Bill Cosby’s current sex assault allegations lead me to analyse his Twitter follower growth, and  got me wondering whether there are times when brands wished they did not get anymore followers during times of scandals.
In the case of Bill Cosby, did he wish the follower growth away between November and December, when his accusers came forward and made damaging allegations about him?
Bear in mind that this was not the first time that these allegations were made, the difference is that many more women have come out – 33, to be exact – and the media have taken bigger interest.
Using ET Online as a source that chronologised the (re)surfacing of sexual assault claims by the 33 alleged victims, we incorporated the expose’s (represented by BLUE circles) on Bill Cosby’s Twitter Counter follower growth graph between November 2014 and February 2015.
This is what the picture looks like:
As can be seen from the graph above, most of the expose’s took place in November 2014.
Growth in number of Bill Cosby’s followers between 19 November and 18 December was 47 882.Â
Notice that Twitter Counter predicts a continued follower growth trend into the foreseeable future.
In the 3 months to 18 February 2015, Bill Cosby’s follower growth came to 106 156, which is the difference between opening and closing follower number labels in the graph below:
I suspect Bill Cosby was conflicted about his Twitter follower growth at the height of negative sentiment about his brand.
On one hand, it could have been that Twitterers were hoping he would say something on his Twitter timeline, given that he refused to make any public comments since the breaking of the expose’s.
On the other hand, he might have been secretly hoping this is an indication he still has a sympathetic ear on social media, as people would not want to follow someone they resent?
A day after we published this post, one of Bill Cosby’s accusers was interviewed on CNN:
What is your view about what Bill Cosby is thinking right now while watching his Twitter follower growth?
