I'll never understand why people follow certain twitter accounts. Why follow back someone who themselves follow 10s of thousands of people? It's not like they're ever going to read anything you have to say, because following that many people makes their timeline spin like a slot machine. Why follow the vast majority of college athletes who only use Twitter to respond to hot girls and pass on pearls of wisdom like "At it early!" and "#GymFlow"? Why follow Jon Rothstein?
The worst of all these are the automated accounts. Computer programs comb the web for keywords, and then they convert them into a tweet. I discovered one of these while I was searching for information on Sheldon Jeter – the Vanderbilt transfer who made the news when his coach blocked him from transferring to Pitt. This account – Derek Jeter News – has 5,370 followers, and tweets out any story with Jeter in the headline.
It will be tweeting this story, for sure. (Red Sox fans could troll the account with all sorts of fun headlines)
If you're a Derek Jeter nut and follow this account, you've received 53 tweets from Derek Jeter News that are actually about Sheldon Jeter (as well as 27 about Caremlita Jeter, Olympic champion) just in the past 24 hours. And if you're a Derek Jeter nut who got to this story from a tweet from Derek Jeter News, then by all means report the account as spam so that those of us who are searching for actual news can find it.
