I don’t know who’s managing the District 9 twitter marketing campaign, but their abuse of twitter (via their creation of Twam – “twitter spam”) just caused me to decide not to go see the movie tonight. Here’s the history of the experience.
On August 15th, I tweeted “has anyone seen District 9? Worth it?” I got a handful of generally positive responses including one that said "@bfeld district 9 was very good. stylistically a bit reminiscent of 28 Days Later. well done and entertaining. also, go see hurt locker.” I didn’t recognize the handle of the person that tweeted it to me but I noticed it since it was more descriptive than others.
Over the past three days I’ve now gotten over 20 tweets from people I don’t recognize that say exactly the same thing. For example, I just got one from Joanne ODonnell (apedvatu). I don’t know Joanne (if she even exists) and her twitter account is garbage.
Or how about the tweet from Dominique Arnold. Exactly the same text. Same drill – no clue who Dominique is and her tweets are a bunch of district 9 crap.
This is classic marketing spam. No different than all the email garbage we get every day (that a whole industry has been created to deal with). To date, Twitter has done a great job of dealing with twam but it’ll logically get worse, especially now that all you need to be a “social media consultant” is a twitter account.
As I was writing this, I saw a tweet pop up on a TechCrunch article titled “You’re Doing It Wrong Part 348: Complete And Utter PR FAIL” I think the dynamics around social media marketing are now going to get a lot worse now before it settles down.
Guess I’m going to see Julie & Julia tonight instead of District 9. Amy told me that District 9 looks too scary for me anyway.
You mean my comment – 'D9 was only half as good as D18' – wasn't helpful?? I'm hurt.
Comment by John Minnihan — August 19, 2009 @ 9:16 pm
Well – that’s actually a lot more useful than the 21st comment that says “@bfeld district 9 was very good. stylistically a bit reminiscent of 28 Days Later. well done and entertaining. also, go see hurt locker”
Comment by Brad Feld — August 19, 2009 @ 9:19 pm
Yep. The stuff that's starting t bug me is the follow porn-spam. That's getting to be a big drain on me, as there's no easy way to determine – for sure – if they're spam other than to visit their profile. And then WHAM! X-rated crap fills up my screen.
Comment by John Minnihan — August 19, 2009 @ 9:22 pm
weird, brad, i sent you the original tweet saying that. i would guess this is not district 9 marketing, but instead just twitter spammers keying on @bfeld and a trending topic like district 9
Comment by Deva Hazarika — August 19, 2009 @ 9:25 pm
Yeah – the porn folks are always the first to embrace a new version of spam.
I just heard via twitter from another follower that he thinks this is porn spam (twam – now that’s good – porn twam – twat?). His comment – “Agreed. But that 1 follows a pattern: Spam hashtags/trending topics/celebs/'A-List' users, for attention + SEO (I've studied it)”
Enough already.
Comment by Brad Feld — August 19, 2009 @ 9:26 pm
Yeah – that’s what it’s starting to look like as I keep digging in to try to figure out what’s going on. Many of them (not all) seem to have a porn angle to them so I’m starting to thing they are porn spammers.
Comment by Brad Feld — August 19, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
I'm sure one of the TechStars are already working on a "shutdown"app for this problem.
Comment by mikehartcxo — August 19, 2009 @ 10:12 pm
[...] See original here: An Example of Failing At Marketing Using Twitter [...]
Pingback by An Example of Failing At Marketing Using Twitter | Twitter Bootcamp Money Marketing Machine Secrets Skills | Targeted Twitter Traffic — August 19, 2009 @ 4:32 pm
Ha! Ironically, your blog post about twitter spam has a display ad next to it offering 4100 followers for $12.95
wild wild web FTW!!!
Comment by Mike Su — August 19, 2009 @ 11:36 pm
Brad — it sounds like this is actually a giant porn scam, but let's pretend it wasn't…
What would you reaction have been if @district9 had tweeted "@bfeld it's stylistically a bit reminiscent of 28 Days Later. People are also comparing it to Hurt Locker"? I'm guessing it's the lack of transparency and the 40 @replies that are pissing you off, yeah?
