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."
I wouldn't pay one shilling to use twitter.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Whenever a new medium forms it does not take long for it to be colonized by marketers. In fact, it is a sign of how successful Twitter has been that it is being used in this way.
There are already enough drooling brain dead fanboys for most of the companies going telling anyone willing to listen that their favourite product is the best ever. In fact if they want to compensate people for promotion, they'll probably do it for some cheap shitty little sticker of their favourite corporate logo.
a) mix it up. make the ratio one advert per 10 quality, humanistic, value-oriented tweets
b) be transparent. Some of those magpie ads in the article were a little misleading I thought.
b) be clever about it. I've never felt even remotely interested in any paid tweet because they're so crappy, or reduntant, or irrelevant.
I have personally used magpie for advertising, and with success. It's not as potent as pay-per-click (ala Adwords) because the intent to purchase typically isn't there. That's why marketing on Facebook is such a lame idea. Brands are only getting inbetween conversations with loved ones. Not cool.
Twitter has the advantage of having real-time search, so intent can be captured as it's happening.
You definitely can use contextual marketing on twitter and still look at yourself in the mirror each morning. You just gotta know how.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Start suing the ad sponsors. They are usually large companies.
Just include a clause in the account startup agreement. Then go after the $$$. Could be profitable.
Because it couldn't possibly be that Apple users like the products, is that the thinking?
Anyone looking to hire Apple shills: I'm available! Mind you, I'll say good things about products I like for free, and that *usually* includes Apple products. So I'm probably not a great place to spend $$$.
Yeah, but it's nowhere near as bad as the Open Source shilling on this site.
Oh, wait, are we using the same definition of 'shill'?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
... should be disallowed.
As a Level 4 at Apple's forums, whenever we mentioned a third party product or service to solve a posters problem, we had to disclose a disclaimer that we were not rewarded by the third party for the plug.
As a moderator for another site, the site owner allowed post spamming and the result was a take over of the site by marketers and the normal posters soon vanished, the site later died.
Posters want honest opinions and judgements from fellow posters and users, not targeted spam from marketers.
Twitter was a stupid waste of time already so this changes nothing.
Twitter's not just bad for this - oh my, a new form of spam, I never saw it coming - but for poor context community as well. I feed my Tweets to my blog in a widget (Geekiest phrase ever, I know) and, thus, am searchable. Now, I put up a "Legal" page about my site - claiming authorship and all - and immediately was added by nearly forty Law-oriented "Free Advice" Twits who likely had never read another of my posts. I changed the page's name from "Legal" to "Disclaimer" and the additions halted. Changing the page to "Copyright" had the same effect - media trolls, dozens of them, now on my block list. It's incredible.
Twitter's nice for micro-posting, but seriously. This shilling thing? Been going on for some time. It's nothing new.
Those things you're doing with that stuff you just bought? That's not what it's for! -
Apparently, you like 'b'?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Am I really one of a rare few who find Twitter completely useless? The 'connection' of Twatter to follower is one borne of impersonal salesmanship. The Twatter doesn't feel that strong, real interpersonal relationship is worth their time yet they still want would be the reciprocal feelings of such a relationship. The follower thrives on being an enabler of those types of people. The worst (and probably most prevalent users) are the psychophants who follow only so others will follow them.
The only problem I really see here is that since there seem to be an enormous amount of people who use this service now, internet advertisers are going to have a new round of completely bogus numbers to back up that 'advertising works on the internet'. "Look, potential client who has been terrified in to believing that the internet is a huge cash cow and you aren't milking that cow so hire me because I am an expert milker, our ad for ass ring fungal remover was a steath campaign on Senator Twatting Network it has a cumulative following of over a million followers so we potentially moved over a million units!"
This means that decent content on the web will continue to be infected with this bogus logic attaching these disease ridden ads to their art because the guy who sold ass ring fungal remover to over a million people said we had to do it.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
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.
Twitter is a glamorized chat. I fail to understand why it's touted as something revolutionary.
The messages are all identical.
Image FTA: Apple tweets
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.
I see the typical "I'm too hip for Twitter" comments are out. The system makes more sense if you use a little moderation - a bit like Slashdot, when it comes to it:
- the home page only shows tweets from the people you're following. Messaged from Spammers don't appear unless you Followed them.
- So, you have control over what comes up and who you see. If you want to see interesting tweets, follow interesting people.
- if someone Follows you, you are under no obligation to Follow them in return. If they don't look interesting or relevant to you, don't Follow them.
- Ignore people who Follow you with the aim of building a Follower count. Not your problem.
- Be selfish. It's your time and attention, and no-one else has an automatic right to any of it.
One of my friends is about start on a motorbike trip around the world, and Twitter means he can post quick blog updates from Outer Mongolia or wherever he happens to have a few minutes to spare. For that application, it's like SMS texting to a group of people instead of one phone number. Nothing wrong with Twitter if you use it sensibly, as much as it suits you.
(this is not a
that when we get inundated with the same message again and again, it turns people Off on the product?
It alienates me at any rate, and particularly so if its endorsement type advertisement, since those usually have no actual information in them and usually feature actors hired to say their lines, ie they are lying.
I more or less ignore ads, I bypass them when I read them in the newspaper, or in a magazine. I speed past them with my PVR when I am watching TV, and I mute them if I can't bypass them. Oh I know the rule is to reach a consumer as many ways as possible and that in theory that is more likely to make them buy your product, but I think its backfiring these days because we see far too many ads.
Marketers: I am not interested in your product, whatever the fuck it is. If I want something I will go research it myself, read honest reviews (if I can find any, harder and harder these days), and then decide if I really need the product. If I do, I go buy it, if its crappy or I don't need it, I don't buy it. I buy virtually nothing based on seeing an advertisement as far as I can tell. I often specifically avoid products I can recall seeing Ads for because 99% of them are more irritating than informative, and they all seem to be based on outright lying about a product. For the most part if I can recall your ad, I won't buy your product, because if I can recall your ad, I have likely seen it so many times it makes me want to puke
I am exposed to so much media and have so many people trying to grab my attention that I more or less ignore them all
This onslaught of media screaming - Capitalist Propaganda if you wish - is tiring, and only pisses me off. I am sure I am not alone.
Now, products I do like I am more than willing to support in discussions with my friends and fellow workers, but I would never stoop so low as to become a shill for the company that made them.
One of the only upsides to Communism I can think of was there was almost no marketing and advertising. Shakespeare had it wrong, the firs thing we do is shoot all the marketers :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I can understand your hostility towards Apple users, brought to you by Carl's Jr.
We like the idea of the products best of all.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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."
Any medium will be used for advertising. It's pure naivety to believe that your precious Twitter will remain pure and unsullied.
At least Twitter is so obvious that you know when they are around. Does anybody else use M$ any more apart from Twitter's sock puppets?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2002/20020722h.gif
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