If you haven’t heard of SocialToo, it is a “computerized personal assistant” for Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed.
SocialToo is also stealing your money.
Don’t get me wrong. SocialToo offers outstanding services, such as enabling you to automatically follow anyone who follows you (or unfollow anyone who unfollows you), generate automatic direct messages to send to new followers (or block direct messages sent by new people you follow), and offering you a series of surveys so you can poll your Twitter friends.
But if you look at the SocialToo preferences page, additional services cost money:
- $5 to follow everyone who followed you before you signed up with SocialToo
- $5 to unfollow everyone who isn’t following you back
- $10 to turn off new message notifications on your cellphone
- $25 to delete all of your friends
Amid changing my Twitter follow strategy, I decided 72 hours ago, per this tweet, to run an auto-follow script and follow everyone I was previously unfollowing (or the first bullet above).
Despite my prior creation of a SocalToo account, I never synchronized it with my @ariherzog Twitter account. How do you explain my success in following everyone who I previously was unfollowing without spending $5?
Enter twiPing, a contact management solution in the form of a Windows software program you can download to your computer. How it works is you log into your account, it loads your friends and followers, and you can conduct batch operations with a click of a few buttons. So, in my case, I loaded my friends and followers, selected only my followers I was unfollowing, and asked the program to follow all. Thirty minutes later, over 5,000 people and organizations who previously were following me I was reciprocally following.
You can argue with me over the merits of my actions and why I’m changing my Twitter rules (which I’ll delve into deeper in a future blog post), but the fact I’m paying attention to here is I did it for free, without coughing over $5. In fact, if you scroll above to the four bullets, twiPing enables me to do all but the third for free; that’s a savings of $35 that SocialToo requires for its premium services.
TwiPing is only one service, and others include Mutuality and TwitterMass. I recognize companies are launching left and right to offer you personalized Twitter services for a price. But when competition allows the same services to be performed for free, why pay the money?
Photo credit: velo city
Related posts:
- How to Get 21,347 Twitter Followers in 2 Weeks
- Show Me the Money or Twitter Will Fail
- Twitter Lists: A New Way to Follow
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Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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{ 31 comments }
Usage and merits of the programs and software aside, how exactly is SocialToo “stealing your money”.
Are they twisting your arm behind your back to make you pay for the additional services? Have they hired fat Italians with baseball bats to break your knees?
As far as I can tell, you get to choose whether or not you want to use the service, and whether or not you want to use there paid services!
Stealing? I don’t think so…
Paul OFlaherty´s last blog post..Twitter is getting hacked???
If I am driving in an unfamiliar area and want to fill up my tank with gas, I’ll pull into Al’s Station and pay the price.
If I’m driving in the same area but am familiar with the locale, I may know Al’s is slightly more expensive than Bob’s. It matters not that Al’s offers superior service or that I went to high school with Al’s wife; if I want the most economical price, Bob’s beats Al’s.
Same story here. SocialToo is Al’s. Other services are Bob’s. I’m not dissing Al’s, that one can’t or shouldn’t go there. I’m merely pointing out that Al’s is offering a higher price than you can get at Bob’s, and if you don’t know any better, Al’s is stealing your money.
So, by your logic, anybody who is charging a higher price for a similar service or product than somebody else is engaging in theft?
Do I need to point out the ridiculousness of such a statement. You choose where you spend your money. You are at no point forced to spend your money. There is you, the value that service providers place on their services and the choice you make about your desire to have the service and what you want to pay for it.
At no point are you forced to go to Al’s or Bobs! And if you’re happy with Bobs prices and I come along and provide the gas even cheaper does that make Bob a thief too?
And by your own logic, aren’t you a thief too? Much of what you offer in your “About” page is information that is freely offered by others online and can be obtained with just a little research. Much like researching who has the cheaper gas, Al, Bob or me?
So, doesn’t your logic make you a thief? Why with that in mind, would anybody pay for your services?
The answer as to why they might, will also be the answer as to why some services are free, some aren’t and some folks pay a premium for quality, reliability and having others do the work for them.
Paul OFlaherty´s last blog post..Brand yourself – Don’t give away your biggest asset online!
Ahh. My bad. You’re referring to my usage of “stealing” as theft. That was not my intent, but to analogize with passive trickery, e.g. when a runner tries to steal second base at a baseball game. Is stealing a base theft? No; and no different than SocialToo requesting a monetary fee for a service. Does that make sense?
