Make Money Littering Twitter

[Sheryl Loch]

I see that the tweets are again flying with ways to make money by spamming (posting) on Twitter. It's where you get paid to let them sling ads through your twitter account. I think there was a program called Magpie that tried that & everyone who signed up likely lost followers. I know I unfollowed several that had Magpie ads.

I figure you are ruining your reputation by advertising just any old thing they choose to post on your account.
What if they posted an advert under your name for a scam? Will your followers hold you responsible if (when) they loose their money?

They now even have automated programs that people are selling to get you millions of followers.
Yes, we have all seen the free ones but, the last one I heard about has an affiliate program so you make money off the sale. The funny part - the person that talked about how great it was had less followers than my dog!

These type of things just bother me even though I don't follow these people. Their bot post just clog up Twitter in general. Every time I see the Fail Whale - I blame the Tweeters that allow this crap in their stream.

OOO, then you have the ones that post adverts in the 'Hot Topic' sections. Or when there is a Trending topic. Some of these are real people but, when you see the exact same ad over & over on different peoples accounts - I tend to think it is an automated system they have allowed.

How long until these program stop?
How long until people stop participating because they don't work?
Or is this going to just keep growing until Twitter is deemed worthless?

Sheryl

[Brian Hawkins]

I'm with you Sheryl, spamming is spamming and just because it's Twitter doesn't make it acceptable. I check every follower before I follow back and if I don't see some @replys RTs and signs of socializing I just move on. If I see repeated posts and ads I block them. I also look for things like 'twitterfeed' and 'api'. Twitterfeed not always bad but can be abused with those auto tweets. I'm not sure what api is but it seems similar.

I just blocked a spammer that sends ads over and over along with three or four @RandonFollowers so it looks like actual replies. I can PM you the user if you haven't seen this yet but I suspect you have.

I have to believe that a few 'real' followers is a better than thousands of followers that never see a Tweet because their account is just an automated spamming machine.

[Sheryl Loch]

Yes, I have seen those that send some generic message & include a few @names to make it look like a real tweet talking to people. That is until you go to their page & see that you were not special.

Nope! They send junk Tweets to every Tom, Dick, & Harey there is. Sad that they got your hopes up about having a new fan on Twitter only to tear your little Tweeter out.

The other day I saw an account sending out ads. Then there were even more - infact there were 13 of the same one. She had her Userename, and the other accounts had the same username but with the numbers 1-12. DUH, who would guess that was spam? I just blocked & re[ported all 13 of the accounts.

Needless to say - I KNOW I did NOT follow all those accounts! How they all got in my stream, I have no idea!

Sheryl