Stop Twitter Spam

Advertising has arrived on Twitter.  Last month, we saw the introduction of TwittAd and Twittertise.  TwittAd allows you to rent out space on your profile page to an advertiser.  Many people (myself included) tend to only check someone’s profile page after receiving a New Follower email, so it remains to be seen if advertisers will see any meaningful results from this.  Twittertise provides a way for brands / advertisers to schedule advertising tweets and track the CTR’s (click-through rates) for those links.  Since that dashboard is only visible to the advertiser, there is a good chance that you won’t know that Twittertise was used to send out the tweet.

Now we have Magpie, which has the tag-line: “convert your tweets into bling-bling”.  Magpie matches up advertisers with Twitter users who have agreed to periodically send out “magpie-tweets” containing the advertisers message, which will contain a link to the advertiser’s site.  Here are a few examples of what the magpie-tweets look like:

According to the Magpie FAQ, every fifth tweet will be an advertisement, but that can be changed to be less frequent.  They recommend that you decide on a frequency based on listening to your followers: ‘”Listen to what your followers tell you. If they’re annoyed by the magpie-tweets, they might unfollow you and you might earn less.”

So how much can you make from Magpie?  That depends on how many followers you have.  You can use this estimator to estimate your earnings.  For example, if I were to sign up, I could make 208 euros per month.  Don’t worry – I’m not going to sign up. : )

Read Write Web checked the estimated earnings for some of the most popular Twitter users:

But what about the heavily followed Twitter crowd? Kevin Rose, for example, could stand to make an extra $8,000 a month, Leo Laporte around $15,000 a month, and Barack Obama? A projected $64,000 a month. (Which, ironically, is more than he would make if he gets the job he’s gunning for.)

So the big question is: How will the Twitter community react to this new form of advertising on Twitter?

Laura Fitton (@pistachio) from Pistachio Consulting is skeptical:

Twitter readers don’t care who you are or how many followers you have when it comes to click-through-credibility, they care if the link sounds compelling.

So as the advertiser, paying magpie what sounds like a fairly high CPM, is probably NOT going to be happy with results and continue the advertising at that rate. The platform on the other hand (your tweet stream) will go down in value by losing followers and by losing click through credibility among followers. We’ll go blind to the #magpie tag just like we are to banner ads. For that matter, Twitter clients will probably offer settings to simply filter out the adtweets.

I believe, firmly, there are ways for Twitter to make money and for people and businesses on Twitter to make money, by working within the cultural system there.

Had I gone on, I would have pointed out that the clickthroughs I do see frequently depend more on “re-tweets” which are pretty unlikely unless Magpie obtains some amazing ad inventory.

Rick Turoczy from Read Write Web questions whether or not the extra cash is worth it:

With Magpie, the annoying tweets could – ultimately – be beyond your control. In fact, this “ad in the tweet stream” concept is exactly what people fear Twitter will be doing with their tweet streams in the not too distant future – inserting advertising into conversations that heretofore have been wholly controlled by each user.

Magpie is promoting the service as a way to get into the tweet stream of “popular twitterers.” One has to wonder, if those Twitter users – especially those who are already seeing value in their Twitter use – are going to be willing to trade their influence for cash.

I, for one, will keep posting annoying drivel on my own – for free.

And there is no shortage of critics on Twitter:

So what does Twitter think of other companies building an advertising platform on top of the Twitter network?  So far, Twitter has taken a hands-off approach and hasn’t shut any of these ad networks down and there is nothing in the current Terms of Service that specifically prohibits advertising.

At the recent Conversational Marketing Summit, Federated Media CEO John Battelle asked Twitter CEO Ev Williams how he feels about other companies building platforms to monetize Twitter.  From the 16:24 mark of this video:

John Battelle:
It strikes me that people may just go ahead – and some have already done this – and start to build publishing executions and sell ads against Twitterstreams and you guys don’t get any of it.  That is a dilemma…

Ev Williams:
(laughs)

John Battelle:
[That is a dilemma] that has happened already to Facebook.  You look at some of the most successful applications on Facebook where 100% of the revenue in those applications is going to whoever developed them and Facebook isn’t seeing any of it except they sort of put an HTML frame around it.

