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DK and Jimmy: Too Dumb to Fail « The Salty Droid said:
[...] a period in which Jimmy the Greasy tweeted NOTHING. It’s a christmas miracle!!  {or a follow spam [...]
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# 31 March 2009 at 4:14 am

Wyrd said:
@SD
To what extent do you think these particular twitter gimmicks still work? More broadly–do you think twitter follower numbers are still totally bogus, or are they only semi-bogus now?
–
Furry cows moo and decompress.
  +1
[Reply]

SD Reply:
April 26th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
@Wyrd ::
Well I’m not on Twitter so I’m not really qualified to speak about it anymore :: but buying followers didn’t seem to be enough to deliver the presidency to marshmallow man fuck stain Newt Gingrich …
http://saltydroid.info/popular-robot-mechanics/
[Reply]
# 26 April 2012 at 12:28 am

EricG said:
All artificial methods of getting twitter followers are bloody useless.
You just end up following thousands of garbage identities who in turn are following thousands of other garbage identities.
Which just generates a whole lot of noise that nobody ever looks at.
I have a twitter account, and follow about 150 selected people.
Just over 300 people follow me.
I follow people because I am interested in what they have to say. If I no longer find what they say interesting, I cease following them.
Whether or not they then cease following me is something I don’t know about – or even care about.
I figure that those who follow me are interested in what I have to say.
I might even follow them back if they are interesting. If they aren’t – I don’t bother. And if they cease following me because I don’t follow them I don’t even know. Or care.
The whole reciprocal following thing to increase your numbers is a crock of shit. And it stinketh.
  +1
[Reply]

Wyrd Reply:
April 26th, 2012 at 9:03 am
@EricG,
Yeah, I know auto-follow is dumb. And I know there’s a lot of useless twit-bots out there spewing garbage.
I just wondered if the twitter followers number was any more reliable now than it was back in 2009 when Salty posted this.
I think what’s happened is that there’s still lots of garbage, but that twitter has put blocks in the way only to limit the number of accounts you can follow such that the number of accounts you can follow cannot very greatly exceed the number of accounts that are following you.
But… I’m not sure that addresses the core problem at all.
However, I did see a post in comments somewhere on this site where Twitter is suing somewhere between four-six of the biggest Twitter spammers. So, that might help some. It’s funny (to me). Twitter’s basis for lawsuit is that those entities are violating the TOS.
The sad part is, I suppose I need to start taking TOSes seriously*. I kind of hate that, but then after all–in a situation like this, what other recourse would Twitter have? And they need to have some sort of recourse because spam sucks balls.
* about me and TOSes: I never spammed on Twitter. But it wasn’t because of the TOS, it was simply because I figured that spamming is generally lame and a violation of the social contract of electronic communication. Spamming is basically just one step away from a Denial of Service attack. And sometimes it turns into one on accident anyway.
–
Furry cows moo and decompress.
  +3
[Reply]

SD Reply:
April 26th, 2012 at 4:32 pm
@Wyrd ::
Twitter is suing somewhere between four-six of the biggest Twitter spammers
Correction :: Twitter is suing somewhere between four-six spammers.
[Reply]

Wyrd Reply:
April 26th, 2012 at 8:53 pm
@SD, Ah.
Well, that’s even better then.
[with friendly snarkiness...]
Wait, how come you can modify my hastily written statement to generalize it to spammers, but not be more specific as to the number?
–
Furry cows moo and decompress.
  +1
[Reply]

Jack Reply:
April 27th, 2012 at 6:05 am
@Wyrd, I think that it’s he meant the ones sued aren’t probably the biggest ones.
  +1
[Reply]

Wyrd Reply:
April 27th, 2012 at 11:43 pm
@Jack,
Point taken. I now have mild embarrassment.
It’s just that a couple of the parties named on the suit were actually companies that provide spamming tools. So when I said “biggest” I was thinking that the companies and individuals named in the suit might be ones responsible, either directly or by proxy, for a lot of the spam on Twitter.
I guess I just don’t know how deep the Twitter rabbit hole goes.
–
Furry cows moo and decompress.
  +2

Jack Reply:
April 26th, 2012 at 6:00 pm
@Wyrd, But it creates jobs!
MTurk Spam Study
  +1
[Reply]

Wyrd Reply:
April 26th, 2012 at 8:55 pm
@Jack,
Right. Much like telemarketing jobs, and nuclear waste, that’s a thing that we could stand to have less of rather than more of.
–
Furry cows moo and decompress.
  +1
[Reply]

