So You Thought Nothing Could Be Worse Than Fail Whale? Now Get Your Followers Back

Svetlana Gladkova,

on July 24, 2008,

You remember that only a week ago we were all betting if Twitter really recovered and we will see Fail Whale only when it really means maintenance, not some unexpected crash. Twitter users that left to FriendFeed or Identi.ca started to mention that they could still return to Twitter if it really proves to be back to stable again.

And to a certain extent our expectations were met - we had API requests lifted to 100 after 20 per hour and we really saw less of that fail whale for a while. So in general the glitches were reduced a lot. At least until earlier today when Twitter presented many of us a big surprise - when suddenly lots of users lost huge numbers of followers on Twitter. The blogosphere is abuzz, Twitter itself is full of questions from people that start to notice it and wonder what happened (here is FriendFeed search for “twitter followers” and it really is very pathetic with so many users worried about it - even if it may seem like a storm in a teacup to any normal person outside this still relatively small crowd).

Users report losing followers in numbers ranging from dozens to thousans - the most effected user I’ve found is Chris Brogan with 7,000 missing followers (now his count is at 9,600 but I am not aware of Chris’ counts before the incident). And of course in the times when so many people rely on Twitter heavily for their business, including bloggers and all marketing types, it may be depressing to these users.

In the meanwhile Twitter has noticed the problem and started working on it to return the service back to normal, though they don’t even promise the counts will be back to normal for everyone fast - the changes need time to propagate. This problem is really not what any of us could expect. In general, we have started to hear various rumors about Twitter banning users for various reasons and doing strange things when removing numerous spammers from the system (which is a good move with so many of them now) - and it started to resemble people constantly discussing Digg algorithm making all the wild guesses we can so probably Twitter should really do a better job in explaining what it is doing with the system for us at least to know what to expect (when it does not come to unexpected glitches in the system).

Ironically, the latest post on the main Twitter blog (written today as well) introduces “a fun new application” Twitter Counter that is intended to show your followers count on your blog or on your social networking profiles. Very timely, right?

Image credit - Twitter Counter homepage

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29 Comments (Subscribe to rss)

David - July 23, 2008 at 11:48 pm PDT

Twitterpocalypse had tons of folks flippin’ the heck out. I mean, I was disappointed, but life *does* go on. lol
Kat - July 24, 2008 at 12:16 am PDT

This is a very balanced post about the situation. Personally I can see both sides, I don’t have tons of followers and was mostly unaffected but I can see how other people may worry, business-wise. However, the amount of personal press (posts with people just freaking out as opposed to writing the facts) was astounding. Thanks for writing up a level review. I have to say, Twitter hasn’t been doing itself many favors and that Twitter-blog post did give me an ironic chuckle.
Svetlana Gladkova - July 24, 2008 at 01:17 am PDT

David, Kate, very true: all so often our concerns about Twitter downtime or this one are just ridiculous and this is exactly why I refer to them as a storm in a teacup. Sometimes we just have to stop for a moment and think exactly what the fuss is all about. And those using social media for business should never rely on one single service and diversify their participation not to be damaged by such situations. So at least this proves that we do need Twitter clones, after all.
Boris - July 24, 2008 at 02:10 am PDT

Hi there, thanks for mentioning TwitterCounter! There are more people discussing this issue at GetSatisfaction so if you want to see what is happening go there: http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/followers_and_following_are_all_gone_when_will_this_be_fixed

Also, TwitterCounter is not a Twitter product but a service I built myself as a nice side-project. Just thought I’d clarify that…
Svetlana Gladkova - July 24, 2008 at 02:30 am PDT

Boris, thanks for stopping by, I’ll be sure to stop by GetSatisfaction and see what the discussion there is. And I fully realize that TwitterCounter is not Twitter product, I just think it is ironic to have your app introduced at this time with all the followers fuss.
David Tallan - July 24, 2008 at 04:11 am PDT

My issue isn’t with losing followers. My issue is that the number of people I’m following has also noticeably dropped. That directly affects the quality of my Twitter feed.
Allen Stern - July 24, 2008 at 02:07 am PDT

i lost all my friends, now im all alone in the internets, i go back to irc they dont lose my friends
Mitchell Tsai - July 24, 2008 at 02:07 am PDT

Nice picture.
Benedikt Koehler - July 24, 2008 at 02:07 am PDT

Losing followers really is an annoyance, but the diagram exaggerates it a bit.
Alex Popescu - July 24, 2008 at 03:07 am PDT

Yesterday I went down from 500 to 50. Today I am just up to 390. They say the problem was solved. NOT!
Svetlana Gladkova - July 24, 2008 at 03:07 am PDT

@Mitchell: It’s not mine, credits to the creators of Twitter Counter application that I mentioned in the post.
Svetlana Gladkova - July 24, 2008 at 03:07 am PDT

@Allen: That’s hypocritical - chatting to me on Skype and claiming you are alone?
Svetlana Gladkova - July 24, 2008 at 03:07 am PDT

