The unusual case of Jmcoon

I click to follow him and got a constant stream of his tweets, then blocked him. I don't have a clue??? it could be hormones.

I'm guessing that the unusual Twitterholic stats (i.e., rapid daily increase in number of people followed, then a sudden drop) are due to Twitter stepping in after his account got suspended.

Another user apparently had a similar experience, and on his blogpost, he quoted the email that Twitter support sent him.

Excerpt of that support email:

Your account was frozen for investigation due to a large number of people blocking the profile. Your are following an excessive number of people who are in turn blocking your account. This mass-following behavior is not user-friendly behavior. On their behalf, we’d like it to stop. While we’re working on automatically enforcing specific, declared limits, we are still responsive to activities that alarm our users.

We’ve reduced the number of people you’re following by removing everyone you’ve followed who does not follow your account, and everyone who is blocking your account. Thanks for your understanding in this matter

What's interesting to me is the date. The rapid increase in the number of people @jmcoon was following started around May 24 -- right around the time that Twitter IM went offline and when the site stability problems began.

Edited to add:
And lest anyone think otherwise, I just want to go on the record that I'm not blaming him for the site instability. I think the onus is on Twitter to figure out a way to prevent any automated / bot-like behavior from making the system unstable.

I found his ratio unusual as well, he started following me when he had 5000+ followers and was following bout 50. I took the perhaps unorthodox approach of confronting him directly with a link to this very page, I'm waiting for an answer now...

I received two notices that he is following me. Soon after each notice I did not find hime in my followers. Pretty annoying to say the least.

I keep getting notification. It's annoying. Blocked.

He seems to be following the jakemarsh method: follow thousands of twitter users. Many people will follow back anyone who follows them. Once a decent number follows you back, remove everyone except who you really wanted to follow in the first place. This follower number obsession is lame.

It's pretty clear what this script-kiddie is doing. His bot follows as many people as possible then IMMEDIATELY UN-FOLLOWS THEM. There are enough friendly/gullible people who will "auto-follow" that he looks like some really popular person.

But, he's a jerk who is abusing the system.

http://twitter.com/Jmcoon/friends

Reload it and watch as the people he "follows" changes minute-by-minute.

Here's another one for you that's been following me. Same picture, 2 different first names, same last name..not a twin..same person and one in FL and one in MO. After I commented the one in MO unfollowed me. kellyvogue and the other is bridgettevogue Note the pic is the same and she's following lots of people on Twitter.

Jarret Coon has been consistently following me for some time, without a break and without me receiving notices. But when I checked back on his twitter listings either I wouldn't appear on the list of people he was following or there would be no follow list. Now he shows as following 463 but previously it has been as few as 30. None of the explanations people have given actually make that much sense, because he still remains on my list of followers.

Having read the various comments here he has tweeted:
"Jmcoon i have seen the the “The unusual case of Jmcoon” and i would like to say why do you care any way i don’t have to explain any thing... about 1 hour ago from web"

Whilst it is true you don't have to explain anything - but I am really interested in how you do this. Jarret - if you are reading this please let me know .

Re: jmcoon
It's possible that by mass following a lot of people through his scripts, he has managed to find the accounts that are currently set to 'auto-follow,' and in the process has managed to get his follower numbers to go up.

It seems that his intent is to improve his ranking in the Twitterholic 100

Also, he has commented about this thread in his Twitter account -- saying that he doesn't have to explain anything.

-------

Re: kellyvogue and bridgettevogue
I'm inclined to think that the purpose of these accounts is to collect followers.

The posts that you see in the accounts are not original, but are copied from other accounts. I think they're randomly pulling tweets from the public timeline, and posting them as their own. They just strip away slashes, @, apostrophe, colons, and other punctuation from the tweets.

Here's an example for the @kellyvogue account:

kellyvogue: The Apple hating Flickr idiot has decided to block me He knows I m write I win at life http flickr com photos neilchristie 2566862591

Here's the original tweet that they copied:

NathanMakan: The Apple hating Flickr idiot has decided to block me. He knows I'm write. I win at life: http://flickr.com/photos/neilchristie...

