Internet Marketers Stinking up Twitter?
May 27th, 2009 | Author: Alice Seba
Man, I thought safelists were dead. Seems they’re back with a vengeance and a new twist on Twitter.
You probably know I’m not the type to go all crazy for social networking sites, but I LIKE Twitter. Well, I used to like it a lot more. Now, I just think some Internet marketers have gone a little nuts, cheapening the experience for everyone.
I’m also not one to tell people how they should Twitter. I may have my opinions, but I think people should use it the way they’re comfortable. HOWEVER, I draw the line when people’s use of Twitter (or any site) impinges on the ability of others to enjoy their experience too.
The cool thing about Twitter, until recently, is that you had complete control over your own experience. If you get annoyed by spam followers, don’t auto-follow back. If you don’t like all the welcome DMs…don’t follow so many people. If you don’t like what someone tweets, unfollow them. It’s as simple as that.
But then I realized something the other day (and forgive my naivity until this time – I was enjoying my Twitter bubble). Here’s how it happened:
On Monday, my father-in-law said to me, “So I joined that Twitter thing because you said it was simpler and better than Facebook.”
I said, “Oh yeah?”
He replies, “But I think I made a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“Yeah, I made a mistake and followed you because as soon as I did, I had all these people following me. [My wife] was wondering who all these people were and wanted to know why I had so many friends!”
He was joking on the wife thing (my MIL wasn’t annoyed or anything, but curious!), but I realized. Damn! People are mining my follower list (some near instantly) and following people that follow me.
Now it would be one thing if people were looking at his profile after seeing him following me and decided he was follow-worthy. But here is his profile (I’ve blacked out some information to protect the innocent and not-so innocent):
Why the heck would people be rushing to follow him? There’s NOTHING there. NOTE: He’s down to 2 followers because it’s been several days and I guess the people who auto-followed him have removed him for not following back.
What is This Madness?
Are people really this desparate to look popular or have they truly been duped into thinking that random people are going to increase their business? Hmmm…I’ve got an email list of 30,000 I can sell you for $20 if you’re interested. 
LOL!
Of course, this is all still just my opinion, but I think it’s downright rude and slimy. Think of the average person coming on Twitter who happens to follow an Internet marketer. BAM…suddenly, they’ve got all these followers who are so obviously trying to sell something. Not cool.
I was really surprised by the people who are doing this, but then I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s often people with really high follower counts who also follow tens of thousands of people (but obviously, this isn’t a instant indicator of such activity).
What I’d Like to Do About It
The other day I asked:
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To which I got the kind reply:
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And LOL, I did check Asfaq’s profile to see if he might guilty of such actions, but he looks like a fully human Twitterer to me. 
So I proceeded to block those who were using this technique. I was really upset by one of them as I enjoy her tweets, but when you start to make others who know me feel uncomfortable – sorry. You gotta go.
So Please, Do Me a Favor If You Use This Technique
If you use this type of script that mines followers, post a comment here with your Twitter ID, so I can block you. Or simply send me an @ message on Twitter, so I can block you.
Yes, I’m serious. I won’t say anything bad about you, single you out or anything. I just don’t want to participate in your numbers game. Now, I don’t care if you try to amass a bunch of followers and look at my follower list to see who might be of interest. But this automated garbage isn’t cool with me.
NOTE TO MY LEGIT FOLLOWERS:
I’ve felt a bit overwhelmed by the noise on Twitter for a while. At first, I just followed everyone who followed me, but then I got to 900 people I was following and I realized:
- This is TOO much noise.
- I’m following people who really have no interest in me. They just want to pump up their follower numbers.
To help me manage my Twitter better, in the next few weeks, I will be unfollowing people I don’t immediately recognize. This is NOTHING personal. If you’re a subscriber, blog reader or customer of mine, just @ me and ask me to follow you (we will be searching names against our database before removing, but we may make some mistakes). I’ll be happy to do so. I simply JUST want to hear from people who have some interest in conversing with me.
Posted in 42 Responses to “Internet Marketers Stinking up Twitter?”
