Sunday, July 26, 2009

Why faking your network is worse than #twitterspam

I've been kicking around a thought for a while now regarding whether I despise spam on Twitter more or those users who think it's acceptable to game the system by using software to develop a huge fake following.

Yes, #twitterspam sucks. That should go without too much debate. Thankfully, this a problem that users can have a part in controlling simply by blocking spam accounts and using Twitter's @spam to report spammers and abusers of Twitter. The company also is taking steps to eradicate spam accounts and correct follower and following counts.

You big faker!



I pulled the above screen capture off of a presumably popular downloadable software that claim that you'll "be able to time-warp past years of network building to become a Twitter Elite in a matter of days?"

I really hated seeing that line in their promo page.

To me the line should be corrected to read: It's ok to be a jerk-face with no real marketing or networking skills because I'll just game the system to make it look like I know what I'm doing.

I think this is the ugly side of Twitter that doesn't get the attention it deserves and I hope it soon comes to an end. In the meantime, any respectable communicator with an ounce of sense should run as far away from these types of bogus network builders.

What do you think? Am I being to harsh on these types of (ab)users?

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