# A question about Twitter

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-twitter/497281>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 22, 2009, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-twitter/497281 "2009-05-22T06:42:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2009, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-twitter/497281/1 "2009-05-22T06:42:23Z")

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I’ve just started using it and very impressive it is. But one thing puzzles me. Why would complete strangers choose to Follow me? I’ve had about half a dozen in the last week. Is this the Twitter version of spam?

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**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2009, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-twitter/497281/2 "2009-05-22T10:19:33Z")

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Within minutes of signing up, I was being followed by someone named “britnetfuxvids”, who had a rather graphic photo as their icon. Shortly after that, someone named after a UK dating site joined up as well. As flattering as that was, sadly yes, I suspect it was spam. I haven’t had any others, though.

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**Author:** ![kapri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kapri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kapri)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2009, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-twitter/497281/3 "2009-05-22T13:24:48Z")

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I have, on occasion, followed strangers with twitter, and since very few people I know in real life are on twitter, nearly everyone who follows me is a stranger. The strangers I follow are usually people I’ve noticed through people I already follow, or people I’ve browsed using the public timeline. If you don’t know many people who use twitter, that’s pretty much the only way to follow/get followed.

I have, though, been followed by people who aren’t interested at all in my tweets and are following me only to get me to follow them because they are selling something. I usually glance at their profile, and if their tweets are only about the product they are selling, I don’t follow them back. Some of them do have interesting tweets nonetheless, so I follow them, although sometimes if they get too annoying I unfollow.