• Hey Twitter, Can We Have Our 1.4 Million Followers Back?

    Monday, May 10th, 2010

    Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to a thriving... → Learn More

    Twitter is all sorts of wacky today. Earlier Mike Butcher at TC Europe reported on a bug which can be used to force any Twitter user to follow you. Now, everyone’s follower count has been wiped out, at least temporarily.

    If you look right now at the TechCrunch Twitter account, for instance, it lists 0 followers and 0 following. That is down from 1.4 million or so earlier this morning. This is true for every account. It appears to be temporary and part of Twitter’s attempt to deal with the first bug mentioned above. Tweets still seem to be going out, so everyone can breathe easy.

    I wonder how many followers we will have when the numbers get restored.

    Update: Yup, Twitter is aware of this and working on the issue:

    We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to “force” other users to follow them. We’re now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place. Follower/following numbers are currently at 0; we’re aware and this too should shortly be resolved.

    Company: Twitter
    Website: twitter.com
    Launch Date: March 21, 2006
    Funding: $1.16B

    Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post updates 140 characters long. Twitter “is a real-time information network that connects [users] to the latest stories, ideas, opinions, and news.” The service can be accessed through a variety of methods, including Twitter’s website; text messaging; instant messaging; and third-party desktop, mobile, and web applications. Twitter is currently available in...

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