It's official: Twitter clearing out spam accounts

Lots of chatter on Twitter now about people losing large numbers of "followers."

Many are sad that they're losing them, even if they're only spammers. It made them feel important and wanted to have a lot of supposed followers of their tweets.

Twitter posted a status report this evening that said it was making changes to "correct for spam accounts and data inconsistencies. No legitimate followings should be affected—we’re just cleaning up artifacts in the system." See report here.

Twitter users reported losing hundreds, even thousands, of followers. News flash: They weren't really following you.

Here are some sample comments on the purge:

calliekins wrote: “Damn! Twitter took away all of my followers! Ha! 60 something plus were porn. Priceless.”

fanbab wrote: “I just lost about 60 followers. Damn spammers gave me a false sense of popularity.”

amy_mclaughlin wrote: “i lost like all my followers! i feel lame now”

tboyle2244 wrote: “I'm back under the century mark of followers I feel defeated”

Gardenwiseguy wrote: “Dear former followers purged by Twitter: R.I.P., you bunch of useless leeches! The rest of you--MWAH! Luvzya!!”