Isnt this a Sign of Twitter Spam?

Not really. When the follower and following numbers are close to each other, it means that the Twitter user is reciprocally following back all users that are following him/her. When you see these similar numbers, the user is likely using an automation tool or service to follow back. The practice of following back is used by many on Twitter as a friendly gesture towards their followers and even allowed per Twitter's service terms.

There is a limit on how many people you can follow once your Twitter account reaches 2,000 who are being followed. Basically, you are limited to about 10% more that you are following compared to the number who are following you.

That is why the numbers tend to be close.

There is also no need to interact with every one of those on your list. It is possible to not interact at all and just receive messages without responding to them. This means it is not at all difficult to send messages en masse to those who are following you, without messaging anyone on an individual basis.

Twitter is OK with this. For instance, last time I looked, Tony Robbins had in excess of 1.7 million followers (he is following far fewer). I'm sure he doesn't attempt to interact with each and every one of them.

Twitter gets upset if you tend to aggressively follow lots of people and then unfollow them a short time later. There seems to be no problem if you wait a couple of days before unfollowing those who haven't followed you back.

Ivan

They are using auto-follow systems to build followers...

It is something that IMer's do to trick themselves into thinking they are doing something valuable for their businesses...

Truth: I would rather have 50 people who pay attention to my tweets, than 50,000 who ignore every word I say...

Thats what I mean so most of twitter is spam then...People just add people for the sake of getting another and just pushing their own message out and not communicating..Personally I think its a complete waste of time and completely over rated...

Ok if you are a star and a famous politician then that could be a different story (who get followers because they really want to follow) but for the layman, spending time there trying to get followers and those followers do the same in return just sound like another spam farm (trying to promote themselves all the time)...I think all these overpromotion and buzz about twitter is way too overrated...

As TPW says, better to have 50 followers than 50,000 ignoring every word...To be honest, that is totally right. How can you possibly keep up following that many...

These are just my random thoughts but let me know if you see this different than me...Or maybe I am missing something?

I would say tat the fact that Twitter allows you to follow more people than you can actually follow will eventually be its undoing. It just makes no sense. I follow 7000+ and never see any of there tweets because they all fly by too fast. I just follow them so they will follow me back. It is not a good social media marketing tool if you are not already famous.

That's why I don't do the follow the person who follows you thing... I only follow people who I want to get updates from...

Vicone
A particular difficulty with Twitter is that a large percentage will never see my messages. The reason for this is that the message usually remains visible for only a short period before it is pushed off the page.

Right on target...Thats what I mean and which is why twitter is not an effective tool...

The way to keep following thousands of people from being overwhelming is to segment your followers into lists. Then you use a tool like TweetDeck or HootSuite to view the tweets from people in your list(s) in a separate column.

The other thing to keep in mind is that there is no expectation on Twitter that you keep up with everything everyone you follow says. There is an "implied presence" on Twitter because it is such a real time thing. So when you're there, interact with folks. And when you're not, don't worry about it.

If you focus on interacting with the people who are most interesting to you, you will become more interesting to others. And your follower count will grow naturally. As it does you become more influential. When your influence grows you will find more people responding to your offers on Twitter.

Like anything in social media, marketing on Twitter takes some focused effort over time.

Direct response marketing can be done on Twitter (and on other social media sites) but it is very hard to pull off successfully. When done badly it will actually repel people rather than generate sales. Unfortunately the overwhelming majority of folks who are trying to accomplish direct response marketing on sites like Twitter are doing a poor job of it and conclude that Twitter is a bad place to market.

That's also why most of the people who train how to market on social media teach relationship marketing instead of direct response marketing. It's simply easier to learn even though it makes for a more time consuming sales process.

I do really well with relationship marketing on social media, but have never mastered direct response marketing there. They are simply different ways to achieve similar goals.

I really dont have an issue with someone following me, I can always unfollow if I wish, but I have an issue with the swarm of tweeters who tweet me on irrelevant topics and yet you yet I do not have an option to refuse getting such tweets.

The only options you are left with is to either reply or retweet.

Please how can stop receiving some tweets I hate?

Cheers!

I think it's a non-issue ... Twitter is nothing but spam. Most accounts are filled with fake spam friends and are following fake spam friends.

I have an account with almost 40K followers. I get 30+ @ messages a day. 10 spam, 10 RTs and 10 asking questions or interesting comments on a tweet I made.

I reply to the latter 10. Sometimes we 'talk' back and forth a few times. I usually RT a couple good tweets a day and @ comment/question a couple more, (as well as reply to the 10 @ question/comments), otherwise, I ignore the 'tweetStream'. I also ignore the DMs. Any link I post gets 200-1000 'clicks' Every link I post is completely transparent as to where it goes. Have made 19 sales on one single tweet. (I do not use it to do much 'selling', just in passing and only interesting stuff).

So, it is all in how you use it. It is not much good as an automated gold mine, but like anything, has it's potential and it's limitations. (As an aside... I apparently posted something that someone took wrong and they got my account suspended. I emailed Twitter and they looked at my tweets and his and re-instated my account immediately and banned his. LMAO).

There are so many softwares are floating around which can add 1000s of followers instantly. 50% twitter user base is created by softwares, they are not real users. Nowadays, you can see many gigs at fiverr saying that "I will promote your product to my 4000+ twitter followers for $5".

These people, actually have false followers created by softwares and if you use them promote your stuff, it's just waste of time!

Twitter is becoming a complete SPAM factory!

for me is not possible.