
Keith's note: The NASA Astrobiology Institute recently notedthat "AstrobiologyNAI now has over one million followers!" on Twitter. One small problem: a close look at the followers for NAI's Twitter account will show that a substantial portion are fake accounts used for spam or other marketing scams. Just go through them and you will see. These accounts have no profile pictures or information, follow (at most) a couple of dozen accounts, and rarely if ever post anything. And when they do post something they do so once and it is often not in English - and yet all of NAI's Twitter postings are in English. To be certain, some of NASA's Twitter accounts are wildly popular and are of great value. But in this instance, the numerical popularity of NAI's Twitter account is due mostly to spam, not content. NAI has been informed of this issue more than once by a number of people inside and outside of NASA, but the NAI folks seem intent upon boasting about this number without understanding what it actually means. There are ways to scan and remove spam and scam followers. NAI should look into this.
Understanding What Twitter Stats Really Mean
Keith: please please stop with the massive number of articles about twitter.
I read NASA Watch for news about NASA and related space events, and hope that you are devoting your reporting energies to a diverse set of sources.
But twitter occupies more space on NASA Watch than SUV tests occupy in Consumer Reports! Please, stop the madness.
If your response is "if you don't like what I do, don't read it", I'll simply say "that's my decision to make, but please give reasonable consideration to my constructive criticism".
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NASA would do well to read the recent article about this very issue by Anil Dash.