The Eggs

Ah, the egg account. These are named after what for a decade — until last week — was a default logo assigned to users who had just activated a Twitter account. Some of these novices don’t adopt a headshot or other image in place of the standard egg logo, and other users came to associate the egg with all manner of aggressive and uncouth behaviour.

The connection between egg avatars and bad behaviour was so entrenched that Twitter this month replaced the egg with a new design in an attempt to break the association.

Trump boasts more than 7.5 million “eggs” among his followers, according to Social Rank, or about 28 per cent of his total following.

“When you’re a big account, you add eggs,” said Alexander Taub, cofounder of Social Rank. There’s also a strong association between inflated follower tallies and egg accounts. Taub suspects some portion of the eggs following @ realDonaldTrump might be less than authentic. “People also target you, and they might buy you egg followers,” he said.