Ev Williams:
At least in their case people still have to come to their site.

John Battelle:
Right, that’s true.  So are you a little concerned about that?

Ev Williams:
It’s not near the top of my list of concerns.  If someone is creating extra value from Twitter, I’m happy for them to make money.  If that becomes *the* big thing – the way Twitter makes money – we’d probably want to see how we could share in that. But, right now, we think it’s a win-win…

Later in the conversation, Battelle asks Williams about how they might monetize Twitter Search (formerly Summize).  From the 18:31 mark:

John Battelle:
When you look at Twitter, particulary at the search piece – if someone is going there and saying – I’d like to find all twitters about Chrysler mini-vans – or put in Chrysler or put in a brand – it strikes me that there’s an AdWords opportunity there for you guys.  Particulary if you get really big – so that you’ve got scale and then you have that long tail kick in and you can start to really say we cover the universe of brands and potential use cases for people looking for information about things.  Is that something that you’re looking into developing?  TweetSense?

Ev Williams:
Uhm – can I use that? (smiles)  … Yes – well, so search ads – is that something that we want to do?

John Battelle:
Yeah.

Ev Williams:
Sure.  That’s somehting that we’ll try.

John Battelle:
Will you first start with just sort of sticking AdSense [on Twitter] and see what happens?

Ev Williams:
We’ve talked about it.  It’s…

John Battelle:
I’m sure Google has called. (smiles)  I mean they do have your phone number.

Ev Williams:
Well…  I’ve changed it.  (smiles)  Yes.  It’s another thing that might be worth doing.  It doesn’t excite me as much as other things.  Because, I really want to focus on things that are very organic to Twitter.  Twitter is very much about opting in to information.  If we can make that compelling – if we can make an AdSense-like product where this arguably does adds value to the content that you’re looking for – then yes, that could be intriguing.  But what I’d love that to be is not just AdSense because when you do a Twitter search, it’s very different from web search  – you’re really – there’s the content right there.  You’re not looking to go somewhere.  So … it’s not likely to perform like web search.  So if we can have something that’s more Twitter-related where maybe they’re sponsored tweets and they come up and they’re related to this content that you’re searching for – but it’s not necessarily the most recent thing.  If we can really sell the value of getting people following you on Twitter.  So if you’re a company, or a brand, or an event, or whatever you are – then discovery is a big value.  So if someone then searches for Chrysler, and Chrysler has a Twitter account and they’re able to come up and say “Follow us” and we’ll make that worth your time.  Then that’s some value that we can deliver and it’s up to the user whether or not they opt in – and if they do then we could charge them for that – maybe.

There are some advantages to Twitter sitting back and watching these other companies try out different advertising models.  They can watch to see how the Twitter community responds to the ads.  When they see something that works (adds value for brands / advertisers without alienating the Twitter community), Twitter can partner with that company – e.g. set up a revenue-sharing arrangement – or just acquire the company – similar to what they did with Summize.

And don’t forget that Twitter has been experimenting with display ads on the Japanese version of Twitter since April 2008. I’m sure that they’re monitoring that closely and have plans to roll out something similar to other markets.

Coverage Elsewhere:

• Mashable: Make Money on Twitter
• ReadWriteWeb: Selling Ads On Your Twitter Background?  You’ll Love Magpie
• Pistachio Consulting: What’s a Tweetworth?  My Two Cents On Magpie
• The Social Path: The Price of my soul?  $33.82 a month apparently
• Sam Sethi: why I don’t think I’ll sellout for €30 p/m to Magpie a twitter advertising model
• BuzzNetworker: To Magpie or Note to Magpie: That is the Question
• A View From the Isle: Twitter vs. Magpie: Wait aren’t Magpies supposed to be one of the most annoying birds?
• The Future of Ads: Magpie Tries To Make Twitter an Ad Network, Fails
• Get Satisfaction: The idea of http://twitter.com/beamagpie is completely spam-annoying

Dan Tynan (PC World) identified ‘Spams and Scams’ as one of four things that could cause Twitter to stumble.

