I noticed something on the CNN (@cnnbrk) vs Kutcher (@aplusk) race on Twitter to reach 1 million followers, which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else. Something that, in a way, decided the race some hours before it actually finished.
Like many (becuase I am sure I was not the only one) I wanted to be Kutcher's 1 millionth follower. So I started checking Kutcher's number of followers, refreshing the page and writing the number and time on a spreadsheet. My idea was to try and predict when the 1 millionth follower would occur and that way clicking the Follow button at that time. I knew my chances would be slim but, like when you play lotto, at least I'd have a chance, and a better chance if my predictions were correct.
In this sort of situation, when there's a deadline (in this case the deadline was 1 million followers), there's always a bigger influx of followers as the deadline is getting closer. The same thing happens when people bet on horses, where most of the bets would occur right at the end. That was a situation I was considering, I was expecting the rate number of followers to start increasing rapidly at the end.
The interesting thing is, it never happened. The number of followers were increasing at a constant rate, at around 66 - 67 followers per minute. This rate never increased towards the end. So, you could predict with a couple of hours in advance when the number of followers would reach 1 million.
To me, what this shows is that the Twitter servers showed a maximum capacity on the number of followers it can process; and on that day it was about 66 to 67 followers for Kutcher. Have a look at this image posted by Ashton Kutcher http://twitpic.com/3fzvy which shows this nice line. The line didn't go up at the end as I expected. The line shows a constant rate of followers for both Kutcher and CNN.
This might explain why people complained about finding it difficult to follow Kutcher. Many also complained that it was not possible to unfollow. I don't know if there's an official word from Twitter on the unfollow thing but I would dare to say it was caused by the same server capacity.
So I tried to follow when my calculations indicated Kutcher would reach 1 million, but of course, it didn't work. I had to click several times on that Follow button without success. And so, I was not the 1 millionth follower, but I learn something about Twitter to write on this blog.
