Who really is following me ? (and You)
This morning I opened my blog's home page, and ...here it is - my new milestone: 500 followers.
500 ?!
Hmmm, looks great. I decided to make a post, and write a common "thank you " type post to my followers. And possibly - send a small prize, maybe ~10 SBD to my honored 500th place holder. But who really is my #500 place taker?
I opened database page
https://steemdb.com/@onealfa/followers
And , this was where I started to see an interesting, yet surprising and confusing figures
As the figure "500" on my home page was tumbling back-and-forth between 499 and 500 for a while, I decided to look closer, who exactly did that #500.
To my surprise , most of my last 7 followers all were newbies , who joined steemit only ONE week ago, yet with thousands and thousands of followers. So here are screen shots of some of them
Then I checked steemwhales.com, to see if such high numbers of followed persons are common these days. A new surprise.
Two of these followers, while showing 5000+ and 7000+ persons on their home pages, where not at all in the TOP-20 on steemwhales:
I went back to steemdb.com, to see more statistics. More surprise !
The persons followed, while being listed/sorted in chronological order, yet all were also listed alphabetically (!), by the first letter of the nickname. Your check out this yourself:
https://steemdb.com/@kishore1988/following
It looks to me, that most of those record-braking followers just use some bots, harvesting all the steemit users by the database, letter-by letter. All in a roll.
Mots likely, they never even have opened even one of my posts. I was simply been grabbed by a bot, because today was the turn for a letter "o", and my nick name starts with "o".
Here is some statistics, how the closest pretender to my prize was harvesting new victims, in the last three days
So, once this discovered, I have changed my mind regarding #500 prize. I don't care at all of being grabbed by a bot for a simple "follow-4-follow" reasons. I do not believe that this makes any good at all to steemit, and to the steemit community.
Am I wrong?
No F-4-F any more
I know, we all are humans, and all make mistakes. The first few weeks on steemit I was often asking to follow me, or encouraging to do this. No, I was not begging directly, like "pleazzz follow me, and I will follow you back" (F-4-F) . But once I reach close to 500 followed people on my own list, I suddenly have noticed, that this huge list is not so good. My feed page got overloaded with useless posts, and I figured out, that I maybe see (see, not read) only 10-20% of the posts in my feed, and read completely maybe 3% or 5% of them. Maybe even less (because I have no idea how many goes through my feed)
**So what's the point to have so many followers? **
Currently I am considering to go carefully through my whole list of followed persons, and un-follow 200-300 of them.
I can probably handle 200 on my list , and read, curate, upvote a good half of them.
However 500 seems to be quite and overload to me.
Your thoughts?
P.S.
Hundreds and hundreds of "unfolowed" been seen in the lists of my inspected steemdb.com data, and this was another weird thing.
Do these bots "follow" automatically everything they can find, and then, a few days later, make automatic "unfollow"?
Seems simple, "F-4-F" fans may discover they been followed, and naturally, they follow BACK. Job is done !
Now they can be released, unfolowed, just to make the list smaller.
If this is the case, I think it must get more publicity.
And get some open discussions, shall such bots be tolerated, or not.
P.P.S.
Regarding bots, unfollowings - look what I found today:
https://steem.ly/4Y
15274 unfollowed in just one day . Top this !
Or this one. Crazy. Just wondering, why so exactly 28000. Is this the maximum capacity of this bot?
You are right, I also tried to follow the top 300 paid authors, but realized would be hard to identify them later, so I stopped at 50, now I only follow the ones that makes me want to read about! Great research you made here, thank you for showing us!
It all came out by accident, while I wanted to figure out the lucky 10 SBD winner. (BTW, prize was not promised in advance)
But I'm not willing to waste my funds on bots... haha :)
If I spend my precious time on writing, at least what I expect is - to be read. Not grabbed by bots
paskaityk apie tuos kurie komenuotja, bet nededa upvote nes puse kuriems uzdejai upvote komentaruose net nepasivargino uzdet upvote ant straipsio.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@deividas/did-you-notice-that-lately-a-lot-of-people-leave-positive-comments-but-don-t-upvote-the-actual-post
I understand, still a lot of "tricks" to try to fool the system, but this kind of posts will make us aware of the existence of this, hopefuly the rules keep changing for the good of the system, I also consider that the flag feature can damage a lot, and the poor encourage to update posts because of not earning anymore after 7 days... There should be educational tutorials/page of what's currently happen with the good strategies and common mistakes of use here on steemit. And constantly updated to save us time searching on older posts.
Nice job @onealfa, you dug a lot of information about them new users. I myself had similar idea since i follow like 1200 people, but i barely have time to even go through my feed page. Need to reconsider maybe better less, but valuable.
