I set up my Twitter page just a few weeks ago and only notified three friends about it, so I have only them as my followers. Got back from vacation and found 15 additional followers, only a few of which are related to my page, most of them are sites I never heard of , such as: UK Listings Are you a UK business? List your business for FREE in our website directory, Colombo City Tour @ColomboTour OK Lanka Travels is a tour operator Echo Projects @OurEchoProjects We harness the power of your voice to create real change. LovePashminas.com UK @lovepashminas selling #pashminas and #shawls for #weddings What's going on here? How did these accounts find out about my page? Since the vacation was in Europe and involved buying a travel phone from a British company, I suspect that company sold my information to these accounts.
I too have received many followers which completely did not make sense to me. They are either bot or any random user which have bio and display picture. There could be many reason behind this. I am listing down what I can think of. While creating accounts twitter asks for an email address for verification along with phone number. Most of the time we click on next or skip once we have filled the basic requirements for creating account. I am guessing you might have clicked on next button when the window screen with the message notify your contacts would have come. As you have mentioned that you notified your 3 friends. If you have started following and you have been followed back. In this case scenario you are visible to all the followers of your 3 friends. If you open your account on desktop. You might notice there is a section in right navigation who to follow. Twitter automatically suggest also. Sometimes Twitter users follow in this hope to get follow back. They are not looking for relevant thing. They just follow and want to follow back.
It's a strategy to gain Twitter followers. They will follow you hoping that you will follow them back.
Thanks Mrinal Dev and dcristo ~ OK, so I guess the only thing to do is laboriously go through the list of your followers and block them one by one
<<They will unfollow you if you don't follow them back.>> Aha. The unsolicited followers remained on my Followers list for about a week before I blocked them. The next time an unsolicited follower shows up I'll do nothing and see if after some period of time they disappear. Thanks dcristo
This getting random followers is the part of being on Twitter. You will have to develop the habit of ignoring. Because after some time blocking will also feel like tedious thing.
OK dcristo, thanks, I'll study up on the the follow/unfollow thing. <<getting random followers is the part of being on Twitter. You will have to develop the habit of ignoring>> Thanks Mrinal Dev, I'm slowly learning about Twitter, your help is much appreciated.