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!
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.
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! -
Except for Twitter.
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.
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