Sunday 15 March 2009

Twitter Scam

I wondered how long it would take before people started to try to scam twitter. And today I got my answer

People have started playing twitter

The power behind twitter is reputation.

If you already have a big reputation in your niche, then getting a ton of people to follow you on twitter is not hard work at all..

And we know that the most responsive part of your audience is your followers.

Imagine having a 10,000 followers. That means
  • Your tweets go directly on the twitter home pages of 10,000 people
  • The mobile phone updates.
  • The potential to directly nudge them

Whatever happens, a large proportion of your followers will know you have something to say


But what if you don't have a big online reputation

Well this is where the scam comes in.

Remember your profile name is the user name you register with

Well someone started following me on twitter using the mane of a big name Internet marketer but including an extra L in the name. And he even has his picture as his profile picture

Easy to overlook.

Why did I pick up on this. The big name marketer is already following me on Twitter.

Hmmm.

Now you could argue that

  • The big name marketer has a look alike, who has almost the same name, and is in the same niche. Stranger things have happened. Or have they?
  • Or perhaps the big name marketer has maxed out his twitter account and is building another one. I suppose that's possible apart from the fact that he has been tweeting lately about scams and people leveraging on his name
  • Or perhaps this is just the beginning of scammers moving in on the twitter platform

You decide

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

nice postt,,Or

Voices en EspaƱol said...

This is kind of what happened to Shaquille O'Neal. Somebody was tweeting under his name and photo and Shaq opened an account on Twitter to combat this.

How on earth will Twitter police this kind of "identity theft"? Will they require people to submit a social security number and driver's license before opening a Twitter account? What a drag.

Ching Ya said...

No surprise as Twitter has emerged strongly as one of the most-discussed social network tool around. Imagine having email spams/scams, but now only happening in a different place. Identity-theft is definitely an issue, security wise.. a protocol? well, who knows?

Webincomestepbystep.com said...

I am going to be trying twitter out next week. I have not been familiar with this medium. can anyone give me some advise about this, My business now is focused on setting up someone with their own niche, and giving them customer service to make sure they are successful.
please check out my blog and let me know if anyone can give me some advise.
Daniel Adams

ami said...

Daniel, I have taken a look at your blog and it's a good start

With regards to twitter and setting up a twitter profile for your business, it's a big subject and covered in some detail at Twitter quickie

Hope it helps

Anonymous said...

I have a bigger problem others may have it too). I don't even have a twitter account. And, as I posted annonymous comment on a blog a twitter account showed up next to my chosen name. This account was preceded by "follow me on twitter." Well, that account is linked to a website with a bio on it that is completely different from how I described myself in the comment. Even, though, I was anonymous..I feel sorry for the website owner (if they're not a part of any scam) because whoever owns that website looks like a fake after my post. How is this possible?

ami said...

Interesting comment Anonymous
I looked into it and there are two different accounts

The annonymous twitter account appears to be a legitimate twitter account with links to his website and 42 updtaes. He has managed to get 35 followers and has a name attached to his account

What smells fishy is the other twitter account anonymous [has a single n]

No tweets, not following anyone and has 97 followers. That's the one that raises my eyebrows. How does one get 97 followers while apparently doing nothing!!!

But if you look most of his followers are from china and places like that

Should you concern yourself with this. I think not

Anonymous said...

I would never use these people again. After buying 1K followers, it took them four days just to get the campaign up and running - quite contrary to their 24 hour guarantee. During my email correspondence with them they said they will deliver 500-1,000 followers weekly - this did not happen. They were delivering around 3-4 followers per day at best and they did not keep to the specifications of the followers I wanted to target, despite clear instructions to that effect before payment. Well, I requested a refund under their 30 day money back guarantee - and to this day, I have not heard from them. A complete scam, please avoid like the plague.