Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Gregory and Shelina — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:46:03 -0000

We've been using twitter to post our daily life which many find interesting as we have been called modern prophets and bring information about the first creation of humans which people have never heard of before. We've also made a JesusandMary twitter since they channel through Gregory as they are in our soul group and are sharing new messages which others have not heard before along with tidbits about their guides, angels and past lives. Our intentions are not to spam anyone. It does look like it can be overwhelming sometimes as we are following Obama, Oprah, Depak Chopra and others but for the moment we are having fun with it and will be putting it on our regular website which is being built. Blessings for a Happy New Year!

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Christopher di Spirito — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:46:06 -0000

Wow! I thought it was just me.

I signed up for Twitter after reading an article about it in a reputable computer magazine that likened it to the invention of email.

While some of the social networking stuff was fun and useful during the election, most of what I see now is written in a foreign language (sorry, I only have two semesters of college level Spanish) or people "Tweeting" as a means to get free advertising for their business.

The remainder are posts similar to this: "Whoa, so tired today, Tweets!" Or, "Looking forward to spring!" Or, "My husband is away this week, I sure would like to meet you."

Am I missing something magical about Twitter?

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

guidosoundadvice — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:36:52 -0000

Those techniques wreak of the old MLM days!
not a bad idea, def should be tweaked out more to be effective though.
I almost wish I were an affiliate ;)

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

sahar009 — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:06:58 -0000

All these tools are amazing when they are used well - unfortunately it's only a matter of time (usually pretty short, too) before something initially great becomes a pain in the you know what. Think of Facebook - it started as a tool for students to communicate. You knew the person you were talking to really was a university student with that name, but now... -Sighs- I have about 30 friends requests from people with names like "Naughty Bear" and "Everyone's Friend".

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

timehasnotime — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:17:07 -0000

If I want to check I just sign in from my Palm. How hard is that? Ya don't need to have someone do it for you.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Kosso — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:27:50 -0000

Twitter really needs to have a secondary/API key/password separate to the main user password for all third party things like this.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Taylor Blue — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:26:12 -0000

It's a great idea for me because I don't stay logged in to Twitter all day. If I were I would never get my work done. Instead I go in a couple times a day and then answer to all my replies. People hate that. So I thought this would be a great idea. I signed up and so far I haven't got one reply sent to my email yet. So who knows...I may just disable it...

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

srini kumar — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:41:33 -0000

happy new year !!! nobody cares about your privacy unless it's you, and advertising pays for everything, so caveat registror. i have been rendered immune to caring about this by the parade of throwaway facebook apps + the news feed - this simply seems like an "i got bit by a vampire ! do you want to get bit too ?" for the twitter crowd.

this service at least strikes me as useful. someone was apparently trying to do something helpful for others, and if the final payoff was $1200 i mean that sounds pretty coder-altruistic to me. i don't see a ponzi scheme brewing inside this guy's head. this simply seems like a case study in contagion, and quite likely will become a "best practice" for a certain class of projects - as Eric Rice points out, it's Qik and Brightkite and such which proclaimed to the world "hey coders, you can program robots to talk into twitter, it's cool, no biggie". so this twply coder just did that too, which was adapt a best practice from inane fb apps and qik et al to his intentions (which apparently started with "i want a truck of people to use this" and ended when he got his wish).

is a tweet saying "hey i'm live streaming on _service_, come chat" automatically any better than this ? frankly, it's worse, isn't it? if you're a qik user do you see how annoying this "feature" makes you on twitter? whereas new signups to a service - at least that only happens once....

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Eric Rice — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:15:57 -0000

Or, mob justice.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Joseph Hunkins — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:11:02 -0000

Loving how this is playing out, which I think shows the power of online communities in terms of questionable marketing. This company risked pissing people off to gain more users. The Twitter crowd appears to be policing itself to the extent we may be able to avoid the spam that has made email such a problem. I would encourage Twitter to begin a program to verify identity in such a way that people can't launch new campaigns under different names.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Paige — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:09:03 -0000

@twply was just sold for $1,200 http://marketplace.sitepoin...

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

bunnyhero — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:33:39 -0000

i wonder if anyone has tried to contact the person listed in twply.com's whois record, for comment.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Allison — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:14:11 -0000

(and yes, I really am so hung over that spelling and grammar capabilities *have* abandoned me)

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Allison — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:12:13 -0000

I'm in PR, and I find this kind of marketing beyond obnoxious. That tells you something haha. But even more so, I find the company's response in this comment section absurd. Are you really so hung over from last night that commen sense has abandoned you? Making enemies of this audience won't help you gain fans.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Mike Doeff — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:56:26 -0000

Interesting development... The founder of Twply just sold the property because their servers couldn't handle the load. Winning bid was $1200. http://marketplace.sitepoin...

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Fabio Seixas — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:46:58 -0000

The problem is that they are spreading an opinion ("neat stuff") like that was written by us and this is realy wrong.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Daniel Tunkelang — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:14:04 -0000

Eric, I don't know about you, but this is the first time a service has automatically sent out an endorsement signed with my name without asking permission--or, more precisely, ignoring my opt-out of a vague request for "support". This isn't just about spam, this is about undermining what it means to endorse a service.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Eric Rice — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:03:07 -0000

Hold the god damned phone, you are SERIOUSLY pissy about Twply after the umpteen gazillion SEESMIC, QIK COME CHAT NOW ping.fm universe we live in?

Seriously, WE are the spammers. We use shit like ping.fm and then it goes to EVERY DAMN SITE and makes no coherent sense.

I HATED seesmic in the beginning because the users had everything on auto-post. It was sickening.

The fact that Twply is offending you, when users of other services (and I'm sure other services themselves) have done this time and time again.

Look in the mirror already. We are the worst spammers of them all.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Ryan Merket — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:38:44 -0000

Anyone who gives their login and password without taking the time to read what that site is going to do with their info and then complain about whatever said site does with that info - looks dumb. That site has a horrible UI, no privacy policy and is a feature you can find on socialtoo.com.

Workstir.com did something similar when we were in private beta. We clearly stated what the message was going to be and stated that the info would not be saved.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

rolfkleef — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:29:26 -0000

"The company" behind twply might just as well be a high-school kid having fun with an idea on a free day, and seeing an experiment backfire...

Oh well, interesting to see so many people eager to give out their password to a totally unknown "entity" and then complain about something like a little message sent on their behalf :-)

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Daniel Tunkelang — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:27:13 -0000

It may well be a good service, but this kind of spamming is evil and sets a terrible precedent. Not only was it not clear that "support us" meant spam all of my followers, but I explicitly unchecked it! Besides, why would I endorse a tool before even having a chance to use it?

More ranting on my blog:

http://thenoisychannel.com/...

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

NASDAQ120 — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:21:33 -0000

Twitter needs OAuth ASAP.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Marco Massarotto — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:56:33 -0000

Delicious. (not spamming, right... i mean this conversation :) ).

It is indeed a new form of quasi-spam and of "possible" spam (spamming back your twitter account once i got to be your friend) and a new form of marketing.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

ceejayoz — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:52:14 -0000

@Megan Taylor - @replies are not direct messages. The two are separate things.

Re: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?

Steaders — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:45:36 -0000

Twply: Since when did "Support us" mean "send out a message"?