Superfan Twitter accounts with huge followings
June 26, 2013 8:28 PM Subscribe
I'm curious about a phenomenon I've observed many times on Twitter. In the reply threads of tweets by Justin Bieber and other pop celebrities, you see a enormous amount of nearly content-free chatter by superfans ("Follow me please", "I love you", "OMG", etc). What's puzzling is that in the majority of cases, despite their inane content, the accounts posting this stuff seem to have enormous numbers of followers (many are 5000 or 8000+, more than many actual public figures), despite only following a modest few hundred accounts themselves. Where are all these followers coming from? Is this some sort of Belieber-specific phenomenon?
Related: what determines who shows up as replies? There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason, even on popular tweets with (seemingly) fee replies.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 8:48 PM on June 26, 2013
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 8:48 PM on June 26, 2013
Spam begets spam. You accept spammers as your followers, which trigger more spammers to follow you. And so on and so on.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:54 PM on June 26, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:54 PM on June 26, 2013 [1 favorite]
I believe you can buy feedback and followers for almost anything - including Amazon, Ebay, Instagram, FB, etc.
posted by blaneyphoto at 9:31 PM on June 26, 2013
posted by blaneyphoto at 9:31 PM on June 26, 2013
I don't see why little girls who love Bieber would have the motivation or money to buy followers.
Unless they're obvious spam accounts trying to cash in on Bieber, they're probably just exactly what you said: superfans. They love Bieber and post about him. Therefore Bieber fans follow them. He has a lot more than 5000 fans.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:48 PM on June 26, 2013
Unless they're obvious spam accounts trying to cash in on Bieber, they're probably just exactly what you said: superfans. They love Bieber and post about him. Therefore Bieber fans follow them. He has a lot more than 5000 fans.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:48 PM on June 26, 2013
Spam begets spam. You accept spammers as your followers, which trigger more spammers to follow you. And so on and so on.
There is no "accepting" followers on twitter. Anyone can follow you, and they will only be removed if you take the trouble to actively block them. And other spammers have no possible way of knowing if you frequently block people, and wouldn't care if they did.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:50 PM on June 26, 2013 [1 favorite]
There is no "accepting" followers on twitter. Anyone can follow you, and they will only be removed if you take the trouble to actively block them. And other spammers have no possible way of knowing if you frequently block people, and wouldn't care if they did.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:50 PM on June 26, 2013 [1 favorite]
It's exceedingly difficult for most mere mortals, superfans included, to build up, using "organic" techniques, tens of thousands of followers. It's also pretty damn cheap to buy followers. Having a huge number of followers can give you credibility and status, or "Klout". Presumably some of the Bieber followers and repliers are also bots. Why? Spam.
>Related: what determines who shows up as replies?
Presumably Twitter has an algorithm, as does Google, Bing and Facebook, that determines what shows up as "popular" replies.
Presumably Twittter's algo is not nearly as sophisticated as Google's technology; they just don't have the resources yet, so sometimes anomalies like this will appear.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:52 PM on June 26, 2013
>Related: what determines who shows up as replies?
Presumably Twitter has an algorithm, as does Google, Bing and Facebook, that determines what shows up as "popular" replies.
Presumably Twittter's algo is not nearly as sophisticated as Google's technology; they just don't have the resources yet, so sometimes anomalies like this will appear.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:52 PM on June 26, 2013
A 12 year old girl does not spend her allowance on Twitter followers. She spends it on twenty copies of Bieber's new single so she can help get him to #1, and then she tweets about it, and then people follow her because she is so awesome. Teen Twitter is a completely different beast than Adult Twitter. I know plenty of totally normal-in-real-life teens with more than 100,000 tweets. Totally different culture. For someone who spends that much time on Twitter, the threshold of "what makes a person worth a follow" is much, much lower.
Plus, you're talking about a fandom with about 20 million people (most people estimate that 50% of Bieber's 40m followers are real). Fandoms don't just revolve around a central figure. You might think that Justin Bieber's mentions are totally inane but some fans see that as a prime source of entertainment. There are subgroups, and popular fans, and "famous" fans who have been RTd, mentioned, favorited, or followed by Bieber himself.
posted by acidic at 10:02 PM on June 26, 2013 [3 favorites]
Plus, you're talking about a fandom with about 20 million people (most people estimate that 50% of Bieber's 40m followers are real). Fandoms don't just revolve around a central figure. You might think that Justin Bieber's mentions are totally inane but some fans see that as a prime source of entertainment. There are subgroups, and popular fans, and "famous" fans who have been RTd, mentioned, favorited, or followed by Bieber himself.
posted by acidic at 10:02 PM on June 26, 2013 [3 favorites]
Yeah, most or all of those fan accounts could be fake, prochased accounts.
