

Should Twitter remove its follower count? - andr
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/16/should-twitter-remove-its-follower-count/?awesm=tcrn.ch_DW&utm_medium=awesm-twitter&utm_content=techcrunch-autopost&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_source=direct-awesm

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cjc
Of course they should NOT remove it! Like facebook, myspace, and real life,
follower counts provide a huge service.

The number of followers is a really strong objective measure of an account's
(or a person's) legitimacy.

How do you know the guy that added you on facebook isn't a spam bot? If he has
600 friends (or whatever is average in your social group), then he's probably
legit. If he has 0 friends, he's probably not.

How do you know if the guy that's presenting you a business proposal is
trustworthy? Based on the number of references or mutual friends or the
breadth of his past experience (higher = better).

How do you know that THE REAL SHAQ is actually the real Shaq? Because 650,000
people have already verified it for you.

My point is that external opinions of people (or representations of people)
are really important. The easiest way to verify this is to look at sheer
numbers - "Tom has 20,000 followers. Mike has 1,000 followers. Therefore, I am
risking less by following Tom" is sound logic. People don't have time to
research every Twitter account they want to follow. Therefore, Follower Count
is a really great way to convey legitimacy quickly.

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tdm911
_How do you know that THE REAL SHAQ is actually the real Shaq? Because 650,000
people have already verified it for you._

Whilst I agree with you, it should be noted most people thought the CNNbrk
account was CNN until yesterday (and only now it actually is). That's 900,000+
people who had verified it.

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far33d
NO!

Follower count is the only way to recognize spam/junk accounts. If someone
follows 10k people and has 4 followers... obvious spam account.

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dschobel
Twitter could still use such obvious discrepencies (and does, I believe) to
nuke spam accounts without the numbers being publicly visible.

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mr_justin
But it's the non-obvious discrepancies that I'm more concerned with. I have no
qualms about blocking people when their following/follower ratio is off-
kilter.

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wallflower
I like how LinkedIn displays 500+ if you have gobs of network connections, and
I doubt Twitter will do something like that.

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ajdecon
Would it really remove any pressure to increase follower count? Presumably
_you_ could still see your follower count and who is following, and if you're
trying to drive traffic or affect a conversation than you're still going to be
trying to push it up. If you're feeling silly-competitive about follower count
it might kill that irrational pressure, but I really doubt that's a major
motivation for that.

The only maybe-positive effect I could see is that it might force readers to
evaluate twitters based on content rather than joining a crowd of followers...
but for organizations' twitters, that follower-count is often a good first-
look evaluation as to how interesting it really is. Watching count also
provides useful information about the rate of change of a person or
organization's popularity.

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vaksel
i doubt they'll do it, competition helps them grow

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topynate
Anyone who doesn't like the supposed pressure that exists to accrue more
followers can use a Greasemonkey script to strip that data from their page
views. I see no reason for them to enforce that preference on anyone else.

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bbuffone
I am calling for all people to stop following both @cnn and @aplusk.

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roc
While a potent driver of early growth, it's just going to become a hassle and
a distraction from actual use. (not unlike public friends lists on social
networking sites)

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datums
I would love to see how this changes the usage of twitter. Maybe for the
better.

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smileplease
yes, they should get rid of it.

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vladocar
YES!!!

