It was the holy grail of the twitterverse; the Midas touch of social media… and now it’s gone… le sigh…
The suggested user list has proven its ability time and time again to create the overnight digital celebrity. It’s taken people, organizations, causes, and brands and lifted them into impressive followings of six digits or more.
For those under the proverbial rock, the suggested user list was a list comprised of some of the “best twitterers.” This was decided by an algorithm, followed by a manual review conducted by the twitter staff. The list of many would show up when a user first signed up for twitter, and gave an option to follow 20 of them (chosen at random) or not. The simplicity of clicking yes led many of those new users to agree, and follow profiles they may have heard of, or be exposed to new people/companies. On January 21st, Twitter decided to change the practice.
The biggest difference to those included on this new list is the ease of the follow. Before it was a simple yes or no to the user, and now you have to go through categories, and individually select those whom you want to follow. It basically went from an almost default yes, to an almost default no. This has obviously severely stemmed the growth of those included on the suggested users list.
Now that we are a couple of weeks out from the change we can see trends developing with the following rates of those included on the list. Here’s the most interesting part; not only has the rapid and steady advance in the following slowed, it’s reversed. A sample of a twitter user that was on the old suggested user list, and has since moved on to the new suggested user list is below.
The growth of the following hits a complete wall on the day that twitter switched the style of the suggested user list. Surprisingly it then begins a slower, but still impressive steady decline at about the rate of a thousand followers a week. Is this a reflection of spam and dead accounts being deleted by twitter on a daily basis? If this deleting of accounts so severely outweighs the number of followers being added when will the decline stop? Is twitter also deleting the 60% of dead accounts out there (going off Nielson’s famous estimate of a 40% retention rate)?
There are many questions about the statistics, but the thing that is sure is the suggested user list is no longer a guarantee of droves of followers. A simple addition of a click made all the difference, and the wheat is now separating from the chaff. In my opinion this is a great thing, sticking with the idea that success can’t be bought on the social media playing field, it has to be earned. This is an equalizer between established brands and newer brands that are earning a following with good ideas and great content.