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Oh man do I agree with all of this. Every time I follow someone new, I get overwhelmed with spam followers most of the time. Some people just don’t get it and it will ruin them in the long run. I definitely don’t follow everyone who follows me and I don’t even keep track of those who unfollow me. If they don’t want to hear what I have to say then by all means I don’t want them to follow me LOL
RIGHT ON! I agree with this 110% and have been blocking people faster than you can imagine for this very reason! I’m with ya! The auto-follow software should be banned (in my opinion), as well as the auto-DM garbage. That gets an automatic unfollow by me when I get one of those canned messages.
I used to try to follow everyone who followed me, but when I had to set up Seesmic Desktop with groups of people I really want to hear from versus those who are just talking, I started to wonder what the point was. Now I’m a lot more stingy with my follows, and if you auto DM me with a link to *anything* it earns you an automatic unfollow. I also unfollow anyone who repeatedly Tweets spammy links.
I’m even considering taking that a step further and actually blocking the person instead of just unfollowing. Maybe if enough people blocked these unsavory characters they would find themselves removed from the party.
I’m new to twitter, and I was wondering where all these followers were coming from. How do I go in and clean it up?
I am new to Twitter (about 2 weeks now). I don’t autofollow and have no plans too. I sure wouldn’t mine someone’s follow list to add more people. Having 30,000 people who follow me on Twitter is not worth as much as 10 people who listen and enjoy what I have to say.
It is not a numbers game.. it is a relationship tool. Getting someone’s Rolodex or email contact list would gain you very little since you don’t also get the relationships that person has with them.
Every tool we have – blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc are only as good as the person using them.
Excellent post!!
Hey Angie (the second one). You can block people if you don’t want them to follow you. I generally don’t block, but if it keeps people from mining my list, I will start doing it readily.
NOTE – If you’re using the Tweet It plugin on this blog and you don’t see your tweet, I am looking into it. We suspect it is due to the URLs being redirected by Twitter, but I don’t have the techy skills to diagnose it and fix. I’ll have to get my techy on it.
I appreciate all your comments and tweets!
Thanks for the post. I will probably start following you, but I am a real twitterer (jazzlifejunkie), use no scripts or auto-anything, and agree with what you have said here.
I have noticed the same thing, as soon as I would follow someone, i would get an instant list of followers, who would then un-follow me within the same day if I didn’t act.
Even with all this crap going on, it is still nice to have the tools to screen what you want. I wrote a blog entry a few months ago about Twitter and in there asked the readers to imagine having the unfollow or block options in real life. That would be sweet.
Thanks, again, for the post.
Kevin.
Amen, amen, and amen! (Did I say “amen”?)
Crapbots are killing Twitter’s usefulness. I have started blocking with abandon. Sick and tired of the B.S.
Yes, totally agree with this post…
The purpose of twitter isn’t to have a massive follower list. I’ve been manually pruning my own follower list — because I too started out following mostly everyone who followed me — I didn’t know any better! Then it got too noisy. Especially with a few twitterers who kept retweeting their own tweets from earlier in the day.
If you’re new to twitter, do things your way from the start. Don’t feel pressured into following people, and definitely take advantage of the block tool if necessary.
It’s better to have a few qualified followers than to have a thousand random followers who really couldn’t care less about you.
So, what’s acceptible? I spend an hour a day in social networking for my biz, but I don’t really fully grasp twitter. Sometimes I post that I like my raspberry coffee, and sometimes I throw a link on there to an article I wrote, or something else I want to get traffic to. I check out some other ppl’s stuff it it looks interesting, and leave a comment if I desire. I asked one time, why ppl have repeat posts all over the place, and no one answered me. I asked what “RT” is and no one answered. It’s like no one cares to associate. Or at least no one on MY list. Funny, I posted a twit about why ppl send me a link in a direct message, when they say “thanks for following me.” I said it was like they were asking to feel me up on the first date. What is “proper social etiquette” for twitter? How will it be most effective, and where is the line drawn for socializing and using it to advertise?
If I were in your presence I would give you a stand ovation. I am so annoyed with the way that people are using Twitter to SPAM and promote instead of connecting and sharing. For me the latter two make better business connections and the best promotional tools than the former ones.
Thank you for letting your feelings be known. I am with ya all the way!
Twitter: aliceseba
:
Hey Michel – thanks for the RT on Twitter and for sending new people here.
