Is @ev helping out @aplusk for @oprah show? I'm... - Robert Scoble

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Is @ev helping out @aplusk for @oprah show? I'm getting tons of messages from people who realize they can't unfollow that account. I can't either.

April 16, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

zokiboy, Bernard Moon, Paul Stamatiou and 49 other people liked this

wait now they are blocking unfollows? - rob friedman

Yep, I cant unfollow him. - Christian Burns

This is not right at all. We should have the right to unfollow him if we want to. Personally, I'm not following him, but still, THIS IS NOT RIGHT! - Michael Forian

rob: yeah. I can't unfollow @aplusk - Robert Scoble

oh BURN! - rob friedman

as aplusk woud have said on That 70's show - rob friedman

Nope, I can't unfollow Ashton..but I can unfollow other users - Sam Houston

Oh that is cheap Twitter, You can't unfollow @Aplusk!! I am glad I didn't do it at all!! - Paul

The beginning of the end... Twitter has sold it's soul to Oprah. - Trad Robinson

You can't stop following? -- that is lame. I guess you have to be special to get that set up? - Brian Sullivan

I've tried to unfollow @aplusk and I cannot do it, either. - Anthony K. Valley ©

I'm so glad I never followed that one. Maybe they moved @aplusk to it's own server and have the SQL update/delete locked down. - rob friedman

Leo was just talking about that. Makes the whole platform a joke. - Eric - seven eleven

I can't follow @Aplusk, let alone unfollow. Twitter's just borked. No conspiracy here folks, sorry. - drew olanoff

I followed him, but it took a few minutes to register - maybe unfollowing is the same? - Caffeinated Sue

Glad I never bothered to follow him anyway! - Chris Charabaruk

Eric: the whole platform has been a joke since day one. Didn't stop all of us from joining. - Robert Scoble

lol @ own server - Stuart Evans from twhirl

Twitter cant afford to have that account go down - Christian Burns

Weird. Twitter's been acting wonky the last few days tho. - Tiffany Monhollon

wow..... - MikeAmundsen

Twitter is becoming the new VH1 "Where Are They Now" countdown special. - Eric - seven eleven

And @aplusk's follower count is still going up. - Michael Forian

definition of Twitter = Wonky - rob friedman

Twitter's infrastructure is just falling apart, as always - Michael Krigsman

@aplusk is adding about 2-4 followers a second from what I can tell. - rob friedman

I've tried to unfollow for a couple of hours. I have successfully unfollowed marketers and spammers in the same time frame, just not Kutcher. Getting this error message on him "Whoops! Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and try again!" - Anthony K. Valley ©

Okay, I just tried to unfollow, it didn't work. Has anyone tried to unfollow CNN? - Caffeinated Sue

I was unable to unfollow @aplusk, but I did just unfollow @scobleizer. Just a test ;) - Ryan Kuder

I tried to unfollow both of them and it gave that Whoops error - James Rowe

You can't unfollow @cnnbrk either. Wow, this sucks. Twitter's obviously trying to cover their parfaits. - Michael Forian

Brings new meaning to the term, "default" - Jesse Stay

Being pretty new to Twitter (two years but very sporadic until the last few weeks) I hadn't heard of @aplusk until today. Anyhow, I went to try to follow him in the last few hours and none of my attempts were successful. My conclusion: the race is rigged by joint PR effort, they want him to break the million just as he appears on Oprah. Or something like that. I have to say that, given it's a free service, I didn't mind too much. But I probably haven't invested as much of myself as Scoble and others here :) - Richard Drake

Well, the million follower scandal will hopefully show us technical folks what not to do if we ever hit it big. http://twitter.com/aplusk... Hacked really? pfft. - rob friedman

can't unfollow, but I can still block. Let's all punk him and block him. (I did.) - Michael Markman

1,000,000 blocks that'd be nice - rob friedman

Honestly I don't remember ever following @cnnbrk, and I don't see updates on page, or tweetdeck - James Rowe

