Twitter has confirmed a bug that makes it possible to force any user to follow you. The bug was first discovered by the Turkish blog and then put to the test by Webrazzi. They created a dummy account and were able to get some high profile geek follows like @ev, @finkd, @readwriteweb, @mashable and @techcrunch.
Before you go trying this out, Techcrunch reports that Twitter is working on fixing the bug. One of their “solutions” involves resetting your follower count to zero if you attempt to exploit the bug. If you just have to see it in action, create a dummy account as Webrazzi did. Now, let’s say you want some high profile people following you:
- Load up Twitter’s web interface at Twitter.com. The bug doesn’t work through any 3rd party clients which is probably some limitation or feature of the API. On the same note, you may be able to get this to work via SMS, but that requires more setup time.
- Simply send a tweet of the form “accept @username” and @username will be forced to follow your account.
It seems like Twitter and Facebook, both giants in their areas, are slowly exposing more chinks in their armor. This is not unusual as the most popular are the ones people are always gunning for. The issue here is that Both are still on the way up. They are trying to move the crowd and can’t afford to slip up right now. Facebook just corrected a bug that allowed anyone to view your pending friend requests and chat history. Now, users were able to manipulate their follower counts and force high-profile people to follow them on Twitter.
These types of mishaps won’t go unnoticed and, as I’ve said before, these bugs seem so simple that one has to wonder how they have possibly been overlooked. Twitter’s follower numbers are already pretty much worthless, but they are still a metric that many brands look at to measure ROI.
Google Buzz took a lot of heat regarding privacy when it first launched. It seems to me that the issues popping up as of late regarding the likes of Facebook and Twitter are much more disturbing. While Google’s actions can be argued as a difference of opinion or strategy, Facebook and Twitter just appear to be getting sloppy.