The microblogging company, Twitter, has admitted that it has been affected with an unfollow bug that randomly “unfollows” people without the account holders’ prior consent or knowledge. Twitter users across the world have been tweeting about this unfollow bug on the site and many have been complaining about the sudden decrease in the number of people, they have been following.
One of the users, Alex Andreou @sturdyAlexw wrote, “This twitter random unfollow bug is REALLY ticking me off now!”, while another user Gennefer Gross @Gennefer tweeted, “The Twitter random follow/unfollow bug is getting out of control. Any word on a fix? Will affected accounts be restored?”
Few users from the city claim that they have not yet discovered that big a difference in their Twitter pages. “I have not noticed it, because all the regular people I follow haven’t been unfollowed But I did notice some tweets about twitter unfollowing people on their own,” says Supraja Subramaniam, a public relations official at an NGO.
Another regular Twitter follower, Amogh G, a software employee at the Cognizant, Hyderabad, said it does not matter that much. “We follow like a hundred profiles and check those tweets that are regular updates. I guess it will take people some more time to realise that, they have been hit by the bug.”
A consultant at Deloitte from Boston and a social media enthusiast, Dhanraj Konduru opines, “Twitter has outgrown from the simple mentions which clearly indicates that people have outgrown from the “I’ve to follow someone new or something different or valuable” tendency and and they’re happy and conscious of whom they’re following.” He also adds, “I did see a slight difference in the decrease in the number of people on Friday, though.”
Explaining his version of the effect of the unfollow bug, Aditya Vedula, who is doing his MBA at the Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, says, “Following and un-following in twitter is entirely up to a person’s wish, except when the other person’s account is protected, where the account holder will have to approve the follow request.” He then adds, “So even if I follow or un-follow someone, they might see it in their statistics or get a notification email. But, yes I have seen some random unfollows from people who I was regularly in touch with and same with my account where I have un-followed someone without me actually doing it. In retrospect, I have no regrets.”
For a few users the unfollow bug has come like a blessing in disguise! How? Well, just unfollow your friends and blame it on the bug. One such user, Anil Dash @anildash wrote on his page, “Seriously, you guys: Stop complaining about Twitter’s unfollow “bug”. It’s a wonderful feature that eliminates tons of unnecessary drama.
While, Rob Sheridan @ rob_sheridan says, “Quick, unfollow some of your annoying friends while you can still blame it on the unfollow bug”. Agreeing with them, was another user Kinmun Lee @mrbrown, who tweeted, “With the Twitter Unfollow bug, you can now unfollow your frienemies and blame it on Twitter when caught.”
However, Twitter officials have advised affected people to visit its support page and go to fellow tweeters’ profile pages to check whether they are still following them. Adam Rifkin, co-founder of a conversation website Pandwhale, tweeted, “Is it me or has Twitter’s unfollow bug been going on for a while? Why is this such a hard bug to fix?”