@Alex: I think they mentioned that it would take time so maybe some patience could do?
Dave L - July 24, 2008 at 09:02 am PDT

After “noticing the problem” and working to “resolve” it, two of my friend lost the large majority of their people. This is after the “resolution” work began. There was no problem before. Status.Twitter.com needs to update more often. Is this an ongoing problem still being resolved? Is this a new problem? Is this a new set of rules we have to live with? It’s not clear.
Sally Robinson - July 24, 2008 at 04:07 am PDT

There are some benefits to being relatively unknown in the Twitter-sphere…the follower issue halved my follower list but I think most of those lost weren’t active with my feed anyway. I’m more concerned about regenerating my “followed” list as right now other Twitterers provide more value to my use of the service.
Svetlana Gladkova - July 24, 2008 at 04:07 am PDT

@Sally: Yes, this is a bigger problem: when you are not an A-lister and don’t have thousands of followers, you are supposed to actually track what the people you follow do. And this is a huge problem for such people - though I think it will be wiser to wait a little for the promised changes to propagate.
Leslie Poston - July 24, 2008 at 10:13 am PDT

I lost over 200 followers. That is my conversation and connection that is missing, and that upsets me more than the numbers. People have been readding me all day, and new people have been finding me, but I must think - if they “fix” the problem will it erase all of today’s hard work? I am not happy right now.
Al Degutis - July 24, 2008 at 11:03 am PDT

We can’t rely on Twitter anymore. (How long are we going to keep saying this?) We need to rely on 3rd party Twitter clients and maybe others (FriendFeed?) to make up for Twitter’s incompetence. My very short suggestion: http://www.degutis.com/blog/3rd-party-apps-twitters-incompetence/
Sarah Perez - July 24, 2008 at 06:07 am PDT

updating my post to link to yours
Brent Newhall - July 24, 2008 at 08:07 am PDT

Svetlana wrote, “you are supposed to actually track what the people you follow do.” Horrors!
Svetlana Gladkova - July 24, 2008 at 10:07 am PDT

@Sarah: Thanks a lot, appreciate the mention. Funny how we both ended the post with “ironically” on the Twitter Counter app
Ari Herzog - July 24, 2008 at 03:09 pm PDT

Twitter Counter is definitely useful which I display at the bottom of my blog. I saw it on someone’s website, I wish I remember who, a few days ago and signed up on July 21; I guess I beat the cowbell.

If you’d like to follow me on Twitter, here I am!
Svetlana Gladkova - July 24, 2008 at 11:07 am PDT

@Brent: Sorry, it was not supposed to be “supposed”, it should rather be “you have better chances of actually tracking” if you don’t follow thousands of people.
Susan Beebe - July 24, 2008 at 12:07 pm PDT

Fail Whale (outages) + Follower/Follows Counts all screwed up! + Sending of random, unauthorized tweets (I did NOT write!) = corrupted database and management fiasco
Svetlana Gladkova - July 24, 2008 at 09:55 pm PDT

@Dave L: Obviously, there's a big difference between noticing the problem and actually eliminating the cause of the problem so it is not exactly fair to expect them to fix it as soon as they noticed it. But I agree with you 100% that Twitter staff should communicate their actions better to users - with the user base like this it is a must to let people know what is going on promptly not to cause multiply rumors to emerge.

@Leslie: Obviously, you can not be happy about the problem - no one can, especially when we do rely on Twitter as a communication tool for our business. For many people it has become similar to losing all the contacts in address book - and that's a huge damage for the business. I myself am all for removal of spammers on Twitter but I think the approach they chose is a wrong on - it could work much better if they allowed users to report spammers since spammers always start following multiple people so they won't stay unnoticed. And knowing that they do have some problem with algorithm, I think they should have opted for crowdsourcing in this particular case.

@Al Deguits: How are we supposed to rely on Twitter clients when Twitter is unstable itself? After all, the clients only get what Twitter gives them. I don't see your point. We can choose to rely on Twitter clones and any of them that comes up with a descent approach to importing all the Twitter contacts may well become the destination for our exodus.
Svetlana Gladkova - July 24, 2008 at 10:07 pm PDT

@Susan: I’m over there as well at http://identi.ca/profy and I’ve been subscribed to you anyway but I have not actually started to use the service. Though I am sure I will start with it now, after all.
Svetlana Gladkova - July 24, 2008 at 10:07 pm PDT

@Susan: Definitely. I myself think this is absolutely enough and as soon as I see a new clone launched that would allow to import all the contacts from Twitter itself, I think I will jump on it and be its most passionate evangelist. Developers here?
Susan Beebe - July 24, 2008 at 10:07 pm PDT

LOTS of twitter evacuees showed up in Identi.ca recently. I am over there –> http://Identi.ca/susanbeebe
The Songnumbers Team - May 14, 2009 at 05:05 pm PDT

Hey, give Twitter a break OR come up with something better We live with it b/c it’s still a killer tool….

Sincerely,
The Songnumbers Team
Songnumbers.com

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