Slashdot Mirror
Paid Shilling Comes to Twitter
An anonymous reader alerts us that an outfit called Magpie is paying Twitter users to tout advertisers' products. Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb has identified a number of household-name companies — among them Apple, Skype, Kodak, Cisco, Adobe, Roxio, PC Tools, and Box.net — whose products are hyped by identically worded, paid Magpie tweets. But comments to Kirkpatrick's post, including one from a Box.net spokesman, make it sound likely that these shills were paid for not by the companies themselves, but by affiliate marketers. That may not matter. In the same way that Belkin recently got burned paying consumers to write complimentary online reviews about the company's products, the makers of products and services touted through Magpie may find themselves tainted in the backlash from this new form of astroturfing. Kirkpatrick concludes his post: "So there's the Twitter-sphere for you! Bring on 'real time search,' bring on a globally connected community, bring on vapid, vile, stupid shilling. It all seems pretty sad to me."
It's already been here at slashdot for ages.
I wouldn't pay one shilling to use twitter.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's full of twittering twits who will twit their twits off about twittering twit.
Die in a fire
Apparently, you like 'b'?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Except for Twitter.
Dying in a fire...I've had worse things happen to me in my life.
I, for one, welcome our undead overlords.
I am shocked about this, I tell you, shocked. I was so upset I had to go sit in my La-z-boy recliner and drink a nice, refreshing glass of Lipton iced tea.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
Twitter reminds me of hearing people shout to each other in a crowded place, making sure to make not-so-vague references to how cool they are.
@chad: My cell phone cam sux so u can't tell I'm wearing that $200 T-shirt
@all: Anybody know where I can pick up some gaiters? I'm doing Mt. McKinley this weekend
@cybercheese: I know what you mean. I use Gentoo too, and it totally rocks
(which are all lies, of course)
Because most people in the media are not smart enough to use Skype or YIM. Those are programs, therefore by definition they are too hard and too geeky to learn. The media automatons' $200 hairdos might overheat.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
By the way, I'm the same AC that posted "hath not an AC eyes", but a different one from the one David Gerard replied to. :-)
PROVE IT
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."