Lanna Reply:
April 27th, 2012 at 11:37 am
@Wyrd,
To what extent do you think these particular twitter gimmicks still work?
Twitter removed autofollow five days after this post, so the following for autofollows gimmick no longer works. (1, 2, Chris Brogan) {Go Droid!}
More broadly – do you think twitter follower numbers are still totally bogus, or are they only semi-bogus now?
Artificially inflating follower numbers to appear more popular is still happening. Newt’s “Follower Gate” was reported only nine months ago. (3) I was *just* followed by a service that sells followers.
The tactic they’re using now – paying for zombie followers – actually strikes me as a lot shadier than relying on autofollows. Autofollowers were real people who could choose to unfollow, versus Newt’s 92% nonhuman followers. (4)
Even though “less than 9% of [spam] accounts form social relationships with regular Twitter users,” they still try, padding authentic Twitter users’ follower numbers. (5 [PDF]) I’d say five to 10% of my followers are spam, the same percentage one blogger estimated back in July 2009. (6) However, he has more followers than me, which “Popular Mechanics” says attracts more spam accounts, so perhaps follower spam is actually still on the rise. (7) PeekYou says different kinds of Twitter accounts average between 30 and 60% human followers, although some of the remainder are businesses or private/anonymous accounts. (4)
Some follower spam was targeted at getting a marketing message or link in front of more people. Like the popularity-fakers, those spammers have also moved on to other methods. In a study that monitored spam accounts from August 17, 2010, to March 4, 2011, U of C Berkeley researchers found “17% of accounts rely on hijacking trends, while 52% of accounts use unsolicited mentions to reach an audience.” (5 [PDF])
On a platform where you hand-select feeds from accounts that use the service in very different ways, it’s difficult to pin down what constitutes unwanted messages. U of C Berkeley found three of the five spam campaigns they identified sent “spam directing visitors to reputable store fronts, blurring the line regarding what constitutes spam on social networks.” (5 [PDF]) And Twitter’s big fix for follower spam – limiting the allowable following-to-followers ratio – actually forces authentic users to unfollow some people in order to follow more if we don’t get enough followers.
Except when they’re proudly announcing new anti-spam efforts, Twitter refuses to comment on Twitter spam. (8, 4) “Spam and abuse reports are not made public,” even to developers, and third parties need special contracts to access Twitter’s “firehose.” (9, 10) There’s no way for anyone outside Twitter to definitively know if spam is up, down or flat. No one outside Twitter knows how many registered users they have, either. (11) They only report active users, whatever active means.
—
Put this 2008 PBS article (8) in the why-didn’t-you-investigate-further file next to all the reporters who wrote about the sales pitches at Get Motivated! events:
The Howie Schwartz screencast, however, leads to a pitch for a “Micro-Blogging Automation” offer for $197 (and $49 per month) to get an automated Twitter account where they provide the content, links, and promotion for you. This clearly isn’t about creating a compelling Twitter experience. The pitch continues: “The LAZY way to make the top Web 2.0 sites work FOR YOU and bring you FREE Subscribers and FREE MONEY from affiliate and product sales everyday without lifting a finger.”
Of course, many of these money-making ideas end up making the most money for the people offering to do the promotion.
Evidently their lightweight coverage of “Twitter Squeeze, which says it will help you: ‘Learn How to Quickly Generate a Massive Crowd of Followers Who Give You Cash When You Tweet!’” created too much of a fuss as it was:
UPDATE: I heard from Carrie Wilkerson, the new owner of Twitter Squeeze, and she was upset that I insinuated that her product “advocated and taught spamming techniques for Twitter.” While I never did say that in the article, she tried to clarify what Twitter Squeeze is:
The former owner, Rick Butts and myself, are big spam haters. We advocate wise following, good content and building up a list the right way…I have 2,600 followers on Twitter and have NEVER been spammed, even though I have an auto-follow policy.
Rick Butts, the original owner of Twitter Squeeze, backed up Wilkerson in a separate email to me:
My ‘service’ is no service at all. It is a series of videos showing how to ETHICALLY leverage the way people look into who you are so that they are more likely to follow you, by reducing the options they have on your BLOG.
In fact in the training I make it very clear that you want to keep the wrong kind of people from following you. Twitter Squeeze is all about increasing followers — every single thing I offer from that point on relative to USING Twitter is to not spam, not even close, but to build relationships — and market sparingly.
I agree that Twitter Squeeze is more of a training on how to use Twitter to market to people, but the language around the product does sound to me like a get-rich-quick scheme (even if that’s not what it ends up being).
  +1
[Reply]

Wyrd Reply:
April 28th, 2012 at 6:46 pm
@Lanna,
Wow. That’s a scary-impressive amount of research there.
I wish I had something pithy to follow it up with, but all I can think of is: Thanks!
  +1
[Reply]
# 26 April 2012 at 1:55 am

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