If someone doesn’t want to do business with me, that’s their prerogative. In fact, I’m the first person to suggest someone else for a job. Case in point, if you tweet Marc Meyer, you can ask him about my referral of a potential client to him, for I felt he would provide the better service.
Ari, I just look at your post, your avid defense of your statement up to now, and while, you’re second analogy is more passing as a definition of stealing (in context of the comment I am replying to), I honestly can’t help but feel that someone as obviously “aware” as you seem to be chose his words for the precise effect they had.
But deliberate or not, we all make mistakes, we all get called on our crap (god knows I’ve been enough) and we all move on. It’ll probably be my turn tomorrow, with @subrbanoblvion burning the bridges out from under me.
And as for you referring clients to people you feel are better suited, I don’t doubt it, I was just highlighting the entire “if something is available for free why pay for it” side of the discussion.”
Paul OFlaherty´s last blog post..Brand yourself – Don’t give away your biggest asset online!
Twitter Comment
RT @dannybrown: Did you know SocialToo is “stealing” your money? @ariherzog spills the beans [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Did I miss the part where Social Too sneaks into your house, rummages through your wallet and takes your money?
No?
Then it’s not stealing.
Yes, people with the know-how can easily do these things themselves through various third-party service, but keep in mind, the average Twitter user is not as knowledgeable as we are about that. Most people are not early adopters, and won’t be out trying every new service the way we do.
Social Too as far as I can tell is aimed at the average user. They are providing a service people are willing to pay for at a reasonable price. While I wouldn’t pay for their services, I don’t see why anyone would be grudge them offering these services to people who would.
What annoys me is seeing someone so flippantly throwing around terms like ’stealing’ just to drive traffic to his own blog post, and possibly hurting an innocent company in the process.
Suburban Oblivion´s last blog post..Aftermath
The fact that I follow trends and try out new products makes me an early adopter? How do you define an average user? I’d argue, in comparison to the MySpaces and Facebooks of the social networking world, that Twitter’s user base of 10 million are early adopters. Thus, I don’t know how knowledgeable someone is or isn’t on Twitter, because I haven’t asked.
Usually “premium services” mean just that – service that you’d otherwise be unable to get elsewhere, and certainly elsewhere for free.
I haven’t used SocialToo as I use Tweepular instead, so I can’t really speak about SocialToo’s “services”.
But as far as bulk follow or bulk unfollow, or unfollow by last Tweet (for dead accounts), and other Twitter account management, I find Tweepular does the job. Which sounds a lot like Twiping and the others you mention.
So it does seem strange to pay for this service if there’s no other major benefit to SocialToo?
* Disclosure – Tweepular is a client.
Danny Brown´s last blog post..Talking Twitter with CityNews Toronto
I don’t know anything about Tweepular, having only heard of it last night; but your first sentence is the ringer for me. I’m more than willing to pay for something I can’t get somewhere else.
Should I be singled out for googling keywords and learning of alternatives to SocialToo or any other company? I don’t think so.
Dang, Ari, you’re following everyone now? I got all excited late last week when I noticed you were following me back… thought I had finally done something worthy enough to warrant an @ariherzog follow-back under your strict guidelines. But alas, not so much.
amymengel´s last blog post..This post is not about Oprah. Well, mostly not.
If I didn’t take my own medicine, what does that say? When you consider I frequently tell people that there are no Twitter rules (other than not engaging in hate crimes, not having pornographic background pages, etc.), it’s about time I adhere to what I say, eh?
Sorry if you’re offended, but if I don’t challenge the status quo–and change the way I do things–then what’s the point?
Not offended… just amused.
Glad to have you as a follower!
amymengel´s last blog post..This post is not about Oprah. Well, mostly not.
Ari, as a friend I wish you would have e-mailed me before posting this and saying my service is “a waste of money”. Your facts are inaccurate – I think there are some misunderstandings. We do not offer the ability to DM your followers at first. That’s stated specifically in our FAQs. Also, SocialToo is completely free for auto-follow or auto-unfollow. What those services we charge for enable is to go back retroactively from the time before you joined SocialToo and follow those people as well. We state that specifically next to each item.
In addition to that, auto-follow isn’t the only thing SocialToo does. We send out a nightly e-mail with results stating who followed you and stopped following you in the previous day. We provide a Social Polling service enabling you to poll your followers. We provide a profile redirect tool to give you an easy URL to send your followers to your Facebook profile. All these services are 100% free. There is also much more on the way.
However, each server (we have 6 of them) costs us from $100-$200 per month to manage. In addition I have a family of 4 I need to support and feed and provide a roof overhead. I would hope people would feel compassion enough, in order to keep this service moving forward, to pay for the additional retroactive follow so we can keep providing the service.
