A pretty serious bug hit Twitter recently that allowed users to “force” others to follow them. By typing “accept [username]” you could gain any follower you wanted. The bug apparently only worked on the web interface – not in any third-party apps – and may only have appeared to give you followers, meaning those people would show up on your list but would not receive streams like a real follower would. I say serious only because you could potentially achieve some very prominent followers, like, say, Barack Obama, through this little exploit.

Twitter is aware of the bug, but the fix is a little ugly in the meantime. It requires rolling back accounts that made use of the exploit to zero followers. That includes sites that were doing any kind of testing. Sites like TechCrunch.

The zero count is only temporary, but it was probably a bit of a shock for Twitter’s heaviest users.

I was a little alarmed when I opened my Google Reader and found eight new followers. Nearly everyone I know has used Gmail for years, and I’ve had a few followers since Google rolled out more social networking features, but eight in two days? Madness.

When I opened Google Buzz I understood. The service creates a profile for you and automatically follows the people you have conversed with in the past. Thankfully, it’s transparent enough that I realized what I was doing and cancelled a few follows that I just don’t want. It’s strange, though, since your followed profiles can be viewed publicly unless you mess with your privacy settings. Not a bad thing, unless you have particularly jealous friends/roommates/significant others.

Just remember to dig through whatever Buzz automatically sets up for you. It could save you a lot of “and who the hell is she” arguments down the road.