Comment by Eric Marcoullier — August 20, 2009 @ 2:40 am
Brad — it sounds like this is actually a giant porn scam, but let's pretend it wasn't…
What would your reaction have been if user @district9 had tweeted "@bfeld it's stylistically a bit reminiscent of 28 Days Later. People are also comparing it to Hurt Locker"? I'm guessing it's the lack of transparency and the 40 @replies that are pissing you off, yeah?
Comment by Eric Marcoullier — August 20, 2009 @ 2:40 am
Awesomely ironic!
Comment by Brad Feld — August 20, 2009 @ 3:36 am
If @district9 has been the handle I would have been fine. The 40 @replies is what made me nuts. Now that I realize this is a giant twitter porn spam ring (I think I’m just going to call these things “twats”) I’m annoyed, but in a totally different way.
Comment by Brad Feld — August 20, 2009 @ 3:45 am
Curious minds want to know how was Julie aand Julia?
http://twitter.com/familyforest
http://familyforest.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/anot...
Comment by Alexis — August 20, 2009 @ 4:30 am
And what did I do when invited to one social media tool after another that asked for any remnant of personal privacy in exchange for the glory of an online profile? I shrugged. LOL at the exchange here –
Have you seen the Whole Foods CEO Op-Ed / Boycott call… great case study in SMedia. Imagine all those poor fools – working with full health care that will be laid off in the event of a boycott. I admit to mining some out of curiosity. Gosh, you can learn alot about people online.
Comment by Paige — August 20, 2009 @ 4:54 am
[...] An Example of Failing At Marketing Using Twitter [...]
Pingback by Social Media For Small Business | How Do You Twitter — August 19, 2009 @ 10:09 pm
[...] here: An Example of Failing At Marketing Using Twitter Tweet This Or Share Through Other Social [...]
Pingback by An Example of Failing At Marketing Using Twitter | Complete Twitter — August 20, 2009 @ 1:47 am
I don't know if you've had a chance to see the twitter feed of a trending topic before and after it goes trending. If not, check out #ashes over the next few days (it's a cricket series between Australia & England). It might or might not go trending. I noticed that before, people are genuinely talking about the topic, but while it's trending, there's a huge amount of piggybacking and spam. It's quite pathetic, I reckon.
Comment by MikeHaydon — August 20, 2009 @ 9:05 am
Do you think this will eventually take down twitter – when there is more spam then actual tweets? Or, any ideas on how this can be stopped?
Comment by phanio — August 20, 2009 @ 11:47 am
whats funny to me is how I have people following me that i have never met. I mean just completely random people. What is with that?
Comment by JChauncey — August 20, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
It was superb – I loved it. Perfect couples movie, especially for foodies.
Comment by Brad Feld — August 20, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
Yup – 24 hours later I’ve learned a lot about trending topic spam. The poor hash tag – if it only knew what kind of cruft it was attracting.
Comment by Brad Feld — August 20, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
This won’t take down twitter. Email had the same problem and it eventually got “mostly” solved – maybe “addressed” / “managed” is a better word. Comments had the same problem and they are ok. It’ll just take a bunch of extra software infrastructure.
Comment by Brad Feld — August 20, 2009 @ 1:48 pm
Just came across this article from Mashable – http://mashable.com/2009/08/20/twitter-reviews-di... It is difficult quantify how much twitter would have helped get it an 8.8 on IMDB (which is also driven by mob-mentality these days) or the $$$ . But the sad part is the encouragement to spammers seeing such things work.
Comment by Sujay — August 20, 2009 @ 3:17 pm
live by the social media sword, die by the social media sword – what did you expect?
quit being part of the problem and become part of the solution – invest in a twam company that does NOT have any patent pending software
Comment by sheryl — August 20, 2009 @ 7:43 pm
I’d seriously consider it if I could find one!
Comment by Brad Feld — August 20, 2009 @ 7:46 pm
Brad, just use Glue!
Comment by Alex — August 21, 2009 @ 7:49 pm
Yeah – should have.
Comment by Brad Feld — August 21, 2009 @ 8:10 pm
Porn spam: bambibots.
Comment by @andrewbadera — August 26, 2009 @ 2:57 pm
I like that. I’ve been calling the twat’s, but I think bambibots is better.
Comment by Brad Feld — August 26, 2009 @ 3:40 pm