How does twitter following and followers work?

[partyhardy_3601]

Like I have 14 followers and 13 following, I know the 13 are the people I'm following but who are the 14 people? Do I have to follow them back? And how come I went from 32 followers to 13?

[kaylee]

so basically you can follow people and the people you choose to follow become the people your following (i hope that made sense, lol) so the people that you are following their tweets will show up in your timeline (like your home page on twitter) so your followers are people that follow you. your tweets will show up in their timeline. the 14 people are strangers, unless you know them (like if a friend of yours follows you). most of the time when i get a new follower i go on their profile page and if i like their tweets i will follow them, also if you follow them there is less of a chance they will unfollow you. but you don't need to follow them if you don't want to. the reason you went from 32 followers to 13 is because the people that were following you unfollowed you, so they will not show up as a follower anymore there are many reasons why a person might unfollow you from twitter (one example is they don't like your tweets). I hope this helped and i wasn't to confusing