3. Spam and Scams

Twitter spam is already a depressing reality, though the company has dedicated staff to eradicating the fake profiles that spammers set up. “Spam is an ongoing battle, and we’re not backing down,” says Stone.

Click here to read about the other three potential stumbling blocks and eight ways that Twitter will change your life.

1. The First rule of Twitter Club is that you Don’t Spam

Look, we all know you have exciting content for all of us to share. But stop constantly bugging your followers about it.

2. The Second rule of Twitter Club is that you DO NOT Spam.

Let’s not turn this amazing medium into another venue for people to peddle their affiliate marketing products and latest MLM scams. The best way to get people to read your stuff is to create REAL compelling content for them to read, and sorry, they’re just not buying the latest get rich quick scheme that you’ve been duped into. Merely providing an RSS feed onto your twitter feed (check out TwitterFeed) is enough to let your network know about your latest posts.

Read the other six rules here.

Twitter Etiquette or the 8 Rules of Twitter Club | Ennui Blog.

As Twitter has grown in popularity, there have been a number of different tools built to measure the reach and influence of Twitter users.  There’s Twitterholic, which maintains a list of the 100 most popular Twitter users based on number of Followers.  As of today, Barack Obama is at the top with over 105,000 followers.

And more recently we’ve seen the introduction of TwinFluence and Twitter Grade. Personally, I don’t care for these measurement tools because they turn Twitter into a contest and encourage people to accumulate followers for the sole purpose of appearing on one of these lists or improving their score.  I recently came across someone named “The Busy Brain” who experimented with a way to boost his Followers count earlier this week. The experiment ended up backfiring for him but it led to some very interesting discussion.

He described his technique for accumulating new followers in this blog post:

First – Follow Me and then close that window! Next, go to my Twitter Followers page and go through the list contacts and “follow” ALL of them!  Each and every one of them!  You will see your work paying off within seconds, as many of the people will follow you within a few moments!  Keep your email opened and refreshed!  I am willing to bet… you will get an extremely high percentage of return followers because of my “Tit-for-Tat” pruned list theory!I do ask ONE THING…

PLEASE!… If you do use this method and generate good success, PLEASE linkback to this Article!  Either via a Tweet or Blog posting

This blog posted generated a tremendous amount of discussion (67 comments as of the writing of this blog post). The comments started out positive but eventually turned negative as people who where following him started to get inundated with New Follower notifications from people who were complete strangers with nothing in common. Here are a few of the negative comments:

Following this tactic makes Twitter spammy, something that nobody wants. As someone has mentioned, I hope that someone follows me because they are interested in what I have to say, not expecting a follow-back. I will only follow people back after I read through their tweets, check out their page, etc. The most appealing beauty about twitter is not the micro-blogging aspect, but the social aspect. If you are going to follow someone you have no intention of interracting with, then why do it? They probably aren’t interested in your topics either. I think you get the gist here.

Here’s a better, strategically refined solution. Visit www.search.twitter.com and search for terms that you write about. See who’s tweeting about those topics and engage with them on a 1-on-1 basis. Yes, it may take a little longer, but you may find yourself with a more loyal, and interesting following.

- George Gayl

What you are doing is a mockery of Twitter. And you ARE actually harming something. You are lowering the quality of this medium, which with all its downsides still has a quality way above the par compared with the other social networks.

You might believe that this new influx of followers is helping you, you might believe that you are increasing your exposure, but all that you are managing to do is to transform yourself into a noise source.  As a credit to you though, this entire controversy does have a positive effect on your business, due to the debate it encouraged. This positive effect however will be short lived and none of it will pass on to the users foolish enough to follow your advice.

- George Cozma

… I have to cast my lot more or less with those saying this technique “misses the point.”

For one, i feel slightly “used” in that those of us who’ve decided to politely follow folks back, are suddenly getting connected with people who are just in it to jack up their numbers. No big deal, just, meh.

But more to why I say “missing the point” it’s a matter of maybe not thinking through the results of this. Will the follower numbers you end up with really serve your goals in the end? Maybe so, maybe likely, no.