Also, we auto-follow in the background, automatically and regularly. You do nothing. TwiPing you have to run manually. If this is the service people prefer we can change our business model around 100%. However, we already offer the equivalent to TwiPing for free – see my blog post from over a year ago where we released the base auto-follow software, which you can download to any computer, Open Source, 100% free. You can download that here: http://staynalive.com/articles/2007/11/14/auto-follow-those-that-follow-you-on-twitter/
I hope people will feel considerate enough, if they like our services, to at least give something back. They don’t have to, but it would certainly allow me to keep providing more great services for our users.
Perhaps you missed the paragraph that opens with SocialToo offers outstanding services?
The crux of my post, Jesse, indicative of the title, relates to the cost for SocialToo’s premium services, in comparison to your competition. (See my reply to Paul above about Al’s vs Bob’s, for an analogy.) I have no complaints with your non-premium services, which again, are top-notch.
I respect that you need to monetize the cost of servers; so maybe you can state that alongside the prices?
Also, there appears to be some confusion about what SocialToo is and isn’t; I’d read your comment on this page at ReadWriteWeb several days ago, yet I apparently still got the facts wrong. For that, I apologize.
Why, oh why would SocialToo state that the cost is to pay for their servers? Just like any business the charges go towards the cost of providing, maintaining and developing the service and hopefully making a profit as well!
Would you ask Walmart to put signs next to their products explaining why they are being charged at that rate?
Paul, I’m not making a profit right now to tell you the truth. I don’t see a problem with being 100% transparent – I wish more businesses would do so. In fact, I’m struggling month to month to just keep SocialToo running at the costs we’re incurring. If you don’t want to use the service that’s fine, but there are 20,000 people out there that really enjoy what we offer and would be very disappointed if we went away. It’s for that reason I keep trying rather than selling it or getting a job like many other services of our caliber have done. I’d rather work, in full transparency, with our customers and users, than not work at all. Transparency is a good thing.
Jesse, I agree with you that transparency is a good thing, I just don’t think that stating the obvious, which is what Ari is asking for (kind of like Troi in Star Trek TNG if you know what I mean) is necessary for you.
As for SocialToo I wish you all the best with it and I really hope it goes places for you
Paul OFlaherty´s last blog post..Brand yourself – Don’t give away your biggest asset online!
You have two identical products by two different companies. One has a cost. One doesn’t. I’d want to see in no uncertain terms why Company A has a cost, wouldn’t you?
So I guess just for the sake of consistency, you will be posting a list of prices on your about page for your own thieving..ooops, make that *services* and an explanation of exactly where that money will be going, correct?
Suburban Oblivion´s last blog post..Aftermath
No, I’m not going to list my costs on my “About” page for the same reason you’re not going to learn the price of martini cocktails from certain bars until you ask the bartender.
With regards to cocktails, over here (Ireland and many other European countries), by law, bars have to have the prices for all drinks posted clearly before you order (actually for the most stuff it’s to be posted outside before you enter)… removes the fun from the old “guess the cost game”…
Paul OFlaherty´s last blog post..Brand yourself – Don’t give away your biggest asset online!
Ari, it’s apples and oranges. You’re describing a service you run once that you can download to your computer. We’re describing something that runs automatically in the background, with nothing else for you to do. As I mentioned we provide that, too, for free, and even provide the source code to go with that – where is the source code for TwiPing?
In addition, you get all the other tools we provide, for free, as one single package. You only have one account to log into , and it all integrates as one service. You’re describing someone, with very inaccurate comparisons, who isn’t competition.
Ari, quite frankly that argument doesn’t hold water because you’re not comparing identical products. In this case one is an automated service and one is desktop client that from what I can tell requires the user to do the work to some degree.. but either way, they are not identical..
And even when you have two companies producing identical products, both companies will have different overheads (rent, equipment, staff, etc…)
Finally, even when products are identical, there are other intangibles to be measured… customer service for example
Paul OFlaherty´s last blog post..Brand yourself – Don’t give away your biggest asset online!
Target charges higher prices than Walmart, does that mean Target steals? No, it means if I want a cleaner store and better service, I pay the higher prices.
I’m sorry, since when does your own ignorance make someone else a thief?
It’s called free enterprise, look it up, you might learn something.
Suburban Oblivion´s last blog post..Aftermath
As you know, I advise SocialToo, and Jesse and I talk a lot about plans for the product. SocialToo isn’t stealing anybody’s money, and if you don’t want to pay for a premium service, don’t. It’s that simple.