We should have a 'follower' count and 'engaged with you' counts too. Who's voted for you ever, who's commented on your blog, who's replied to a comment elsewhere. I'm almost at 900, I've only authored 20 blogs, some receiving less than 10 views!
I agree. It's a waste to "follow" people if you are not going to read their content, give upvotes, resteem, and not interact with them. Let's add the "engaged with you" counts.
hey @onealfa, just wanted to let you know that i'm a real follower :p
you can check out my profile and it should prove it. anyway, i've been experiencing the same thing with my followers. pretty sure a big fraction of them are bots!
Mmmk HOLY SMOKES. I was on my way out for a quick fast food run but I was compelled to read this. Man! The bots are out and running shenanigans 🤖! This really hones in for me how important it is to build your own personalized community on here. I'm new and I am realizing how important it is to take the time to choose carefully and to build those micro relationships. It's supportive, brings in the content related to your interests, and it helps keep your own content authentic. Thanks for the reminder and way to investigate!!! Bravo! I am resteeming this pronto!
When i see comments that say follow for follow on my posts, i don't rly pay attention to it, i have been very active because i just don't have a life Haha. but i make my content mine and will be expressive and creative.
Being a mindless robot is not profitable in the long run, being authentic is :)
Hi @onealfa, I always read your posts since I started following you. :D
I think they need to set a limit on how many people you can follow. Problem solved.
Thanks for the data, I'm going to look more closely at it in a bit, but I think I'm learning a few things from you. :)
This post received a 1.5% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @onealfa! For more information, click here!
Just to you know I'm a follower and I'm real :)
Thank you to share this information and help new Steemers
Well yeah seems like they could be using some sort of bot. I also checked carefully who am I following a few days ago and unfollowed a lot of people because my feed was full of garbage all the time.
You are absolutly right. I've seen bot like that work in twitter and instagram before and they usually follow users, wait a few days and unfollow those that are not following them.
Let's se how it will affect the steemit in the long run.
I really appreciate this post and completely see the potential issue...anyway, look forward to seeing more of your content in the future! I just followed you, and I hope you'll do the same so we can connect and continue to evolve and learn from each other! Full #Steem ahead :)
Follow me @tayken (F-4-F 4 Real) Haha
Much ❤!!!
You have great content your follower will be high
when I joined steemit, I made the mistake of F4F in the first 2 days until I realized that it's the biggest failure strategy and learned that adding value to the community by providing good quality posts is the best way for success here
great job @onealfa keep up your good work mate
Well, you got another follower! You look and sound old enough to know better lol (I'm almost 72). It is good to see other salted & seasoned Steemians.
Excellent post, you forget to mention the bots that vote to get the best curation reward, if you look at certain authors you would realize the trend. I did a post on this, are bots healthy for the steemit commuity, I know they do a excellent job, but are we going to far to maximize gains. Check my post out if you get the chance. You would also find out, that a lot of the day to day interaction and traffic are actually "Bots"
ha..you may be on to something, my following count reached over 600 today and I was wondering why I only got 5 or 6 votes on a thank you lol. Bots are def going on a follow rampage, thanks for the great info @onealfa!
Yeh, mass-followers come to Steem.... then now I'm not surprising about I''ve got +30 followers every day and ZERO upvotes.
Now I understand why.
And any way, congratulations for the milestone
Nice catch, even if it was by accident. I unfollowed a few people already and I've only been on a few weeks. Too much good content getting convoluted with bad.
Nice job buddy.
there are lot of users like these and they only want to earn money in a click .
hats off
@onealfa
nice
good page
Yes. You are right
Yeah I like what you wrote great article with lots of data Now I wonder how many bots follows me
I think you are right on point with the follow for follow bots who automatically unfollow after a few days when you don't follow back. I have noticed that too. Anyway, quality over quantity. Truly good things take time and will last.
Yep, true things will last. No doubt. The only thing we must consider - we have to learn to deal with all this noise, spam, sheeting, garbage. In the way it can hurt the good things at minimal effect
Yes, true. We must understand the game to pull the strings into the right direction.
Well at the start you are mostly very active you check what the site is about and some users experiment a lot. but unfortunately there is a lot of spam, follow bots and fake copy and paste news floating the community to get some attention
Steem is still in beta ,I am sure there will be some solution in the nearest futre. at least I hope so
Yep, absolutely. I agree . Steemit is growing, and we will all grow together. We maybe are like Marks "Hot or Not" in Harvard's domitory in 2003. Still long way to go to 1 mln users...
(source: techcrunch.com)