Paid Shilling Comes to Twitter 134
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."
Twitter? (Score:1, Funny)
Paid? (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't pay one shilling to use twitter.
And this is why I don't twitter (Score:1, Funny)
It's full of twittering twits who will twit their twits off about twittering twit.
Re:Twitter? (Score:4, Funny)
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'?
Re:The first rule of Magpie: Don't talk about Magp (Score:0, Funny)
Die in a fire
You said 'b' twice (Score:3, Funny)
Everyone is making money off of Twitter now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The first rule of Magpie: Don't talk about Magp (Score:3, Funny)
Dying in a fire...I've had worse things happen to me in my life.
I, for one, welcome our undead overlords.
Re:Paid? (Score:2, Funny)
You didn't read the summary. Magpie is paying Twitter users to shill for sponsors.
I'm Shocked (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Paid? (Score:5, Funny)
We need a -1 Whoosh.
Shouting to friends in the cafeteria line (Score:2, Funny)
@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)
Re:New medium? (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:Twitter? (Score:2, Funny)
I can understand your hostility towards Apple users, brought to you by Carl's Jr.
Re:Get rid of KDawson (Score:3, Funny)
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. :-)
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