I find it’s harder to be heard through the noise. I don’t want to sound like a whiner (“No one listens to me.”), but through the “I’ll follow you back” policies and all this auto-stuff going on, it’s tough to get heard.
Now, I don’t mean people aren’t paying attention to my links and any self-promo I might engage in. I mean, In the past, if I had a question about just about anything (biz stuff, personal recommendations, etc.) – I’d get answers. People would talk to me. Now, I almost feel like tapping my screen and saying, “Is this thing on?”
So, I feel much like Angie – who came back with another comment. To answer your question Angie, I don’t know what is acceptable. I think we all need to decide that for ourselves and I feel your frustration. In the past, it was easy to weed out the undesirable stuff, but through all this chaos of people wanting as many followers as possible and everyone accepting people as their friends – it’s become far less controllable to have a really good experience.
Again, thanks everyone for your feedback. I really appreciate it and it’s nice to talk to humans!
That kinda crap makes me more mad than it ought to, but it really is ruining the experience for other people. I’m getting really tired of all those people with 20,000+ followers following me, even if they do tweet normal stuff.
Anybody who is trying to game the system loses my respect whether it’s auto-follow, auto-dm’s, mining other people’s followers, whatever.
Poo on useless Tweeters!
Wow, I wondered why so many strangers were following me. I thought maybe they were just trolling others profiles and manually grabbing names. I shoulda known there was a script for that. Although Twitter is being hyped as the hottest new social marketing tool, I’m not convinced of its usefulness yet. Most of the tweets seem to be “come see what I have to sell.” As you said, there’s just too much noise on there. Keep up the good work, Alice.
Sue
oh man! I had no idea any of this existed. I am so out of the loop. It does explain where all these strangers are coming from though.
I don’t keep up with unfollowers either – couldn’t care less actually.
Twitter: reginabaker
:
So is that why everybody under the sun is selling Twitter handbooks and reports?
(informing people how to do what you’re referring to?) I even saw something the other day about twitter software.
While I do absolutely follow everyone who follows me (with the exception of junk), I’ve found Twitter to have lost it’s ‘umph’. I’ve also never understood the purpose of having so many friends because I could never see all of their tweets! I’m at 3k now and it’s very frustrating because I want to know what they say as much as I want them to know what I say, LOL!
Great post as usual.
Hey…if you auto-mine people’s follower lists, please @ me, so I can block you. http://www.internetmarketingsweetie.com/blog/twitter-stink
Internet Marketers Stinking up Twitter?-http://www.internetmarketingsweetie.com/blog/twitter-stink
I totally agree. Like everyone else here.
I’ve been amazed at why people follow me. I very rarely update and when I do it’s usually an @ reply to someone else. But still I get 2-3 followers per day. I generally have adhered to the Ed Dale philosophy of not following everyone, because it truly becomes unbearable at times have to weed through all the noise to find the people I’m truly interested in hearing or really know.
Thank goodness for Tweetdeck and now Seesmic Desktop which make it easier to sort through the noise.
Thanks for voicing your opinion. We need more people to speak out to stop the madness.
I’m curious about what real impact this has on Twitter?
Obviously we are marketers so we are much more susceptible to the whole thing.
I wonder how much of a problem it is with just average Twitter users who aren’t friends with marketers?
Either way, I’ve always contested that most marketers on Twitter aren’t truly listening, but rather are in a popularity contest.
Little do they realize many look like tools desperate for someone to pay attention to them.
That’s the thing is, Jason – I think it does affect them. It affected my father-in-law, who is not a marketer. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s still off-putting when one gets pounced like that, certainly.
And you can bet with this all this auto-generated stuff it’s reaching every day people who are being bombarded by these follows and then messages if they feel they should be polite and follow back.
Internet Marketers Stinking up Twitter? | Internet Marketing Sweetie: Man, I thought safelists were dead. Seems .. http://tinyurl.com/pkpqfl
i gust want to say some thing “great job”
Update your Twitter randomly according to your intrest Or, from Rss Feed Or, from your own tweet message list Or, Any combination of the above three
Internet Marketers Stinking up Twitter | Internet Marketing Sweetie: Man, I thought safelists were dead. Seems t.. http://tinyurl.com/pkpqfl
Well I guess one of the men who should be blamed for this scenario is Sean Malarkey! He promotes this culture on his website My Twitter Experiment.