So, what does blocking do? - Dennis Jackson

Twitter's TOS: "General Conditions - We reserve the right to modify or terminate the Twitter.com service for any reason, without notice at any time." Wow. This blows big time. - Michael Forian

blocking makes it so that user when they are logged in, are unable to see your msgs - rob friedman

I see the TOS. I still don't think it's right they are doing this. They need to make it fair. :( boo.. - Dennis Jackson

http://www.flickr.com/photos... video! - sean percival

I wonder if it has to do with the "aplusk's 1,000,000th follower gets this and that and the other thing" promises that people/organizations like EA are making. By blocking people from unfollowing those accounts, they could be hoping to prevent people from unfollowing right after he hits 1,000,000 and the jockeying to become the "real" 1,000,000th follower that's sure to come. - Gord McLeod

This is common for users with a lot of followers. I see it with our users on SocialToo all the time - it's some sort of bug in Twitter, assuming it's not a conspiracy. - Jesse Stay

You can block him though http://twitter.com/aplusk - Christian Burns

I just don't see how blocking him does anything. - Dennis Jackson

Hrm, that certainly takes some wind out of Twitter's sails... - Trish Ridgway

Ashton is saying on his twitter feed that his account is getting hacking continually. Maybe this is a protective measure? - Karl Kovacs

Guys, I think I've figured it out: the "unfollow" only takes effect after a few minutes. This applies to both @aplusk and @cnnbrk. - Michael Forian

After a few minutes? I tried unfollowing Oprah and Ev and those don't work either. I wonder if it's my browser. - Dennis Jackson

I can't follow him either. It pretends I'm following him, but when I refresh, I'm still not following him. I don't think this is what everyone thinks it is. Seems more like the account state is frozen. - Cait

I've seen something lke this happen to regular users - follow again, clear browser cache, reload page, try to unfollow again. If that doesn't do it, try blocking. I would never have followed @aplusk in the first place, so I can't perform the test - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Maybe it's a scaling/load issue with their database. - Gord McLeod

digg it: http://digg.com/d1ovKP - Chad DeHaan

Ashton's closing the gap: http://chartbeat.com/cnnvsas... - Caffeinated Sue

Looking at the stats for @aplusk and @cnnbrk, it appears they maybe working on a tie instead of a win. The numbers have gotten too close to call. - Karl Kovacs

Karl's got it. Almost certainly a preventative measure in case the accounts get compromised. I'm wondering though... a) Does this take the heat out of Apple's one billion app milestone? and b) Does it really matter because Oprah will storm past both of them (indefinitely) once she starts tweeting. - Smashing

I was able to unfollow @cnnbrk for sure.I was able to follow @aplusk and THEN I COULD NOT UNFOLLOW @aplusk - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Maybe he paid for that little service. It's one way to monetize Twitter. Then Twitter will charge us to unfollow those people. - Mary Wehrle

I was able to block @aplusk just fine - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Ashton watching it live: http://www.ustream.tv/ashton - Caffeinated Sue

http://www.ustream.tv/ashton idiot has too much money, so he spilled champange on his macbook. - rob friedman

guy makes me ill - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

"i read all your @replies" - ashton - rob friedman

yea, fan mail new low. - rob friedman

I should block aplusk while I still can! :) - Morton Fox

FWIW: I first unfollowed @CNNbrk,worked fine then followed @aplusk could not unfollow, blocked @aplusk then followed @CNNbrk and was not able to unfollow @CNNbrk - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Wow @Twitter. That is very lame. I hope this is a bug, otherwise this will be a future PR nightmare...starting tomorrow. - darnell from BuddyFeed

darnell: No...starting a little while ago..bug or not. This is going to blow up already starting to - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

perhaps twitter did not do this intentionally. their app may be hitting some functional limits! They've got to be scrambling over there... kinda feel sorry for them! LOL - Susan Beebe

there's really not much that can make me feel sorry for them. starry-eyed, failing to manage their business for their customers (and I'm talking outages and lack of notifications esp) sympathy gone. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

oh no! there's gonna be a recount and lawsuits. what will the country do until we know the final answer? oh my! least it's cheaper than a sorry ass movie. - Landon

