Big losers of Twitter followers in new changes

juma chrispinus

July 13, 2018 8:46 AM

Raila's, DP Ruto's and Uhuru's following remained intact.

Following the raft of changes introduced by Twitter on Thursday through Friday morning, and which is ongoing, seemingly influential accounts have lost millions of followers, with bloggers hard-hit by the new changes.

Kenya’s leading social media influencer's and bloggers Cyprian Nyakundi and Christian Dela have each seen their numbers whittle down by half overnight, a move that has caused excitement among Kenyans online.

Nyakundi’s followers have reduced from a whopping 1.2 million to 696,000 while Dela’s numbers now stand at 521,000 from an impressive one million.

The new unprecedented change could mean a loss of finances which have characterized their online presence, as they have been described as ‘tweeters’ for hire.

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Another big loser is the Kenyan Film and Classification Board Chief Executive officer, Dr Ezekiel Mutua, commonly the moral cop, whose following dipped from 106,000 to 34,000.

Machakos Governor’s following dropped slightly with around 2,000 followers from 652,000 to 650,000. Uhuru Kenyatta’s following stagnated at 3.2 million, DP Ruto and Raila Odinga’s following remained firm at 1.9 million each.

Renowned Journalist Jeff Koinange lost slightly from 1.3 million to 1.2 million.

Twitter on Thursday said the changes were “ongoing and global effort to build trust and encourage healthy conversation on Twitter”.

It added in a statement: “Follower counts are a visible feature, and we want everyone to have confidence that the numbers are meaningful and accurate.”

The microblogging site explained that it has been locking accounts when it detected sudden changes in account behavior.

“In these situations, we reach out to the owners of the accounts and unless they validate the account and reset their passwords, we keep them locked with no ability to log in. This week, we’ll be removing these locked accounts from follower counts across profiles globally,” said Twitter.

juma chrispinus