27 Sep Twitter Cleans up Spam Accounts
Facebook is not the only social media channel that is trying to build back their reputation. Twitter has been struggling ever since they moved away from their bread and butter of the reverse chronological feed in early 2016. The recent news that Twitter is overrun with fake accounts delivered a massive blow to Twitter’s reputation. Over the last few months, a Twitter clean up has been happening.
Fake Account Clean Up
Twitter started making headlines in May for suspending and deleting three million accounts in 30 days. Another round came in July of this year when they removed ‘tens of millions of suspicious accounts’. Some brands, celebrities and influencers saw their following drop with this round of clean ups. Twitter said the total follower count on Twitter was reduced by six percent—which is significant. They are locking about 10 million suspicious accounts per week. An account can be deemed suspicious if it is suspected that it is automated spam, or if it has been hacked.
This cleanup was long overdue and essential to the health of the platform. Users and advertisers were starting to question the validity of the information on Twitter, which is the last thing Twitter wants. The clean-up also set them up to launch their new campaign.
Twitter Repositioning Themselves with #StartWithThem
Twitter has launched a new campaign called #StartWithThem. The campaign is putting the focus back on users. The platform is positioning themselves as having more engaged and influential users compared to the other large networks. With brands and users still frustrated at Facebook, Twitter’s #StartWithThem Campaign comes at a crucial time. They are trying to re-engage brands, by emphasizing that Twitter is the place to be for real-time, culturally relevant conversations, especially for certain niche audiences within the B2B space.
To be honest, the campaign has had a slow start with minimal pickup by anyone outside of Twitter. Most of the content tweeted has been by Twitter employees at conferences and people seeing Twitter billboards in Japanese train stations. We will be keeping a close watch on the campaign to see if we see the media start to pick it up and user perception shift in a more positive direction.
In the meantime, if you feel like your Twitter strategy could be cleaned up, we would be happy to help!