Just because Twitter is free and other services are providing free solutions, that doesn’t mean that every business model should roll over and drop dead. SocialToo’s free offerings are already very good, and you can expect more – both on the free and premium offerings – as Jesse continues to develop.
This article is disappointing, Ari, and a bit of a surprise, to say the least.
Ari – WAY TO GO!
SocialToo when it came out was a working product. From time to time, it has stopped working. I noticed my automatic follow no longer worked and the scripted just said it was running non-stop. After two weeks of trying to contact SocialToo, I finally talk to Jesse who says “oh sorry it’s working now.”
Customer service isn’t at the forefront of SocialToo’s business plan. FAIL.
Queen of the Click´s last blog post..Better Houses Coming on the Brooklyn Market
Marlene, you’re now going around to every blog posting the same stuff. I’ve told you both via e-mail and our Twitter account we’re sorry for the delay and I’d love to make it up to you. As I said in numerous places I need some clarification on what you’re expecting so we can make it up to you. Thus far all I’ve heard back is “you need to read”. I simply need clarification and I’d love to make you happy. My offer’s still good – I just need clarification from you on what it is you’re wanting from us.
Just to clarify on my end – you want it to finish unfollowing the surplus of people you’re following that aren’t following you back. Our free service doesn’t cover that, and I’m showing you didn’t purchase the catch up service that unfollows those you’ve manually followed. Is there a chance you did purchase that and we recorded it wrong? I need to know that and, as I’ve said via e-mail and elsewhere I’m happy to help you further.
I’ve now tried to contact you and help you for 3 days now. I’m still happy to help and I’ll continue to be happy to help. If you can clarify that I’ll be happy to resolve whatever service you’re trying to get from us.
First, I’m blogging. This isn’t your blog, but Ari’s blog and he can write about Social Too. I was glad I came here because I wasted my money and Ari offers some great alternatives to SocialToo. I bet they have better customer service as well. Ari, I apologize for arguing in your very important forum, but this business owner doesn’t have a clue.
Business school would have taught Jesse that a customer whose e-mail, twitter requests for help and forum requests all were ignored for two weeks by a company doesn’t need to clarify anything. The company needs to do whatever it can for the customer.
SocialToo and it’s owner and advisors need to clarify who is your customer, who is in charge of customer service and what should be done when the customer has not been responded to in a decent amount of time.
Even after talking to you, I left my socialtoo account in place for you to repair and take care of. Today I deleted it because it’s useless.
But I saw that SocialToo had trouble with their e-mail service and they put a help request call out to their service. I bet the e-mail is fixed within 24 hours! Too bad Social Too doesn’t have that turn around time.
Queen of the Click´s last blog post..Better Houses Coming on the Brooklyn Market
Ari,
Thank you very much for the post. I’m a little stunned at how many people are focusing on the vocabulary being used(theft vs selling products that others give away) instead of the facts. These options are available to others and some are going to migrate away, myself included. It is only a few dollars, but it’s a few dollars I can’t spare.
Much like Jesse, I am trying to run a business and twitter is a part of my marketing department. I currently make absolutely no profits and understand his dilemma but you can’t villify customers if we’re unwilling to pay because we can not pay and then we look to the web for alternatives. Not to mention, socialtoo has almost no advertising on it and adsense is so easy to set up why not install them?
Finally, since twitter is one of the largest used tools with APIs, this is one of the first times we’ve run into this dilemma where customers can move on to other competing products with relative ease. A much more interesting discussion can be had if we focus on how this dilemma resolves itself. Certainly it’s not good for anyone if 20 socialtoo like sites exist, but all of them are not profitable and so eventually they all go away. Perhaps there comes a time when application developers agree with each other to not compete in certain sectors. Anyhow, I haven’t had enough coffee to complete this debate and really I shouldn’t. Debate should involve all the smart people above who are getting hung up on words instead of reality, how it’s interesting and what we’re going to do about it.
DW
DW’s last blog post..I never knew I had a twin
I rarely read a full string all the way through. This was terrific.
ONE piece of advice for Jesse of SocialToo – NEVER, and I mean NEVER be so transparent as to tell the marketplace that you are struggling. The intepretation is that you likely won’t make it and why should I bother learning and using your tool, when you will be closing up shop soon. ALWAYS telegraph confidence (even if you don’t feel it).
Selling it like it is,
Stefan Lubinski
http://www.StefanLubinski.com
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