Just a quick list of things that are indicators your new follower is not a real person, or, if they ARE a real person, they are just a marketing dillweed.
1) You seen any, and I mean ANY, links to “Get 400, or 16k, or 10k followers quick & easy!”
2) The link to their homepage in their bio is a shortened link, like from tinyurl or bitly. This is used to hide the fact they are linking to a marketing site.
3) Their posts are all things like “Can’t figure this twitter thing out!” “Had some breakfast” “Paid some bills” “Made money already on my great new affiliate schmuckatellyscheme!”
4) They use no real name, and the link just goes back to a company.
5) Their username has a number in it like KELLY23232 or even worse, their username is random characters like $ROWEUIYH and then they use a name.
6) Their picture is of an Asian woman, and the username is Bob.
7) All of their posts are Retweets or quotes.
8) All of their tweets are posted by TwitterFeed or HootSuite.
9) Very professional Twitter background, soap star actor level userpics, and nothing but either coaching quotes or how to make money links…these are “bought” accounts through services offering to teach people how to make money on Twitter. They are sold by dillweeds to morons. Don’t help them perpetuate their drivel.
10) Any mention of “I’m trying this great experiment! I want to see if I can get more followers than Ashton Kutcher! Follow me and join the fun!”
I still make it a practice to check the bio and links and posts of every person who follows me – one at a time. I probably block 70 percent of the accounts who follow me, and still a few seem to make it through my filters. When I catch them posting crap or auto-posting crap, I block them later and tell the world. It’s up to those of us who enjoy Twitter to work to keep this sort of thing off the system. No one else can do it…
Written by David Wilson - Visit WebsiteFollow me on Twitter
Good insights, with the exception of #8– All of their tweets are posted by TwitterFeed or HootSuite. I haven't seen any fakes using these services so far, have found great value in links from Tweeple using HootSuite and use TweetaLink myself. I think those services present value to the reader and the original tweeter.
I said "ALL" of their posts. I've seen hundreds using Tiwtterfeed to generate a sequence of quotes and their marketing link in the middle…and HootSuite actually allows them to rotate profiles and appear to be different people at different times… I'm not saying there is no viable use for such systems, just that they are very easy to abuse.
11) The name on the account is of a well-known person, but has just a few tweets and/or a relatively low number of followers.
When you identify a fake Twitter account, help other tweeps by reporting them to Twitter. Just follow http://www.twitter.com/spam, wait for them to follow you back, then send a DM with the fake Twitter ID.
Absolutely. Also…please block all the accounts promising britney porn (lol)
you could also mention the people sending followfriday type tweets completely full of @names, usually about 10 in a row. This is to get your attention if you're not following them. You are supposed to be curious and go look. If you do, you'll likely see good reasons to then block the person.
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Help….how do you get rid of them once you have fallen for one of these? tweeterfollow dot com to be precise!
You signed up for their service? First thing to do is go back there and cancel, or opt out. I'm pretty sure they have to give that option somehow. I searched it and found this:
http://twitter.com/kenfees/status/2293099276
I found other people who tried changing their passwords to prevent Tweeterfollow from being able to login, and at least a couple of folks only got out of that one by changing their username. I'm sorry to hear you got taken in by this …
You signed up for their service? First thing to do is go back there and cancel, or opt out. I'm pretty sure they have to give that option somehow. I searched it and found this:
http://twitter.com/kenfees/status/2293099276
I found other people who tried changing their passwords to prevent Tweeterfollow from being able to login, and at least a couple of folks only got out of that one by changing their username. I'm sorry to hear you got taken in by this …
Thanks for the info! I just hope that people use their brains and realize that #2 alone isn't always an indication of a scammer/spammer. Many "regular" people use URL shorteners to display their site, from @wilw to me.
Well, true enough, but I'd hope the fact that the secrecy has become a problem would encourage you to put the full url in your home page link box. Twitter will only show part of it, but if you mouse over, it will show up the full address at the bottom of the browser and people can know for sure. In your 160 character bio I could see it, but it's not limited in the URL block.
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You said word for word what I think and do each day. I easily block 70 or more percent of all new follows, as they are all crap like you describe. Painful to slog through it, but I still hand check each profile and stream, hoping to run into quality people each day. The gruel is getting pretty thin.
@brickandclick