For those of you who have twitter accounts, do you get random "follows" from people who seem to just want to promote themselves?

Yup, and Linked-in too. They’re looking to add followers or contacts.

Yes, I do all the time.

Yes, and I agree with your assessment that it is basically a form of spam.

Yes, I often do get followers like this. I won’t block them, because I don’t really care that much if they see my tweets, but I don’t follow them back.

Yes. I don’t even use my account, and I still get them!

I get lots of random followers.
I recently bought a new bike, and made a few tweets about how I’m enjoying cycling again.
The next time i went on twitter i had cycling weekly, and about 4 other cycling related twitter pages following me.
It’s not like I’m a popular tweeter either. I have 125 followers.
I often wonder how these people find me.
I never hashtag either.

I get that on Youtube every once in a while.

Yes I get them. They are promoting themselves. The ones that bother me are when I decide to follow them back, all of a sudden they appear to not be my follower. So I feel used…I do not like that. I also block all the porno and/or? Lol the ones who promote certain business.

@Crumpet lol I had a similar thing happen when I mentioned in a tweet about my favorite glass of wine…all of a sudden I was getting tweets from winebot! Lmao.

I’m not a Twit, but the same thing happens to me on Google+, which is the main reason that I don’t like it. I don’t put them in any of my ‘circles’, but I don’t like that my username and avatar appear in their circles. I would like to be able to disassociate myself from them without going to the extreme of blocking them.

Yes. Regularly.

@hearkat G+ is a little different, although I do see your point. I use G+ all the time (more than FB or even Fluther), but it’s mostly for astronomy and other science related stuff.

@Rarebear – most activity on my G+ comes from NASA and the ISS and Ron Garan… very few people in my circles post over there.

Yes, I wish there was a way to screen your potential followers before they just glom onto you.

It actually doesn’t bother me, I was just wondering. If people follow my twitter feed and learn a little astronomy that’s fine with me. I don’t follow them back—the whole thing was just a little curious to me.

About half of my less-than-impressive number of followers are people or organisations I have never dealt with. I don’t really care though, I generally don’t put anything on the Internet I would be ashamed of yelling in the city square.

@mediator. I completely agree

Yes, Its true. It is done so that they come in contact with a greater mass.