Lost Twitter followers? Don't worry -- you don't suck

By Nate Lanxon on 24 July 2009, 11:45am

If you've recently noticed a drop in the number of followers you have on Twitter, don't worry -- you haven't just become unpopular. It's just that you now have fewer spam accounts showing up as followers.

Twitter has pushed out an update to address the fact that many users are followed by spammers with numerous fake accounts. When these guys get booted all of a sudden, people with large numbers of followers may notice a significant drop in the number of people following them.

The company explains: "For some time, the follower and following counts we display have been incorrect for some folks. We're soon to push a change that will address this issue.

"However, a consequence of this change is that follower counts will drop for some people. In particular, those with large followings may see significant changes as we correct for spam accounts and data inconsistencies. No legitimate followings should be affected -- we're just cleaning up artifacts in the system."

This previously concerned reporter's Twitter following dropped about 60 followers. Have you seen a decline? Have a whine in the comments.