Thousands of Twitter Followers in One Day

Why do Britney Spears, NYT, Guardian get thousands of new Twitter followers everyday? Simple. If you are the privileged few to get a place in the Twitter Suggested Users list, you are featured on the accounts and sign up pages of thousands of Twitters daily, and then its not difficult to increase Twitter followers by thousands everyday .

Its being reported that several high-profile Twitter accounts are getting astronomical jumps in new Twitter followers, tens of thousands of new followers, in some cases. While most Twitter users find it difficult to draw even a few hundred followers, how were they getting thousands of new followers every day?

Suggested Twitter Users

Twitter recently introduced a new feature called Suggested users, which you can also locate in your Twitter account at Find People > Suggested Users. This suggests some top Twitter users which you can subscribe to, which includes many top media houses, top blogs, celebrities and Twitter staff etc.

I was tempted to check out my list of suggested users and check the rise of their new Twitter follower counts on Twittercounter. Behold the huge rise and I don’t need to to tell you when they all went live on the suggested users list

Note that these users are not suggested on basis of your Twitter friends or tweeting habits, but  as a preselected list. So obviously, if you are on the Suggested users list, you will attract thousands of new followers. It also helps Twitter promote their brand by suggesting that top celebrities are using Twitter. Now all these users are making it to the top Twitter users list at Twitterholic.

While Brook Baynes wondered if fake followers were gaming the system, Evan, CEO of Twitter pointed in the comments that

The reason for this is that each of these accounts is listed in our Suggested Users list, which is now the last page of our signup process. The followers aren’t fake, they aren’t just new users  which is why they don’t have updates or profile icons.

The reason we created this feature is because lots of people sign up to Twitter but aren’t following anyone, so we trying to help get them started. This is a v 1.0 of this functionality, and we hope to make it a lot better. But I don’t believe there are anything nefarious going on.

I would like the Suggested User feature to be more transparent and suggest targeted users based on your Tweeting habits or of Tweeple you follow. The Suggested users title till then should be changed to more like “Featured Users “Popular Users.

So the secret is out, its not about increasing your Twitter followers by a few hundred, but by a few thousand every day. If you want thousands of Twitter followers in one day, coax the Twitter staff to add you to the Suggested Users List today’s and watch your twitter followers number zoom like never before.