The Twitter Slap and How to Handle It

I was introduced to Twitter about three months ago along with many other Web 2.0 sites. I decided to sign up as it looked like a great place to interact with others and meet people with similar interests as myself. I signed up for Facebook and YouTube at the same time.

I started to be active on all three sites and was learning as I went along. As far as Twitter was concerned, I was told that it was proper etiquette to follow back everyone that followed me. There was a tool available where you could automatically follow those following you and also post a tweet to them thanking them for following you. I set this up and started following people that I thought were interesting. Some of those people also were using this particular tool so they automatically followed me back. However, a number of people did not have the tool and for whatever reason decided not to follow me back.

As the weeks went on, I paid very little attention to the numbers. In the top right-hand corner of the Twitter page there are three sets of numbers displayed. They are ‘following’, ‘followers’ and ‘updates’. I would go on the site and post a few times a day and each day I would add more people to follow, which meant that my ‘following’ number was steadily increasing. I didn’t pay much attention to how many people were actually following me back.

So just about a week ago I was adding more people that I wanted to follow when one of the follow requests would not activate. I thought that Twitter was having a technical problem so left it for a while. However, when I tried again, the same thing happened. I had no idea what was going on. I was still able to send out “tweets” (twitter messages) so I asked if this was happening to anyone else. I received a reply that I had received a “Twitter Slap”. Perhaps you have heard of the very common “Google Slap” where Google punishes you for not adhering to their rules and regulations. Well, this is much the same thing but obviously not anywhere near as serious.

Someone explained that as I was now following 2000 people, Twitter examines your ratio of following to followers and if you fall outside the parameters, then they shut you down and don’t allow you to follow anyone else, until you get your figures in order. So now I understood what the problem was, but how was I supposed to fix it?

I did my Google research and was amazed to find well over one hundred tools to enhance your Twitter experience. I was looking for something specifically that would help me reduce the number of people I was following. I wanted to do this in an informed way, so I was looking for something that would make the job easier. The first thing I needed was a list of the people who were not following me back.

The following two tools were just what I was looking for:-

www.friendorfollow.com….this site lists all the people who don’t follow you back; www.twitoria.com….this site lists the people who have not posted for quite a while;

With the aid of these tools, it then became quite easy to choose the people I wanted to unfollow. By doing this I could have my account unfrozen and then continue to follow more targeted people. It did exactly as I had hoped.

If you are getting close to following 2000 people, it would be a good idea to start to take action now before you run into this same problem. I will periodically go into the website and do a little housecleaning. There are probably other Twitter slaps but this is the only one I have knowledge of right now.

If you are already on Twitter please follow me. If you are not, then hop over to Twitter and get signed up. It only takes a moment and it’s free. If you follow me, then I will follow you back. You can see me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/janshimano.