Chatbot News, Discoverability

Best Twitter Bots to Follow in 2021

From regular folks to celebrities and presidents, Twitter hosts millions of tweets, retweets, and private messages exchanged by real users and, frequently, by Twitter bots. Let’s take a look at some of the best Twitter bots to follow in 2021.

As one of the longest-running social platforms in the world, Twitter has become a space of popular microblogging accounts and a source of information about and announcements from celebrities and politicians. We now not only get our news directly from media sources but we also often hear about recent events via Twitter. Although official accounts are usually run by social media specialists, this doesn’t mean that all the accounts in the platform are considered “real people.” With the rise of coding, bots have emerged in our Twitter feeds to serve a specific purpose—liking, commenting, and posting automated tweets on other accounts.

According to research from University of Southern California and Indiana University, Twitter bots account for an estimated 15 percent of Twitter users, meaning that approximately 15 percent of Twitter accounts are bots rather than people. Although these bots are considered to be fake, many aim to imitate real, human users. Others are thoughtfully crafted and remarkably clever. They combine human ingenuity with easy automation, resulting in bots that are funny, surreal, helpful, and at times, even unexpectedly poetic.

Consider these Twitter bots, which are among the best to follow this year:

wayback_exe

Twitter handle: @wayback_exe

This Twitter bot uses the Wayback Machine to pull images of websites from the late 1990s. Every two hours, it posts a page name, date, and screenshot from some wild relic of the early internet. The results are often ridiculous, surreal, and nostalgic.

Magic Realism Bot

Twitter handle: @MagicRealismBot

This project was inspired from the magic realist stories of Jorge Luis Borges to generate a different 140-character story every four hours, using random combinations of the various elements that define the genre: academic characters, mythical creatures, philosophical disputations, and more. This bot takes random practices or tasks and exaggerates them with some sort of magic. It might not seem that way at first glance, but it’s really funny.

here’s your reminder

Twitter handle: @TinyCareBot

This one is all about self-care. @TinyCareBot reminds you to do all the little things that help keep you healthy, happy, and sane—drink water, look out the window, breathe deeply, stretch, and more. If you want a “friend” who keeps you grounded, follow this bot.

Simpsons Screens

Twitter handle: @simpscreens

This bot has a simple yet joyous mission: Tweet a random frame from The Simpsons every 30 minutes. The stills come from episodes of the popular cartoon, which were originally aired from 1987 to 1998. Hard-core fans of the show might recognize the episode, but even without context these single frames somehow manage to contain so much.

censusAmericans

Twitter handle: @censusAmericans

This bot offers a glimpse into the lives of everyday Americans. Built by FiveThirtyEight, the bot uses a small Python program and census data from 2009 to 2013 to create brief narratives of real people.

Every Color

Twitter handle: @everycolorbot

It’s a colorful world out there. The Every Color bot tweets a different color swatch every hour, based on a randomly generated hex code. This is one of the best Twitter bots to add a little brightness to your feed (and your day).

As we dive into more technological advancements and platform updates, we expect to see more Twitter bots rise in popularity. Although the essence of Twitter is all about facilitating quick conversations and interactions, these examples show that it can also be used for fun, interesting facts, and unexpected reminders for your daily life.

We’ve listed some of the best Twitter bots to follow this year. If you found these bots interesting, check out our