I sent this Twitter message moments ago–half out of curiosity and half out of expectation–that assumed certain “robots” would auto-follow me because of the content therein:
With LOS ANGELES, SEX, QUICKBOOKS, and TRAINS, guesses on auto followers?
I instantaneously noticed @QuickCashMaster follow me–for the same reason the two Foxwoods accounts followed (or as I phrased it, stalked) me earlier this week.
It’s natural for organizations to use Twitter as an advertising channel, which is what Andy Jasenak of Foxwoods wrote in a comment that they’re trying to do at the Connecticut casino; but let’s remember there is a person on the other side of a Twitter handle. Every Twitter handle must be manually created; Twitter.com does not permit one to create an account without fingers typing on a keyboard.
So why does @QuickCashMaster exist? Do people gain value from these messages?
QuickCashMaster twitter messages
Many people would like to make money online.
If the reason why accounts like this–or @FoxwoodsCT or @CNN exist on Twitter is to make money online, then Twitter itself needs to make money. But the microblogging company isn’t making money; that is, they are receiving venture funding but there are no forms of paid advertising or tiered account levels. Nothing I can see as an end-user.
Until Twitter, Inc. shares a business model for it to be sustainable, I agree with Jason Clark that the onslaught of robots and spammy accounts make it doomed for failure.
Related posts:
- Proof Why Twitter Statistical Applications Fail
- Reject Ads and Opt for TV, the Twitter Way
- 10 Twitter Users Share Why They Use Twitter
Comments:
Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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Do you know that all the recommendations on the little Twitter sidebar aren’t advertising models? Or the recommended user lists don’t cost some form of payment (not saying they do, but not discounting the fact either).
And a company doesn’t need to share information about its finances and plans to anyone but stakeholders. Since end-users like us aren’t currently stakeholders, we don’t need to be privy to what Twitter’s plans are.
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How is a customer not a stakeholder?
What are Twitter users paying for? It’s a free service; which negates the stakeholder option. We’re users of the service, not customers. Until we start paying to use Twitter, we’ll continue to be users as opposed to customers.
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Laughed when I saw your fake spam post and a good and true blog post. At TwitChuck.com we are working hard to find, report and block spammers. But it is a big Twitter world and becoming more and more saturated with spam everyday.
Great post! I never thought about it this way, but that makes complete sense. They need to make a little money to implement quality control
I think the could monetize by selling access to archived data like a twit you saw last week about xyz but didn’t get enough info on.
Historical twit revenue, Who knows?
Ari,
I think you’ve touched on 2 big issues here. One Twitter will need to monetize at some point, but I expect they’ll figure it out.
The other is the Twitter spam that we see so much of. On the one hand I hate having to sort through the mindless follower requests. Yesterday I replied to a fellow who’d shared a link to a James Randi video explaining why homeopathy doesn’t work. Now I’m getting requests from various new age advocates even though I’m in the skeptic camp. Obviously they auto-followed on a key word not knowing that the context shows I’m not in their target market.
As a marketer my concern is that these people just don’t get how to use Twitter as a social media marketing tool, and the by-product of their ignorance is the spam requests we get each day.
Some may be making some coin, as there always will be a few gullible folks willing to risk their cash.
But mostly I think there is a sub network in Twitter composed of all of these auto-follower types. A, B and C all start using auto-follow services. Then everyone using the services ends up following each other. Now they all have follower lists of 50,000 or more. They are each publishing their get rich schemes, inspirational quotes, blog entries etc. out to this legion of followers. But as we’ve seen they rarely reply or retweet. Many are auto-posting, so they probably aren’t even reading their followers Tweets. Thus we have a bunch of people shouting into the wind – at each other – while no one is actually paying attention.
Imagine if you were standing on the field of a football stadium full of people. You hold up a giant sign with your message. This is a great opportunity, you have the chance to put your message in front of all these people. You’re so giddy with excitement that you close your eyes and dream of gold while proudly holding your sign in the air.
What you don’t notice is that everyone in the stands is also holding a sign. And they’re all standing with their back to the field, so no one is reading your sign and no one is reading theirs.
Actually this wouldn’t bother me in the least if they stuck to themselves. But as happened with you and quickcashmaker, they try to follow the rest of us too. So each day we get poked by people asking us to look at their sign and we have to look at these requests, saying no, no, no, until we find that one follower request from a real person who actually wants to converse.
sigh.
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What do you mean by spam requests we receive every day?
I agree they need to do something otherwise Twitter will fail and die like so many other fads. Plus it seems like its always kind of buggy and slow. But it definitely has its uses. Great article I enjoyed it.
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