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Pay Me Tweets helps you ruin any credibility you have on Twitter
Twitter, when used correctly, is the ultimate meritocracy. You can freely follow anyone you want, and just as freely unfollow them. For most users this means following people whose tweets they perceive they are gaining value from, and not following people who waste their time. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, particularly when it comes to so many of the self-professed "Social Media Consultants" that seem to pollute my inbox when they meaninglessly follow me. But for the most part, the average Twitter user wants to get value out of what they read using the service, and provide value to their followers.
I'm puzzled then when services like Pay Me Tweets pop up, wanting you to trade your hard-earned credibility with your followers for a few measly (or should I call them weasly?) bucks. Basically, you're trading your followers' attention for money, something they will likely not appreciate. And what do users do on Twitter when they are not getting value any longer? They unfollow, of course!
While I think that users who choose to sell their credibility to Pay Me Tweets are making a big mistake, the people that choose to buy tweets through this service are making an even bigger one.
First of all, do you want your product or service associated with something that is going to annoy people? People are intensely sensitive to spam these days; Twitter users are typically (at least at this time) fairly technically sophisticated, and certainly one of the appealing aspects of Twitter is the very fact that you can unsubscribe from someone you perceive to be spamming you.
Secondly, if you're buying tweets from Pay Me Tweets, chances are you are getting little to no value for your money. Most Twitter users with a large number of followers (more than 1000) typically follow at least if not more than that many people. In fact, that's one of the primary strategies to grow a large follower base - follow anyone and everyone, and some of them will be dumb enough to follow you back just to be polite.
So what do we have when Twitter's "power users" are following anyone and everyone they possibly can, and gullible users are guilted into following them back? A crap-ton of Twitter users that aren't reading a damn thing written by the people they follow. That's why Twitter clients like TweetDeck that allow you to put the Twitter accounts you follow into various groups are so successful: people are looking for a way to filter out all the crap tweets that they don't really want to be subscribed to in the first place.
So, when you buy tweets through Pay Me Tweets, how many of them do you think will actually reach a real live Twitter user, and if on the off-chance it does, what is the likelihood of that user simply unsubscribing from the account that fed it the spam? This Twitter business idea is worse than Tweet-Train.
Comments
6
Subscribe to commentsnetlatchJul 21st 2009 6:34PM
DownLoadSquad sell ads on their blog?! Aren't you being a bit hypocritical to complain that a micro-blogger might want to do the same?
Brad LinderJul 21st 2009 10:21PM
There's a big difference between clearly marked ads on a website that are separate and distinct from the articles, news, and op-ed content, and sponsored tweets.
Personally, I'm not a fan of sponsored blog posts either, but at least those tend to be clearly labeled as such. But when you've only got 140 characters to work with, things get even tougher since it'd be hard to post a substantive tweet along with a disclaimer. Users may not know that they were clicking on a sponsored link until after they've clicked through, and maybe not even then.
TomJul 21st 2009 8:19PM
Well as I see it, DS sells ad space to make money to run the site, while a twitter user makes money to spend?
jpxdudeJul 22nd 2009 2:33AM
This site is owned by AOL, I don't think they need advertising space just to help run the site :-/ it is a bit hypocritical.
Keith DsouzaJul 22nd 2009 11:43AM
I agree with you on this very much, it is not only this service, there are tons of them out there who are just spamming users timeline and helping users lose credibility.
I have come across situations where these ad networks have links to sites that say make 10000$ using your twitter account and so on, and you might guess that those too are dicey.
Best is to not use these services at all.
CiaoenricoAug 12th 2009 2:35PM
I fully agree - these ads only serve to glom onto other user's follow lists, and aren't that effective anyway. They don't work for the advertiser OR the owner of the Twitter account, they just work for the company facilitating the ads. This is becoming a pretty common issue, of course. I was saying similar things about "Magpie" last year, and it faded into mediocrity in short order.
I think that's how all of these programs will eventually fade out: Someone gives it a shot, sees how it doesn't work, abandons it. If there were a way to completely sell out my integrity on Twitter, I'd do it - I'm no angel. But since none of them are effective, for now it doesn't really matter.