What is Twitter Spam? The term is thrown around loosely today, even massive friend adding is considered spamming. I might disagree a little with this. Other then the bacon email they generate, they are hardly spamming me. In fact if anything they are helping by increasing my follower numbers, extending my reach further and so forth. Lord knows how us, the attention generation loves this. However the community has long spoken on the matter, its a clear annoyance to many.
Following someone on Twitter is probably one of the best examples of an “Opt-In” process. If I don’t want it, I don’t have to see it. Never the less, the technique of doing a massive follow of thousands, hoping, oh so desperately hoping that you’ll get a small return of followers is spammy. Twitter recently announced some ways they are trying to curb this.
So when I noticed a new site Topic5 creating several profiles for fake people like Julia Allison, Jimbo Whales and countless others I just couldn’t resist sending the above picture twit. Yes “you’re doing it wrong” as the kids like to say today. Tonight I find the following email in my Inbox:
“Name: Jeremy ——-
Email Address: topic5@——.com
Comments: Hi Sean. I was intrigued by your tweet. Can you give me a hint what we’re doing wrong. Just a tiny hint?”
Jeremy, I’d be glad to give you a few hints. In fact we can have a little group therapy sessions right here. Hopefully others will join the conversation and give their own hints as well. That’s kinda what this whole social media thing is about.
What You’re Doing Wrong:
Setting Up Fake People: Unless you are Darth Vader this isn’t going to work. Following one Julia Allison is enough, please don’t make more. The technique makes me question the class of your operation in general.
Massive Following: This technique is so tired, you are annoying more than you are engaging users with this. Finally, those few followers you get back are utter shit, they probably following everyone and will never see your twits. Advertise your Twitter account(s) on your site and try to drive incoming follows instead.
Pump and Dumb: Twitter is not a pump and dump for your links. You have to be more creative than that. For one use Twitter as its intended, reach out and chat with others before blasting your profiles full of links. Second don’t send the same link out over and over again. If you are running a UGS site feed RSS into Twitter via TwitterFeed. Within reason, have it feed updates from your site to your account, at least this is refreshing and new content.
Final Thoughts:
I see what you are doing, an open forum where people can gather around a person or topic. You should have some type of presence on Twitter but for now narrow your output. You can’t possible make an account for each topic you want to push, please tell me you dont plan to! For a product like yours shift your focus from social media to search engine optimaztion. For example if you had editors build out topics based on Google Trends alone you’d see a much greater traffic return.
Either way best of luck, readers please share your throughts as well.
24-year-old Angel Pantoja Medina of Puerto Rico apparently told his family that when he passes away, he wants to stand upright through his wake. Angel was mourned by family members while standing tall in his mother’s living room for 3 days.The police are currently investigating Angel’s death. His body was found underneath a bridge last Friday, August 15, 2008.
Feeling under the weather today, so I took some time to clear out my Facebook app requests. This new “ignore all” button is obviously coded in ruby on happy rails of joy.
Thanks to this Techmeme thread I’m just confused. Is it like Facebook or Netvibes? I’m really hoping see one more thread extension here comparing SportsFanLive to Twitter.
This post has been brought to you by the Nothing Better to Post on a Sunday Committee.
Over the weekend the Washington Post ran a story about the much loved music streaming service Pandora. In the piece, Founder Tim Westergren says “We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision”. His comments were prompted by the huge royalty fees the company is having to pay out in licensing fees, some 70% of it’s estimated 25 million yearly profit.
As the old Greek story goes, Pandora’s box contains all of mankind’s evils, greed, vanity, slander, lying, envy and pining. It also contains one last thing, HOPE. While the evils (especially greed and vanity) are certainly intertwined into Pandora.com’s problem, perhaps there is some hope in there as well.
I like many love Pandora. I use it daily, so does just about everyone else I know. I’m the type who really has no problem paying for music, in fact I routinely discover and *GASP* purchase music directly through Pandora. The entire arrangement can’t help but feel like a win win for everyone involved.
Attention recording business, let the revenue match the form. Stream it free to build awareness and marketing. Generate the bulk of your cash through music I purchase, concerts I attend and your other licensing forms (movies and commercials etc).
Music is and will always be an important part of my life. However its a 2nd tier form of media. Background music is just that, something I listen to while I do one of 100 other things. The “sound track of my life” that plays while I work or drive should be satisfied by streaming light weight content. It doesn’t even have to be free.
Did you even know there was a Pandora Pro account? I just discovered it myself, time to fight fire (money) with fire (money).
Our east coast buddy Oz told us via twitter that one miss Alana Taylor was in town. He asked that we show her a bit of the local flavor. So a few us headed down to the Brentwood Restaurant and Lounge.
Some of you may remember Alana as the singer of the “The Twitter Song“. Today she is finishing up school and and doing some writing over at Mashable. She shares some of her experiences and trys to convince me that Pete Cashmore is a great dancer.
I can’t help but enjoy doing interviews. Frankly, most of the tech scene interviews these days are just painful to watch. I like to inject my own style and keep the interviewee on their toes. I guess you could say its a mixture of what John Steward and Howard Stern both do so well.
So I’m going to put together a small list of individuals I want to interview before the year is over. Hopefully some of you will find this via an ego search and setup a time. Those that don’t, well sorry I can’t let you off that easily. Just remember if you see me, the red light on my flip camera means its working.
Tonight we had a Docstoc dinner at Benihana’s with special guest Neil Patel. You may remember him from such Internet memes as “The Jason Calacanis SEO Challenge“. Neil has had some interesting experiences in his short but successful career. Unfortunately for you, we talked about most of the juicy stuff off camera. I did however manage to ask him a few questions in the valet line. Enjoy.
Talk 
Over the weekend the 
