The #followback experiment

What was the #followback experiment? Well since I've joined twitter I've seen quite a few of these follow related hashtags flying around and I began to wonder if they actually work or was it just a ploy by the user to gain retweets. So with these thoughts I decided to conduct a simple study from the 08/09/13 to the 15/09/13 to see how many followers I could gain in that time. I would retweet random #teamfollowback tweets once or twice each day and then collect the results at the end of the study.

There were fluctuations thought out the study of the number of people following me after each retweet but this I assume was down to the popularity of the original tweet itself and the time in which I retweeted. If more people were actively using their own twitter when I retweeted the number of followers I would receive would dramatically increase.

Over the course of the study I gained over  30 new followers,  which to an individual like myself who is relatively new to the world of twitter can only be appreciated, so thank you to those who did follow me. However I would like be followed by individuals with similar interests to myself. Obviously I know that twitter suggests people its thinks you should follow, but I think it would be so much better if you get these followtrains so suit certain people. For example a marketing follow back train, a gamer follow back train. I just think this way individuals opinions would be more appreciated on twitter as they'd be preaching to the right audience more often.