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The Twitter Experiment
## You can check the current number of followers at the bottom of this page.
Current Activity:
News:
15/6/10: The Computer Know How will soon be collecting data about daily followers. Our new script will delete 1000 people a day (it will not delete people that are following the account) whilst also adding 1000 a day until we have 4k + followers (then we will bump up the ratio). This gives a user 48 hours to follow back or else be deleted. Our new script will also gather data about the names of people whom follow us back. At the moment, we enter a search keyword of a random name and thus we usually add 180-195 people of the same name at any one time. Although this is not a huge sample, we think it will be enough to determine which names follow back the most. It will also help to determine what sex are more likely to follow back a random.
What is The Big Twitter Experiment?
The Twitter Experiment is an experiment to find the ratio of following to followers. If a user were to simply add thousands of users a day, how many would add them back? What is the percentage of people who will add a random back simply because they are following them.
How are we (a group of 3 people) going to do it?
You may think adding loads of people a day is going to get boring fast. The Good thing is; I made a python script to do it. Basically we will add as many people we can a day over a period of 24 months. The script will run at startup every day so I will never have to look at it. Everything is automated.
But what about the Daily follow limit?
Ahh yes, the daily follow limit and the 2000 follow ratio cap. As you may know, every account can follow 2,000 users total. Once you’ve followed 2,000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow. This number is different for each account and is based on your ratio of followers to following but twitter will not release the ratio. However, after studying some accounts following and being followed in the 2 - 5k range; a number of people found this:
Approximate estimate:
Followers, You can Follow
2000----------2100
2500----------2750
3000----------3300 - 3600
4000----------4400 - 4900
So, when we hit the 2k limit, we will simply start to delete people who didn't follow us back. When we finally hit around 4000 plus people, we can add the 1000 per day limit with no problems, but will still need people to keep following us. After some more study, we estimate that at around 30,000 followers (and a minimum of 10% new people added will follow) we will have the freedom to add anyone without getting into trouble with the ratio limit. We will only be restricted by the 1000 add daily limit. Therfore, the test will only begin when we have a 30k follower to 30k following ratio.
Ok, But how long will this take?
We will estimate that we can get 80 followers a day and if word gets out about this experiment maybe more. At 80 followers a day, it will take 365 days just to get to the beginning of this experiment (30,000 followers), hence why the experiment will run for 2 years. In Total after the 2 years, we hope to be following 350k plus people for a decent sample size. We will then subtract the 30k from both followers and following and find the ratio.
But wont people delete you when they realize you are inactive and just add lots of people?
Thats the thing, we won't be inactive.... We will use the account and try to keep things interesting for everyone so minimal people will stop following us.
What will we do with the account after?
Simple, use it as a twitter account. I'll try to keep it interesting so thousands of followers will continue to follow.
Can i follow you to help you get to 30k followers faster?
Sure, we need all the help we can get to 30k followers. Please help, tell your friends, we need all the help we can get. However, if we already have 30k followers and we arn't following you, please don't follow us. The account is: http://twitter.com/TheBulkTwitExp or click the big button at the bottom of the page.
Will you follow everyone who follows you?
No, we will follow back 99.9% of people so long as they don't spam, don't excessively tweet links, and speak English. There is nothing worse than logging into twitter and seeing a bunch of spam, links and foreign language Tweets. If we do not add you back within 7 days and you wish to be followed by us, please send me an email and I will personally login to the account and follow you.
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Other notes:
Please don't get this twitter account confused with the account on the home page of this blog. That account is my personal account and is not a part of the experiment.
- A more detailed widget is coming soon.
Acknowledgments:
Many thanks to Twitter of course at its your platform we are using. I hope you can see this as more advertising for your website and not a burden.
I also acknowlege the creators of python and zope (I will get a link). In the first small testing phase, I used the zope.testbrowser dependency.
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