An experiment in Twitter carpet following

I created a new Twitter account that specifically tells people what it's for and not to follow it. I then followed 6000 Twitter feeds over 48 hrs to see who would reciprocate without reading. At last count, it had 137 followers. Interestingly, an additional 83 people initially followed me back, but then read the account description and changed their mind (good!). I also had to block 8 idiots that admitted following RU4Real even though they knew that it was an experiment.

There is no need for you to block the account, it will be deleted once the experiment is over.

Phase 2 officially began once it reached 100 followers. During this period, I won't add anybody else until the weekend to see if I can attract those spam followers that have been annoying everyone.

Finally, I have received some requests to post my real Twitter account. Just don't expect me to blindly follow you back ;-)

[update] I was hoping to close down the account and the experiment this weekend but I have decided to extent it by a week. The main reason is that I haven't been picked up by Twitterholic yet. The other reason is that I am still gathering followers even though I haven't followed anybody since Monday.

[update2] This is nuts, the account has had no activity and no links for months and yet it is still accumulating followers at a rate of 2-6 per day. About to hit the big 500. The 3-month statistics are here.

[update3] After reaching 1001 follower notification in December 2008, I now want to unfollow everyone and see if the account still accumulates followers. I need to find a way of doing this without clicking the remove link >5100 times.