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."
This isn't surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Why pay people to shill? (Score:5, Insightful)
The first rule of Magpie: Don't talk about Magpie! (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [tinyurl.com].
You definitely can use contextual marketing on twitter and still look at yourself in the mirror each morning. You just gotta know how.
Re:Twitter? (Score:4, Insightful)
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 $$$.
Don't worry it is OK (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice to know- but who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
New medium? (Score:3, Insightful)
Twitter is a glamorized chat. I fail to understand why it's touted as something revolutionary.
Learn to use Twitter? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Affiliates = worst excuse. (Score:1, Insightful)
This is the kind of thing every shady company says. My company uses the affiliate excuse all the time to cover their asses for all the shady marketing they do themselves. Our company directs users to our websites by spamming users' cell phones with text messages from fake "friends" who want the recipient to join the website.
Of course, this spamming/scamming is done in-house. But whenever someone comes complaining? "It's not us, it's probably one of our affiliates, whom we have no control over." I will never ever believe any company who tries to offload any amount of blame on their affiliates.
Re:Twitter? (Score:4, Insightful)
We like the idea of the products best of all.