No Way! A Twitter PR Disaster brewing quickly! Twittersphere speak it loud. - Kemp Edmonds

I'm seeing a lot of noise about this already....lots of RTs (and coincidentally lots of follows on my account LOL!) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

This sounds like an interesting topic... - coldbrew

Surely if CNN actually stated tweeting (they haven't done any since they took over the account) and they put it on their program, they would have a huge surge. CNN isn't taking this seriously. Maybe it is because it isn't! - CJPhoto

That's what you get for following any of them in the first place. You keep trying to leave, but they keep pulling you back in. - dewtheone

Ahsan: what, you expect Twitter's engineering to be good? You have GOT to be kidding! - Robert Scoble

I personally think this is because to not allow people to unfollow and then follow him back to get a 1millionth follower gifts from EA... my opinion... - Hameedullah Khan

When I unfollowed CNNbrk, then followed CNNbrk again later tonight as per my experiment, I could not un follow. no gifts from cnn right? - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

what a joke... - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Mark, looking for 0 tweets is pretty much dead giveaway - rob friedman from twhirl

Mark well I'm sure there could easily be a collaborative effort given the amount of people using the service, and the amount of companies or projects using the firehose, we could easily find new users, and check their followers out, and who they may follow, then give that back to twitter to judge who is "real" or someone. Adding spam watchdog would be easy too since someone already does spam and link checking. - rob friedman

Someone posted that Twitter disabled the unfollow feature for this jive - Outsanity

Weird this was I couldn't even ADD Ashton to my other Twitter account. So maybe both functions were disabled. But, if that were so, then how did he hit 1mill? Odd... - Outsanity

Thank you for asking that question. - Prokofy Neva

That sucks! Started a campaign for people to stop following him. Well it was a small campaign, but I am so sick of hearing about this silly contest. - PC Easy from twhirl

Chris: So If I can run a big contest to gain followers I giving away fabulous prizes, Twitter will fuck other people around for me too. Yet another example of Twitter really only giving a damn about the big name stars & companies, - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I wonder how many million follower user accounts it will take before Twitter does something drastic? - rob friedman

Really? - ChiliMac

Chris: Fabulous Idea! I'm gonna march right down to @ev's office with a bunch of cupcakes and get my refund today! :) heh. -But seriously, its now how I was damaged personally but about how Twitter is making sure there is the "great divide" between the Followed and the Followers. The more they've focused on the stars the less Twitter is about real interactions between real people. This damages the community, and I am sad to see it happen this way - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I would have been more impressed with Twitter overall if it had taken the opposite approach and shown us what value there is in following ordinary people who have interesting things to say. But instead, they show extreme favoritism towards people who have large draws. Go ahead and ask to see if you can have a special favor from Twitter so that you can draw in an even bigger crowd than you already have. It doesn't hurt you, no, but sure doesn't help you either. What's wrong with wanting equality? - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Nothing's wrong with wanting equality. Internet is becoming just as assymetrical as real life is. The more crowd you already have the less job to take to build even bigger crowd. Sorry, but Twitter can't help you. It's not the matter of Twitter. It's the matter of what kind of people use it and what goal they achieve using it. - Денис

No Twitter can't help me, or you. But it can and does help: Mashable, Oprah, Jimmy Fallon, Tony Robbins, etc, etc, and now Ashton & CNN. It is a matter of Twitter and what kind of people they strive to attract. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Yet another reason Twitter has launched a high velocity missle over the shark for this user. I'm still using it, but most of my time now is here on FF. - Mark Traphagen

It's the too big to let fail doctrine applied to social network chosen ones. wow. - Micah

Mona's ff post to Rafe's cnet How To on unfollow technique that seems to work http://beta.friendfeed.com/monasfe... - Micah

Its easy to unfollow send a message: "off aplusk" in Twitter. Simple as that. I suggest a mass unfollow in order to avenge this dirty trick. - Alexandre

Alexandre: I don't think that unfollows; it just keeps his updates from showing in your timeline. So no message sent that way. - Mark Traphagen