Here's an example for the @bridgettevogue account:

bridgettevogue: Motor Authority Japanese bridges to generate power from vibration http wheelscore com out php id 3 1947

Here's the original tweet that they copied:

wheelscore: Motor Authority: Japanese bridges to generate power from vibration - http://wheelscore.com/out.php?id=301947

Im not going to curse you out because that is not me. But i i'm just amused on how you love hating on me tho. thinks for the interest in me :)

And by the way do you not think im comeing up with original tweets. Show me proof that i am people. Im not saying all of you are all just mainly mdy.

I mentioned this Thursday on Twitter http://twitter.com/acomputerpro/statu... and suggested to my then almost 2,500 Tweeps that we mass unfollow and block @jmcoon. Instead, people Twitter rose to his defense and over 100 unfollowed me. That's what happens when I speak my mind on Twitter, so I'm Plurking a lot more now.

Okay... so now I'm thinking conspiracy theory... because I just wrote a comment to add to the discussion. I saw it here. It said that it was editable for the next 15 min. Then it disappeared and was replaced by two comments from @jmcoon himself.

btw his tweets are genuine and are not copied - they contain 100% genuine spelling mistakes. They are the tweets that someone who is 14years old (and has the interests he has) would write.

jmcoon, if you would kindly re-read what I wrote, you'll see that I never said you were copying other people's tweets. Perhaps you were upset when you were reading my reply, and therefore failed to realize that I was referring to two other accounts that are also mentioned in this thread, and which I've named explicitly.

I even went through the trouble of drawing a dashed line between the two subjects in my reply to make a distinction between the two topics because I wanted to avoid misunderstanding. It looks like I should have drawn a lot more lines! hehe.

It's too bad that you believe I hate you, because I don't. As far as I'm concerned, it's up to Twitter to decide whether or not what you're doing is appropriate use of their site. I've already said I don't blame you for the site instability. The burden is on Twitter to do whatever it takes to keep the site stable.

P.S.
Ten days ago, you said in another thread in this forum that you would not be using a Twitter bot ever again and that you're willing to change your ways with Twitter to get your account back. Well, you got your account back on Jun 6. It'll be interesting to see if you will keep your promises.

FYI, Twitter's user numbers are not sequentially assigned, and therefore are not a good basis for determining the number of users.

Also, my basis for saying that your use of bots (which you've already admitted to) may be contributing to Twitter's instability is this blogpost from the Twitter Technology blog dated May 29.

Below is an excerpt from the post. I've italicized the relevant parts:

charles asks if there's anything users can do to lighten our load.

The events that hit our system the hardest are generally when "popular" users - that is, users with large numbers of followers and people they're following - perform a number of actions in rapid succession. This usually results in a number of big queries that pile up in our database(s).

Not running scripts to follow thousands of users at a time would be a help, but that's behavior we have to limit on our side.

If a script or bot that follows a large number of users hits the system hard, I believe it's safe to assume that a script that not only follows but also immediately unfollows a large number of users will only hit the system harder.

I like Jmcoon's tweets and am glad he found me, no matter how he managed it. I intentionally followed him back, too--I don't "autofollow" anybody. It's nice to see real tweets that aren't directly related to my industries--and that also aren't talking about vapid irrelevancy like what "star" wore what.

I couldn't care less if there is/was a bot involved, what I care about is what kind of tweets a follower makes. IMO Twitter should pay attention to the *real* spammers, that is, the people who seem to think I want to see an endless stream of ads for whatever they're trying to sell.

I didn't follow him because he was boring. any 14-year-old who calls themselves a guru really can't be taken seriously. either that or it should be immediately apparent that they are above average in something besides self-marketing.

Anyone with super high numbers I generally don't follow; they're obviously a scam. There's no way you can rationally follow that many people; not enough to engage in conversation, which is what Twitter is all about.

Temple