Twitter announced yesterday that it start purging millions of accounts today. The micro-blogging platform specified that it would be removing locked accounts from follower counts across profiles globally.
So we were to expect a drop in follower counts today. The accounts that Twitter will be purging today are locked accounts that the company ‘detected sudden changes in account behaviour’ and if the owners didn’t validate their accounts, they were henceforth purged.
Twitter said that a lot of people would see a change of about 4 followers or fewer but those people with larger follower accounts would experience a more significant drop.
Well, it is currently happening and people have started noticing the drop in follower accounts.
Starting with the more popular accounts on Twitter, Katy Perry, the most followed person on Twitter has lost over 2 million, Twitter itself has lost a cool 7.5 million, Obama over 2 million and interesting enough, Donald Trump has only lost 100,000 followers.
Well this is not over and this will continue for the rest of the day. I guess now people will get to know their true audiences, but I don’t believe the actual reach would be hampered in any way.