In a ‘meh’ mood today so just opted to pseudo-randomly follow 500 or so people who followed other real people I twitter with. In a few experiments I poked, prodded and abused my 500 followers – I think 6 replied. The rest are bots! Starter to wonder if Twitter is worth my time and energy!
Threw in sentences like:
#quote OMG For real I’m an eff err #socialmedia affiliate spammer. Click here () to find how i got $38,800 and 10,000 followers. RT plz
and
In the news today scientists at MIT have created self-replicating silicon based #nanobots to try and contain the escaping carbonite sludge
32 minutes ago from webBreaking news: Caltech physicists are mass producing germanium nanotubes to try and eradicate rampaging carbon bloated Silcon #nanobots
30 minutes ago from webConspiracy update, captured on mobile phone: Intel clean up crews are stealing the Ge based #nanobots for use in future 32nm chips
27 minutes ago from webWAKE UP! Don’t make me poke you with an affiliate link!
25 minutes ago from web
Wasted on them, but 99% are automated, timed replies. The “marketing experts” are just relying on numbers to get results:
Create 100 accounts and use automated software to scrape 2,000 names a day to each, send a timed message every 30 minutes. Soon get to the point where they are sending out 48 (a day) x 100 (account) x 20,000 (scraped followers) messages a day. Pure, unadulterated spam, but I guarantee there are probably already people sending anything up to 100 million affiliate links a day, getting maybe $50 per hit. If only 1 in 100,000 work that’s still $5,000 a day pure profit.
Twitter is already dead, it just doesn’t know it!
See also: The evil of affiliate marketing on twitter
Today stats :
- Current rank with Twitter Grader is 92,374 out of 2,212,513
- Current grade with them is 96.1/100
- Followers 651
- Following 935
- Posts 219
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the link to my article, Paul. I think it’s interesting to see what you’re doing. I’m curious to see how long it takes you and will follow your progress.
Your welcome Jon. It’s a good article and fits in well with my own feelings. To paraphrase Stan Lee, “With great (media)power comes great responsibility” – and Twitter needs a birch across the backside for allowing the affiliate spam to spiral out of control so fast.
As it happens, this will work to my advantage in so much as the tools that lets them build up huge ‘followings’ (of more bots) will allow me to reach 100,000 following in a matter of weeks. After that tip over point, well, starts to get interesting.
Looking at reading tools now as I’m already at the point where trying to see real people among the thousands of tweets an hour is a struggle. In the past week – with thousands of followers I think I’ve only found about two dozen ‘real people’ that acknowledge you!
I’m doing this for a few reasons, none of them related to fame or money:
* Huge load of health problems and issues over the past few years and pretty much escaped into online games. Need to break out of that rut.
* Saw the potential for good in Twitter – and over the past few weeks watched spammers destroy it for short term gains. If, as a nobody, I can build up a million followers in a matter of several weeks, well, you can see where that leads.
* Just to prove the point that I can. I’m the sort of professional that can easily earn $1,000’s a day, but have absolutely no interest in money. I don’t smoke, I can’t drink, I rarely leave the house and my computer gear is cutting edge. I have no financials concerns and I’m far too grumpy to be wanting fame or notoriety.
* So, basically, for the sheer hell of it.