Stop Twitter Spam

Twitter user Andrew Baron (Rocketboom) is selling his Twitter account on eBay, sparking lots of discussion about the implications of selling a community and whether or not this should be allowed.

“I’m guessing a majority of the followers won’t know it’s been changed unless it is purchased by an online gambling service who will use it to test out Twitter spam.”
- Rex Hammock

“How much is a Twitter account with nearly 1,500 followers worth? Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron wants to find out, and launches a publicity stunt that will spark a debate about trust and privacy…”
- Duncan Riley (TechCrunch)

“this is an interesting question: is your community for sale, and how does that work”
- Chris Brogan

“Could this auction start a whole new trend of people divesting their Twitter accounts as commodities for cash? And what about any number of other social accounts?”
- Sean P. Aune, Mashable

“Social realities cannot be discounted. Relationships online are not subject to some sort of magical antigravity: they are still a form of human relationship, no matter how virtual, and not economic objects to be traded like pork bellies or manganese. Andrew’s stunt will be veiwed, in the final analysis, as just that, and no more.”
- Stowe Boyd, /Message

“What kind of value can you get out of a Twitter account. Yes, you could spam it, but for how long. . .The audience on Twitter is a LOT smarter than you would think. They barely click on ads and they’re not going to get tricked into your ‘referral scheme’.”
- Four20

“I find the whole thing a bit silly because I am simply going to stop following Baron’s account. Sure, some people will either not know or care that Baron sold the account, but if whoever buys the account simply keeps spamming their new followers, they will lose those followers. Twitter isn’t mainstream enough yet for its users to be as naive as they might be with some other services.”
- MG Siegler, ParisLemon

“…what’s interesting is that people assume there’s value in getting his followers (probably because they assume there’s some value in spamming those followers with marketing messages). That’s funny since it’s so easy to unfollow people.”
- Robert Scoble

And, of course, there has been plenty of discussion on Twitter about this.

“@andrewbaron – … Don’t let someone pay you to spam 1400 people who actually used to like you. Part of the problem.”
- @rachaelosborn

“@andrewbaron, with 1418 followers, is selling his twitter account on ebay. way to not propagate spam there, genius”
- @humantorch

“@andrewbaron you know some marketing sleeze is just gonna buy it & spam your friend list, bummer”
- @Giania

“what if Andrew sells to a Viagra spammer? We can all block @andrewbaron can’t we, if Twitter is a community?”
- @moon

“Prediction: 1 week from now there will be dozens of Twitter accounts for sale on eBay and the buyers will be spammers. Thanks @andrewbaron.”
- @stoptwitterspam (yours truly)

“blocking andrewbaron”
- @tomh

“@ev @biz please disable @andrewbaron ’s account to let twitter users know, accounts can not be sold, draw a line in the sand please.”
- @zemote

” @andrewbaron – Ill buy all your dopes today for cash, just tell me the price.”
- @1938media (Loren Feldman)

“ selling your Twitter account is like whoring your sister.”
- @kr8tr

“@andrewbaron: sorry, had to unfollow. you’re still my friend, and I “get” the experiment and publicity, but I’m not for sale. ”
- @Zadi

” @andrewbaron I agree with @zadi — why would we continue to follow you if some stranger was writing your tweets??”
- @veronica (Veronica Belmont)

” I can’t wait to see how Twitter responds to Andrew @andrewbaron publicity stunt.”
- @techcrunch (Mike Arrington)

Update:

Twitter user @bblboy54 has started a discussion topic about this over at Get Satisfaction. Here a couple of comments from that thread:

“I feel pretty strongly that Twitter should amend its Terms of Service to clearly disallow selling or renting one’s Twitter account(s) and followers as quickly as possible. Getting an account is free, why would anyone need to sell one or buy one except to exploit relationships between people for financial gain. I’m getting utterly sick of that and would like to see Twitter protected from such behavior. Social experiment be damned. Please put a stop to this, Twitter.”
- cherylcolan

“Twitter is offered as a free service to those that wish to make the most of their experience on the internet. The fact that this one user has begun to make money using twitter I do not believe is right. Agreed is the fact that twitter seems to be on a spiral down and will soon be out of hand.”
- rossdurham

“It’s a bit pessimistic to describe one extreme case as a “spiral down.” It’s still very early in the evolution of this new communications tool. Issues like this are simply the price of success, and a manageable challenge for Twitter and the community to deal with. Be positive!”
- Thor Muller