Hi Megan,
We would not have noticed any discrepancy either at first glance. Each month, we record numbers from the last day of each month on the graph. The graph only shows the past 3 mos.
Imagine that on April 31, you recorded the following monthly #s from the graph.
February = 3,500
March = 4,000
April = 5,500
And then, next month, when you looked at the same interface in Twitter, the numbers were all different.
February = n/a (won't go back that far)
March = 3,200
April = 4,000
May = 4, 500
At first you'd think - wait. I recorded 5,500 followers in April, and now in May I have 4,500. Did I lose 1,000 followers?
Nope, because according to Twitter, because the graph still shows growth, and we can see the # of users added in May.
**It's just that for whatever reason, the aggregate #s were all lowered. **All data, across the board, is lower, even though it shows relative growth.
I see a few possibilities here:
1. Our records were wrong.
This is a possibility, but kind of unlikely since we pull the data each month, and we create a separate report for each month (so we have multiple historic record of the numbers being different and higher over time)... But who knows, human error happens.
2. Twitter Purged Spam
Maybe they purged a bunch of spam accounts? If so, I would have expected to see a dramatic decrease in followers over one month - but maybe instead, they deleted all record of them, included when they were added, so while overall this lowered numbers, it didn't mess with the monthly growth pattern of legitimate followers.
3. Twitter Analytics Bug???
Thanks. It's possible there may not be an answer to this, but it would be nice to know if anyone else has experienced something like this.