[link removed by Admin]
Twitter: anitadefrank
:
Wow – it’s about time someone really speaks out about this. In my opinion – Twitter has been absolutely worthless to me as of recent. When I first began and before all the crappy marketing techniques took over – it was a God-send! As a matter of fact, I used to explain to my husband that Twitter was an instant messenger on steroids.
I’d tweet a question and within seconds, I’d have an answer. I’d tweet for feedback and in seconds I had more feedback than what I could handle. Someone I was following would tweet an awesome resource (someone else’s other than their own and it was an actual legitimate recommendation) … I’d check it out and it was really worth looking into!
I think my last “bad experience” was when I posted for a week straight desperately trying to find someone to do a job for me – a JOB. You know, the things you’re usually spammed by people looking for – the thing I was willing to PAY someone else to do. It was a simple audio edit – something I know a ton of people on Twitter do.
Instead of getting an instant response from someone who does it for a living or for at least a recommendation of someone who does it … I gave up after a week. Yeah, all those followers were really reading my tweets, huh?
I too like Alice now feel as though I should be tapping my screen too to make sure it’s still working.
I do actually miss the way Twitter was – I really, really do. It was a great networking tool, marketing tool (done within reason) and a great way to connect with fellow marketers. Now I have to constantly scroll through all the junk and spam that it’s not worth it to me at all. I haven’t been there to update in quite some time and I really have no interest to go back.
Is it because it’s so unmoderated? I mean really how could you moderate something like that any more than it already is? You’d have to have a staff of who knows how many working round-the-clock. It’s a real shame if you ask me.
And you can’t possibly tell me these people that are following thousands of people really are that involved with who their following. How do you keep up? And if you’re keeping up – how do you get any work done?
I *loved* it when I had a small number of followers who actually read and responded to my tweets and when I followed just a small number of people when I could keep up with them and also respond. To me it actually felt like a “tight-nit clique” of friends who were all there to genuinely network with each other along with a little hint of some personal stuff thrown in there here and there. I need to find that group again!
Twitter to be used properly is not a numbers game … it’s a quality over quantity game. Maybe some day I’ll find the time to go in, clean up my following list and my followers list … give it a try again to see if I can bring my own Twitter experience back to when I enjoyed it. Until then … I think I’ll just keep working and converse on my yahoo IM.
(And this is all my 2 cents on the whole thing of course – off my soapbox – AWESOME post!)
I’m curious what real impact this has on people other than temporarily booting their list of followers? I almost always have a twitter client running so I can keep track of the half-dozen folks I find interesting, but I rarely post anything. I turn off email notifications of when someone starts following me because, frankly, it’s their decision, or that of their software, and doesn’t really impact me. So it’s no skin off of my nose if some automated process decides to follow me for a day or two, I never see it.
Perhaps I’m being very naive, but what real impact is there to a twitter account if several, say tens or hundreds, of followers come and go?
Twitter: aliceseba
:
Hi Eric, I totally get where you’re coming from. It didn’t really bother me much either until recently. I stopped following everyone back and figured those just trying to build their list would unfollow in a few days. But it was my father in law’s comments that really got me thinking about how MY follower list is being used by others.
The thing is, Twitter is about PEOPLE. It doesn’t matter that it’s on the Internet, it’s still about flesh-and-blood people. I try to imagine a situation where people would act like this in real world. It’s just absurd.
I have to admit I haven’t been affected by others trawling my followers, or if I have noone has said anything to me, and I figure we’re all able to decide if we need to block people and who to follow.
Ever since I started using Twitter 2 years ago I have only ever followed as many people as I can keep up with and I am interested in hearing from on a daily basis. Thankfully, I followed Ed Dale onto Twitter and he suggested this right from the beginning. The debate has raged for ages with the “follow everyone who follows you” side seeming to win, but now it seems the tide is turning and people are realising how unsustainable that is. Just because I don’t follow everyone back doesn’t mean I can’t interact with others.
Many people will say it’s rude not to follow people back, but I think it is ruder to follow and through doing so imply that you read what they Tweet (when we all know that it would be impossible to read thousands of Tweets a day). These automatic programs that follow and unfollow people on Twitter work only because that system exists and is subscribed to by so many.
