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Twitter Should Shut Me Down

edu.mkrecny.com

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Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#131

Post by tomkarlo »

maxbrown wrote: post #120
MartinCron wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I've innovated on the Ads UX What you've done is move ads from the place where they're supposed to be (promoted tweets) to the place where they're not supposed to be (your interactions). Innovative spam is still spam.

I'll play devil's advocate to this one... you're saying "interactions" are places where ads aren't supposed to be? Isn't any interaction between a business and individuals on Twitter really marketing?

Arguably, but there are social bounds to what's considered acceptable, as well as bounds enforced by Twitter to prevent abuse of the medium. Any phone conversation B2C is similar, but in general, we don't like businesses calling us on a false pretext just to get our attention. It's like those annoying snail mail envelopes designed to look like a federal government notice so you'll open them.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#132

Post by sbov »

darkarmani wrote: post #124
unreal37 wrote: post #67

This business model isn't analogous to "promoted tweets" or "Twitter ads". It's analogous to "email spam". You're a spammer essentially. Using an automated bot to fake a human interaction (favorite) in order to get my attention and get me to follow you. It doesn't matter that it's more effective than "Twitter Ads". Twitter Ads are marked as Ads, your favorites are not. I really do hope Twitter shuts you down, as well…

You're talking to the guy that wiped the user table of a production database for an online game he was working on: http://edu.mkrecny.com/thoughts/how-i-fired-myself . The meat of the story starts with this sentence: > One of the peculiarities of my development environment was that I ran all my code against the production database....

What's your point? That he worked at a company whose standard practice was to have developers run code in development against the production database? Without backups.

Of course something is going to go wrong. IIRC this was already discussed on HN.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#133

Post by arbuge »

I'm guessing they'll move fast to do exactly that now that you've waved the red rag in their face.

This part won't make them any happier:

>> I started renting a large cluster of virtual machines to scale the service while staying within Twitter's 'per IP address' rate limits.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#134

Post by ignostic »

pdeuchler wrote: post #98
unreal37 wrote: post #67

This business model isn't analogous to "promoted tweets" or "Twitter ads". It's analogous to "email spam". You're a spammer essentially. Using an automated bot to fake a human interaction (favorite) in order to get my attention and get me to follow you. It doesn't matter that it's more effective than "Twitter Ads". Twitter Ads are marked as Ads, your favorites are not. I really do hope Twitter shuts you down, as well…

Meh. Doesn't seem any more offensive than a targeted ad on Amazon. It's just a favorite, after all. A subtle, "Hey, check us out." These are company/marketing/publicity accounts anyway (I'm assuming). It's not like followgen is masquerading around with a stolen identity like most follow bots, spitting out bit.ly spam with suggestive tweets and racy pictures. It's simply programmatically allowing twitter accounts to r…

No, this is nothing like a targeted ad. One part of the service "favorites" tweets that you may never have seen or read. It would be more like Facebook selling a service that likes popular user's posts. It's like Amazon writing a useful review for a product you never bought.

Twitter would look horrible by partnering with an automated service of any sort.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#135

Post by ignostic »

mkrecny wrote: post #96
unreal37 wrote: post #67

This business model isn't analogous to "promoted tweets" or "Twitter ads". It's analogous to "email spam". You're a spammer essentially. Using an automated bot to fake a human interaction (favorite) in order to get my attention and get me to follow you. It doesn't matter that it's more effective than "Twitter Ads". Twitter Ads are marked as Ads, your favorites are not. I really do hope Twitter shuts you down, as well…

OP here. Ultimately I want access to the Twitter Ads API, at which point I'll switch from favorites to serving promoted tweets/accounts. I think I've innovated on the Ads UX and the form which the impression takes is secondary. This is a surrogate impression. It has allowed me to build an Ads product and an Ads customer base in anticipation of Ads API access.

Your customer base? You mean the people who "favorite" stuff they may not have read, in hopes of manipulating people into thinking they care? The people who want more followers at any cost?

Yes, your customer list may be useful to Twitter - as a list of accounts to suspend for violating their ToS, devaluing favorites, and hurting any legitimacy Twitter had.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#136

Post by Myrth »

Shameless plug.

One of the ways to start thwarting this spammy behavior is counter-network of twitter accounts, randomly inter-followed for further legitimacy.

Once a follower is identified as a spam, it's being mass followed. It would skew conversion rates and perhaps force clients to pay for fake followers, which they won't appreciate.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#137

Post by bluepill »

Even though, Im not a fan of your "spam" approach (and the fact that you're still a kid taking people for total idiots) I must admit the idea and especially what it lead to is a success, at least for you.

My opinion, is that ads suck, most of them do (except the ones that make you laugh and remain classics which in that case fall into another category, and as far as I'm concerned that only happened with TV commercials and a very few "internet" ones) ... and being spammed even though it's becoming a habbit with all the interwebs bullshit we've been and have to digest everyday is more than annoying.

You seem to be smart and you should definetly put your talent in something else.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#138

Post by corin_ »

mhaymo wrote: post #62
AznHisoka wrote: post #23

"My data showed the cost of a real, targeted follower on my platform was about 12 cents, versus $2.50 on Twitter Ads" The cost is lower, but can someone do studies on the lifetime REVENUE of a real, targeted follower? It might all be meaningless if that number is 0.01 cents.

That people are willing to pay $2.50 implies that the value is at least $2.50. Of course it depends on how effective you are at getting value from your followers, so for many, the answer is close to 0 cents.

No, they could be completely different demographics. I'm personally much more likely to follow a twitter account I see in an advert (if it interests me) than a random account that favorites a tweet (which I will 100% ignore). There may also be people out there who are happy to follow anyone who favorites their tweet, but aren't at all desirable to advertisers and don't get shown that many adverts.

This isn't exclusive to Twitter. Not every person is worth the same value to advertisers. I advertise on platforms ranging between $0.20/click to $1.50/click, and different platforms offer different value per click.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#139

Post by saalweachter »

TylerE wrote: post #123
lucaspiller wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon seem quite happy to charge me $0.50 a month, and they seem to be doing alright.

Yes, but that's Amazon's core business. It's not Twitter's core business.

Charging people money for goods and services is everyone's core business.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#140

Post by MartinCron »

maxbrown wrote: post #120
MartinCron wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I've innovated on the Ads UX What you've done is move ads from the place where they're supposed to be (promoted tweets) to the place where they're not supposed to be (your interactions). Innovative spam is still spam.

I'll play devil's advocate to this one... you're saying "interactions" are places where ads aren't supposed to be? Isn't any interaction between a business and individuals on Twitter really marketing?

Even if all business->individual interactions are marketing, that doesn't mean that all marketing is spam. Marketing and customer engagement is fine. Spam isn't.

The distinction for me isn't between marketing/non-marketing but between humans and robots. If a human representing some business favorites my tweet because they feel that it's worth favoriting, that's great. In fact, it makes me feel good that some human at an organization is reading and caring about what I have to say. Wonderful, I write things so people can read them.

Robots just going out and marking things as favorites just to get attention and followers? That's the kind of spam actively undermines the value of the example above.

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