When my account was first made and I needed to find people to start following, I did what a lot of new Steemers probably do. I found an account that seemed to of had similar interests as me and I went to their follower list. In theory these accounts would be a good place to start connecting.
I started at the top of the list and started clicking follow, follow, follow... not the most genuine way to connect with people but I was just trying to get off the ground. Then, I noticed something.
Alphabetical order.
I kept exploring. Every list - alphabetical order. It doesn't take a hacker to know how you might take advantage of that to gain traction and exposure, to get a head start.
The very first people I followed I did so simply because they were at the top of the list. Somebody named "aaanderson" was my first follow. I went and checked - all of the accounts with this alphabet-leading names had hundreds to thousands more followers than the average account. More followers = more exposure = more upvotes.
It may be to late for us with our already existing non-strategic account names, but it's something worth noting (maybe telling a friend as he or she goes to make an account). What do you think? Do you think this will change along with some other shortcuts for gaming the system?
