 AM on January 25, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by kenchie at 2:11 AM on January 20, 2010