Twitter Should Shut Me Down • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#181

Post by michaelrbock » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 3:27 AM UTC

shurcooL wrote: post #167

tomkarlo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not "or ads on Gmail". Gmail doesn't create ads that pretend to be email messages. The whole point here is that it's a mis-use of a messaging channel - they are leveraging the fact that users _don't_ expect favoriting to be a form of advertising, they expect it to be a message from an actual human being that has favorited their post because they like it. (Similar to the problems with follower spam.) (I'd also poi…

Personally, I mostly use favouriting tweets for my own personal needs only - to bookmark some things. My behaviour would be unchanged if favouriting became private and no one was notified that I favourited their tweet. Sometimes, if I really like a tweet, I'll favourite it because I have no other way to say +1 (other than replying to it). But I must like it enough to want to sacrifice the integrity of my bookmarks. B…

Agreed. I wish Twitter would change "favorite" to "like" or "star" so that people could essentially +1 other tweets with out the severity that "favorite" implies.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#182

Post by aranjedeath » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 3:44 AM UTC

__derek__ wrote: post #147

maxbrown wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's a non-sequitur: marketing and advertising are not the same thing.

Can you provide a definition of either that excludes the other?

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#183

Post by jonsterling » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 4:22 AM UTC

WiseWeasel wrote: post #114

jonsterling wrote: post #74

You're a bad citizen, mate. Not of Twitter, but of the Internet. The things you are doing are helpful to shitty people who want to get followers artificially, and obnoxious to good people.

No, if he were a bad citizen, he wouldn't have written this post. He's a morally ambiguous citizen at worst. He's drawing attention to this kind of abuse, so maybe Twitter will do something about it before it starts pissing everyone off and driving them away from the service.

No, it's an obvious plea for attention. He wants to get bought or hired; or perhaps he wants to trade in his business for notoriety. Obnoxious either way.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#184

Post by idrisser » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 4:23 AM UTC

What grade did your professor give you for this project? Wasn't there any other interesting behaviour changing project from your class?

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#185

Post by bifrost » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 4:58 AM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #139

TylerE wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is, but only when it actually makes sense.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#186

Post by MartinCron » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 5:22 AM UTC

aranjedeath wrote: post #182

__derek__ wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a non-sequitur: marketing and advertising are not the same thing.

Can you provide a definition of either that excludes the other?

Easy. Advertising is a subset of marketing. Marketing also includes product design, customer service, research, etc.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#187

Post by MartinCron » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 5:28 AM UTC

bradleyjoyce wrote: post #176

Caligula wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you spam favorite twitter too? You know you are breaking twitters tos just like the op and degrading the value of twitter the same way an email spammer degrades email?

De-valuing it for whom, exactly? Given the number of people who are following us back and registering for a service that is extremely relevant/important to them, it's hard to see how there is any degradation of value for anyone involved. In fact, they are gaining value out of it.

That sounds exactly like the rationalization any spammer would make. After all, some people want an online pharmacy, right?

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#188

Post by kibibu » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 5:33 AM UTC

bradleyjoyce wrote: post #176

Caligula wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you spam favorite twitter too? You know you are breaking twitters tos just like the op and degrading the value of twitter the same way an email spammer degrades email?

De-valuing it for whom, exactly? Given the number of people who are following us back and registering for a service that is extremely relevant/important to them, it's hard to see how there is any degradation of value for anyone involved. In fact, they are gaining value out of it.

> Our conversation rates from favorite, to follow, to registration on our site are extremely high.

Can you give an indication how high? Greater than 1%? 10%?

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#189

Post by greyman » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 5:59 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #168

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…

He's not a spammer, and the service actually benefits the tweet authors to some degree which cannot be said for spam. Favorite counts are posted publicly, which at least theoretically adds to the user's credibility. Additionally, the accounts doing the favoriting will have some real followers, and those followers will see the favorite and might retweet or favorite it themselves. Given these facts, I'm not sure how ma…

> Favorite counts are posted publicly, which at least theoretically adds to the user's credibility.

Yes, but that's exactly the reason why OP's behavior can be labeled as spamming. You "theoretically" adds to the user's credibility, but by automated means, so the added credibility is actually artificial, which then diminish the value of "credibility by the number of favorites" for everyone.

Re: Twitter Should Shut Me Down

#190

Post by mjmahone17 » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 6:05 AM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #7

Yeah, it's really hard to get in touch with anybody at Twitter. My account has been hosed for two weeks, I log in and just get an error message -- once I log in I can't even view the help page. And of course, there's no option on their forms for the problem I'm actually having. I've been thinking about sending a fax to their number for law enforcement queries since somebody might at least see it before they throw it…

Even trying to get someone there to go through the hiring process is nearly impossible. Getting their campus recruiter to respond (even though he was the one who reached out to us) was a pain for everyone I know who has tried. After receiving the response of "Yeah, we will interview you!" I had to email him around 5 times before he finally responded with the "give me some interview availability" email. And after the first phone interview, despite the interviewer being super excited and telling me I'd have another round, all I got from the recruiter was silence.

One of my friends who applied, was told he had to email the recruiter daily in order to expect a response. And then ended up being called in the middle of class, because the recruiter never bothered to tell him he had scheduled an interview for him.