The slow organic growth of a network here lets you get to know people. I’ve found the periods of rapid growth caused me to miss a lot of genuine opportunities to really meet people within the streams. Jumping into 600 streams at once, I really have to wonder how many people adding those 600 will ever really *see* any of those 600. How much incremental traffic will it really drive, and how many of those Twitter connections will last if they were done “just to connect” instead of because there was some interest in the contents and or person.

- Laura (”@pistachio”) Fitton

There was even a video comment:

That video comments wins extra style points for the cool hat.

To The Busy Brain’s credit, he didn’t delete any of the negative comments.  He even put up a poll asking his readers what they thought of the “Tit-for-Tat” following technique that he was using.  As of today, 50% thought it was a horrible idea and only 19% thought it was a great idea.  30% were undecided.

The next day, The Busy Brain issued an apology to the Twitter community.

I originally put the poll up to prove the point to the negative commenters in the post that majority were in favor, but was surprised to see the numbers quickly sway the other direction.  Certainly not what I had hoped for! Oddly only about 5% of the people who saw the poll actually voted.  I’m not sure why that is!The simple fact is, I had no clue that this would turn into such a big mess! My attempts to put out the fires of hatred and spite are completely SPENT!  I’m done trying!  Hence this appology!

I’m a hard working, home owning, family oriented individual pursuing the American Dream!  I had NO INTENT of inconveniencing the gracious folks who originally followed me! To them, and ANYONE who felt they were done wrong by this situation… I AM HONESTLY VERY SORRY!

You can read the complete apology here.

There’s no doubt that everyone uses Twitter in different ways.  Many people carefully cultivate their community, making sure to only connect with people who they know or people who have some shared interestt in.  Others are trying to build a large audience with little regard for whether or not they have anything in common with their followers.  Was The Busy Brain’s Tit-for-Tat technique spam?  It’s hard to say.  But the poll results surely indicate that this technique is not going to win you fans and could end up doing damage to your personal brand.

Update:
I changed the headline of this post to ‘The Tit-for-Tat Spam Controversy’.  I really don’t think The Busy Brain’s intent was to spam and I regret labeling him as a spammer in the original headline.

Stop Twitter Spam was one of the sources for an excellent, in-depth article by Mark Glaser at PBS MediaShift.  His post gives a good overview of the issue and highlights tools that have been built by the Twitter community, such as MyTweeple.  Mark also asked Twitter’s Biz Stone about what they are doing to fight the problem:

“We have plans to grow our spam team and continue building out our tools for keeping the user experience as spam-free as possible,” he said via email. “We’ll certainly continue to welcome community feedback as an integral part of fighting spam.”

- Biz Stone

3. Never SPAM -

Everyone hates spammers. Don’t ever SPAM your twitter followers because you can’t get a bad reputation back and it’s just a nasty thing to do anyway. If all you do is post affiliate links people will unfollow you and rightly so. Remember #2 above, add value.

Twitter Success Tips | Website Success Doctor.

things not to ask a community manager: “please direct me as to how i can mass mail 7,500 members…”

- Heather Champ
(Director of Community, Flickr)

About two months ago, Twitter started suspending accounts that have been flagged as spammers.  In the past few days, Twitter has done a redesign of the profile page for a suspended account.  As the Facetime Security Labs Blog points out, the new page is a big improvement over the old suspended account page, which still included a profile URL.

Introducing the Suspended Owl…

It remains to be seen if the Twitter Owl will be as beloved as the Fail Whale but the early reviews are very positive…

At a time when VC’s are telling their portfolio companies to cut engineers when the product is “ready”, Twitter is planning to add a new engineer to fight spam.  Twitter co-founder Ev Williams tweeted about this the other day…

Twitter looking to hire spam engineer: http://bit.ly/spameng Someone from a big search engine or email company would be cool. Know anyone?

This follows the hiring of a “spam marshall” back in August.  This job posting is another sign that Twitter is maturing as a business and is using it’s VC funding wisely.  And it’s a refreshing move by a company who seems to understand that cutting engineers when your product is “ready” is a short-sighted move that will hurt you in the long run.