The great thing about Twitter is that you can shut out the spam and unwanted noise with a click of a button.
Twitter: MaryB2010
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I agree with you 100%. But being slightly new to Twitter, I still don’t know how to tell if I’m being auto followed or if the DM’s are automatic.
What drives me crazy are the people who don’t care enough to put a picture or avitar or write a short bio, but they start following all kinds of people. And what I find amazing, there’s no tweets but a bajillion followers. HUH? What are they following? I don’t get it.
I have to admit that I’ve never thought much about the people auto following me, but following people who follow me,… that one is totally surprising.
I’m not one of those people who’s gone for the followers grab, but it still seems to be growing more and more. I can’t believe I’m that fascinating to anyone, but then again, I’m trying to be.
Anyway, I’m a follower of yours on Twitter, and have been for a long time, so I hope you don’t decide to unfollow me.
Those that have used so many of the twitter plug ins are to blame. It was inevitable. They just don’t get it. Auto-follow programs? R U kidding me? Why do you want to follow all the other auto-followers with no tweets? Do you think they are reading your tweets?
I follow the true social networking rule of thumb. I follow those that I have found through others. I only follow-back those that have truly networked with me in some way.
To those that have not had success with it, I’m saddened. I’ve been on twitter for over 6 months now and it’s grown my biz’s tremendously. BUT, I have built relationships on twitter. I don’t just post and ignore. I interact with EVERY reply on my account and this goes for various accounts. lol
You could always make it a private twitter place and only allow those you approve of to follow you.
It does get really messy with all the people. I have a Twitter account for each one of my blogs and my blogs post automatically to twitter. I do interact with as many messages as I can on these accounts and especially to direct and/or private messages. The others who follow me visit my articles and ignore me completely, but I do know they visit.
FaceBook isn’t much better so unlike my fb account that has people from all these different jobs and schools I’ve had over the years I have my very private twitter account where only people I know personally get added. Sure, it’s not on the public timeline, but it’s not there for popularity like my blogging twitter accounts.
Ok that makes sense when I sometimes follow people (I usually find them through you and other people I interact with who are RTing or recommending on a follow friday post, so some of their followers are automatically following me using a auto follow script. Explains the days when I get a influx of followers which seems out of nowhere. I still have a relatively small following and like to keep it that way and grow it through relationships. Like one person I followed now for months, interacted regularly with on a personal level, followed me back 2 days ago. I work on that same principal.
I’ll follow you. My personal account is http://www.twitter.com/theladyboo (it’s private so I have to approve everything) and I think you can see my email privately in this message.
I forgot to add that the ones I follow on my blog postings are never scripted. I follow them all manually so you’re still going to get people who follow a lot of other people but don’t use a script. Places like myspace will kill an account if you have too many scripts and I think twitter even does it now too.
Twitter: anitadefrank
:
@Mary Blackburn
You asked:
But being slightly new to Twitter, I still don’t know how to tell if I’m being auto followed or if the DM’s are automatic.
I’m not sure how to tell when you’re/I’m being auto-followed (but then again I haven’t really looked into it either). However, for the automatic DM’s … that’s usually pretty easy to tell.
First of all, you get a DM almost immediately after following the person – that’s a first good clue. Then if you read them, you’ll notice they’re basically ‘canned responses’.
For example, it will probably say something like:
“Thanks for the follow! I hope I can keep you entertained enough to stick around.”
There’s nothing personalized or anything … just very general.
But even still you can’t be totally sure. I mean sometimes yes, that person just happens to be in their Twitter account when you follow them and they send you a DM. Plus some don’t take the time to personalize them. If I feel the need to DM someone, I always personalize it but that’s just me. Some don’t bother.
So yeah, it can be a guessing game … but often you can just tell. Know what I mean? If you get an immediate DM after following someone … there is a good chance it’s automated.
Twitter: aliceseba
:
Hi Beckie – I wouldn’t want to make it private because my updates aren’t private. I also think it makes it harder for people to decide if they want to follow you. I’m not trying to make it harder for the legit people.
Great Post! Totally agree with you! I don’t use twitter a lot simply because of trying to keep up with everyone who I am following. When I first signed up for twitter I followed everyone who followed me, but now I have also started to unfollow some of those.
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