Calling Bullshit on Twitter

While researching Twitter for a client this morning, I searched the phrase “learning social media” (without quotes) and found the following results:

Must be an interesting article, right?

Wrong.  It’s a link lure to a news item from a consulting firm called Gerson Lehman Group, which calls itself “the global marketplace for expertise.”  Clicking that lure actually takes you to this page:

The “article” is basically a statement: friends and followers don’t necessarily equal paying customers.  Fine; we’ve been hearing this for years.  But note that the analysis was done by someone named “GLG Expert Contributor,” and published at bit.ly.  Last time I checked, bit.ly was a URL shortener, not a site that accepted critical analysis of business markets.

Notice also the disclaimer: “Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.”  So, evidently, “the global marketplace for expertise” allows anonymous users to post spurious analysis to their site.  Good to know.

Meanwhile, who are all these Twitter users who found this article to be so worthwhile as to retweet it (or, more accurately, to independently tweet it of their own volition, all in rapid succession)?  Clicking through to their profiles reveals that most of them tweet practically identical content.  For example:

A more legit-looking profile is that of InterpidMarktr, who claims to be a stay-at-home dad who’s just trying to make money online.  Or Gary Cooper, who’s been “making money on the internet since 2001,” probably with the help of tweets like this.  And I’m sure Donnie Wilson, lead singer of the one-hit wonder R&B group Profyle, would be interested to know that his likeness has been appropriated for a Twitter profile that pushes these same spam messages, links to a defunct Facebook account, and even uses his MySpace photo as his Twitter avatar.  (Either that or his Twitter account was hacked… or he’s in the same marketing scheme as everyone else; his MySpace profile does say he’s trying to finish med school, which must be expensive.)

Even the profiles that appear to be semi-legit, like that of Camisera Clothing, list the same spam links among their other tweets, which implies that they’ve either been hacked or are knowingly complicit in some sort of referral scheme.  (Not too much of a stretch, since Camisera has previously been forced to return money for selling counterfeit goods.)  But a referral scheme for what?

One clue: the profile of Tony Coulson, included in the stream above, links directly to TweetTank, an affiliate marketing scheme that promises you can “add followers and make money on Twitter” — earn $500 a day, 99% automated! (Warning: the page that link opens also executes a “do you really want to close this tab and miss out on these great deals?” script when you try to exit.)

So, if I had to guess, I’d say that the profiles listed above are some of the many people who’ve bought into TweetTank and are now flooding Twitter with identical spam accounts designed to lure in other users.  I don’t know what Twitter’s policy is for Amway-style marketing, but I do know that a rise in this kind of activity can’t be good for anyone.

If Profyle has known this was in the cards, maybe Donnie Wilson would have stayed in that desert…

Tags: bullshit, honesty, legal, networking, pop culture, Social Media, Twitter