How Auto-Gathered Followers Hurt You There are services available that claim to increase your follower account automatically. These are a bad idea, however, because auto-gathering followers creates:* Chaos and noise on your Twitter stream if part of the automated follower-building process you’ve adopted entails “auto-following back.” That reduces the value of your Twitter stream as a listening tool and information source.
* Followers who aren’t listening to what you have to say. That diminishes the value of marketing anything on Twitter and reduces the chance of being heard at all.
* Overinflated follower numbers, which are a turn-off for those looking to make meaningful connections. Many people use the “follow-to-follower ratio” as part of assessing someone’s “worth” on Twitter, as opposed to sheer number of followers. For example, if someone is following 48,895 people and has 46,975 followers, that looks suspiciously like they are fishing for followers rather than genuinely interested in interaction.
* Automated activity in your Twitter account that you don’t control.
* The possibility that your Twitter password gets into the hands of an untrusted third party
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