UPDATE, June 30: This is really, really interesting: Our old account @Twitter_Tips has GAINED almost the same amount our new account @TweetSmarter has lost—1753 followers as of early June 30. And by “lost” I mean the difference between what our followers would usually have been and what they are (see chart below).
This is a unique situation, because Twitter did us a special favor: They let our old account name continue to exist. All that is there, however, is a tweet saying:
Our name has changed! @Twitter_Tips is now @TweetSmarter. Learn more: http://j.mp/TweetSmarter
So this means that people are following our old account by the hundreds a day without ever checking what it is. People are still continuing to unfollow us as they become confused by the name change, however, so I’ve tweeted a few more times about our name change.
UPDATE, July 11: Our account is gaining followers again (chart below) so it looks like the people following again comfortably outnumber the people unfollowing:
Here’s the original post:
I knew some people would be confused by our name change. I thought I would share some of our experience for anyone considering a similar change. (Why we changed.)
There are a couple of issues in figuring out how much it affects our follower numbers. We get unfollowed and followed a lot every day no matter what. The follow/unfollow numbers have to be taken together to make an educated guess at how much the name change is affecting things.
What’s actually happened to our follower numbers as of June 27:
So, how can we make a guess at what effect the name change has on our followers? With an account as big as ours (nearly 200,000 followers), calculating unfollowers is difficult:
- Some will unfollow out of confusion, wondering why this account with a name they never followed before is appearing in their stream.
- Others may think the name change means that the tweets will change—we’re not going to do anything differently!—and unfollow for that reason.
And a very important question is: When will the name change stop affecting our unfollowing number? I think it will take the better part of a month for most everyone to take whatever action they are going to take because of our name change.
Will a name change cause fewer people to follow?
Secondly, we have to figure out if we are getting fewer followers because of the name change. Some followers undoubtably follow a new account in part because of it’s name. If our new name was, for example, “BingoStatistics” I would expect fewer new followers 
Of course, a name change could cause you to get MORE new followers.
While there are many accounts that grow at a similar rate to ours that do NOT have “Twitter” in their username, I think in our case we can reasonably expect to get fewer new followers because of not having “Twitter” in our username.
What is the total effect?
I don’t think it’s possible to project the long-term effect in just a few days. It looks like we’ll lose somewhere in the range of <1% of our followers because of the name change though. I’ll update this post in a week or two when it looks like the changes are stabilizing
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve noticed that you’ve followed over 5,000 new people over the last several days after having been rather quiet on that front for quite a while. Was curious to know if that was done to see if you can pick up more followers after the name change?
Basically, I’ve been following people who may have been trying to follow us. (Great question!)
I’ve followed the people following our old account @Twitter_Tips, and followed people following some of our imposter accounts as an experiment.
I think u are using the same logo and i believe that branding can help bridge this gap. As your twitter account is branded, there are less chances of people unfollowing.
But It would be good to see the results
It would be a good case study
Thanks for the comment Gautam!
It’s tricky, because of Twitter’s special engineering in keeping the @Twitter_Tips account for us with a tweet to let people know what happened. That is not something Twitter is going to do for other accounts.
That account is getting ~300 followers/day, so it appears as far as getting new followers goes, @TweetSmarter has to mainly build up its own reputation and can’t build too much on top of the @Twitter_Tips name.
But we’re mainly here to serve, so whatever happens works out fine as long as we can help people
Tweet Smarter!
Thanks for sharing your story. It was through your latest set of tweets and posts I learned more about you. Originally, I thought you were directly affiliated with Twitter, oops! However, I stayed with you through the name change and have developed a deep appreciation for the quality of content you’re providing. Continued good luck as the dust settles, positive your followers will multiply rapidly. Hang in there!
Thanks! Though very few folks contacted us directly thinking we were affiliated, it was a bit of a pain to explain procedures to them. They thought we could fix things. We had to tell them the same things Twitter employees tell them, check known issues, file a ticket, etc. I’m always happy to help, though! But happy not to be thought to have any special powers anymore
I’m hardly an expert on social media or Twitter behavior, but “I” would think genuine followers, the ones who are familiar with your content and value it will take note that ONLY the name has changed and not your avatar. After familiarity has been established with a follower regarding a specific Twitter account, it would stand to reason that it is easier to visually cue in on a graphic than it does a name per se.
Anyone who would capriciously unfollow an account in their feed based solely on a name change without checking out the accompanying profile probably wasn’t to familiar or attached with the content anyway.
If you guys has done a complete re-branding that would have more of an impact on your followers.
Ya did the right thing making the change as minimally disruptive as possible.
Keep up the good work! And the good tweets!
Thanks! And thanks very much for your early consulting and design work with the logo. There’s always going to be a little attrition when things change. Looks like it’s a very small number so far.
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