OTOH, based on my recent immersion in Twitter (following politics, not crash and burn Napaneeans), I think that if any of these superfans were the first to find some obscure, relevant bit of info about Bieber, or if they once, just once, seemed to get some kind of reply from him, they gain in value among the faithful and earn a following, even if they actually contribute very little overall. I think the behaviour lies somewhere between superstitious chickens and cargo culting.
So this common impulse among Twitter addicts to acquire any little bit of info, any breaking news on [your chosen topic], plus the socialization of teenage girls to usually return the favour of being followed, may account for the surprisingly large number of followers for these accounts.
tl;dr: popular girls are popular.
posted by maudlin at 10:02 PM on June 26, 2013
OTOH, based on my recent immersion in Twitter (following politics, not crash and burn Napaneeans), I think that if any of these superfans were the first to find some obscure, relevant bit of info about Bieber, or if they once, just once, seemed to get some kind of reply from him, they gain in value among the faithful and earn a following, even if they actually contribute very little overall. I think the behaviour lies somewhere between superstitious chickens and cargo culting.
So this common impulse among Twitter addicts to acquire any little bit of info, any breaking news on [your chosen topic], plus the socialization of teenage girls to usually return the favour of being followed, may account for the surprisingly large number of followers for these accounts.
tl;dr: popular girls are popular.
posted by maudlin at 10:02 PM on June 26, 2013
I occasionally have this happen on a much smaller scale. Once was when I started following the account for a screenwriting website - just following, no replies or anything - and suddenly collected a couple dozen aspiring screenwriters (I do not tweet about screenwriting, as far as I can remember), a few "script consultants", stuff like that. I'm guessing they are all using some kind of social media management suite that follows people who follow X.
A similar thing happened with romance novelists. Not fans, actual writers. I followed a couple, one auto-followed me back, and then suddenly like ten more of them showed up. This is clearly the same marketing plan spammers use, hoping I'll follow or autofollow back. None of them are dirty enough, though, so that didn't work out for them.
I also got several dozen favorites - all from spammers - of a fairly random photo of my patio. Twitter is weird.
But also, of my actual twitter followers, the largest percentage are people I know from a web forum I've been on for a million years. The next largest group is either Mefites or MaxFun people. If these kids are participating in forums or tumblrs or whatever the young people are doing these days, they may additionally be amassing followers from there.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:55 AM on June 27, 2013
A similar thing happened with romance novelists. Not fans, actual writers. I followed a couple, one auto-followed me back, and then suddenly like ten more of them showed up. This is clearly the same marketing plan spammers use, hoping I'll follow or autofollow back. None of them are dirty enough, though, so that didn't work out for them.
I also got several dozen favorites - all from spammers - of a fairly random photo of my patio. Twitter is weird.
But also, of my actual twitter followers, the largest percentage are people I know from a web forum I've been on for a million years. The next largest group is either Mefites or MaxFun people. If these kids are participating in forums or tumblrs or whatever the young people are doing these days, they may additionally be amassing followers from there.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:55 AM on June 27, 2013
There is no "accepting" followers on twitter.
Every time I get a follower, I get notified. I check them out, and if it's a spammer, I block them and report them. That's what I meant by accepting them.
As you get more followers, you become a bigger and bigger spam target. That's what I mean by spam begets spam.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:32 AM on June 27, 2013
Every time I get a follower, I get notified. I check them out, and if it's a spammer, I block them and report them. That's what I meant by accepting them.
As you get more followers, you become a bigger and bigger spam target. That's what I mean by spam begets spam.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:32 AM on June 27, 2013
In my experience, twitter "superfans" just continue to follow as many people as possible. Most of them will follow back. Later the Superfan will unfollow those same people.
More than often they won't even unfollow back unless they have a app like "Just Unfollow" running.
posted by justinleon at 8:34 PM on July 1, 2013
More than often they won't even unfollow back unless they have a app like "Just Unfollow" running.
posted by justinleon at 8:34 PM on July 1, 2013
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posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:36 PM on June 26, 2013 [1 favorite]