A Review of the Twiends free Twitter followers tool

When I first set up my Twitter account @io_tweeted to promote my book Io Hunter and the Guardians of Aldernar, I struggled to get followers. After two weeks I had maxed out at 11, gaining a couple, then losing a couple. So, I turned to Twiends, which offers to "Grow Your Twitter Followers Responsibly Free." It's easy to sign up for Twiends. Just sign up using your Twitter account. 

When I first signed up for Twiends, I expected to be able to follow people based on similar

interests. As a new indie author, I wanted to follow other self published authors, readers, and creators of all kinds. But the site isn't really laid out that way. I ended up following a lot of people with random interests and people with random interests followed me. But that was fine. All kinds of people read books, so it worked for me.

At first Twiends was great. For every person I followed, I tended to get a follower. That often wasn't the person I had followed though. Many people never followed me back. I didn't want to end up in a situation where I was following hundreds of people but only getting followed by dozens. To prevent that kind of imbalance, I started unfollowing people who never followed me back. I didn't realize at the time that Twiends was penalizing me for doing that.

"The more connections you drop the less reliable you are as a someone to connect with. We prioritise the twiends experience for those users who are the most reliable. You can of course unfollow whoever you want (especially if you don't like their tweets), but if your drop rate becomes high then your own exposure will decline." - https://twiends.com/chartinfo#ratio

When my ratio dropped, I no longer got followers. I followed new accounts but because I was getting less exposure for dropping people who didn't follow me back, I didn't get new follows. This ended up being a big downside of the service. If Twiends determined reliability by focusing on reciprocal followers, well I'm at 100%. I continue to follow everyone who follows me. I unfollow people who don't follow back, or who initially followed me but then unfollowed. That puts me at 46%, making me unreliable in the eyes of Twiends. For me, there's no longer any point in using the service because it's unlikely I'll be given any exposure.

Still, Twiends was good for building up my initial count, so I don't regret using it. I went from being stuck at 11 followers to reaching 45 in a week. That might not seem like much but it can help a new account get off the ground. And about 90% of those accounts still follow me. Twiends also has a paid service where you are guaranteed exposure. They have a one week free trial for $1.