Twitter Bug Zaps Social Media Website

May 11, 2010 written by MJ

Twitter startled many of its users yesterday afternoon when all “follower” and “following” settings on accounts went to the startling number of zero. For people who keep up with updates of dozens, hundreds or thousands of other users on the website, it was all they could talk about. There were scores of tweets – posts for the non-twitter user – mocking the problem or worried that they were the only one whose popularity on the site had dwindled to nothing.

This unusual phenomenon was put in place by Twitter temporarily while they fixed a bug that allowed users of the social media website to “force” other users to follow them and receive updates. While those numbers had skyrocketed earlier in the day, they eventually returned to normal. Twitter posted status updates during the day to let people know what was going on. The bug clean-up was eventually completed by 6:30 p.m., giving accountholders one more thing to tweet about.