Analysis of Twitter’s “Accept” Bug by the Tweets

This hasn’t been Twitter’s best week. A user discovered that Tweeting out “Accept Username” would automatically add the person as a follower. People jumped to gain the following of their favorite celebrity, Perez Hilton tweeted out the story to his followers, and the Twitterverse exploded with discussion of the bug. Our nature is to start tracking twitter stories with RowFeeder and crunching the data. Here is what we found from tracking “accept” as the story broke…

Celebrities were the most sought after followers, with Oprah taking the crown and 3 of the Jonas brothers in the top 20. Apparently wealth and power also matter. Bill Gates was #7 on the list and President Barack Obama made the top 20 at #13.

When the story broke, most of the activity was people exploiting the bug — tweets starting with “accept.” As the story got picked up in the media, Twitter shut down the bug and the Twitterverse focused on discussing the issue.

• Posted on May 12, 2010 by Adam Schoenfeld
• Categories: News, Social Media, The Internet