Is Your Twitter Stream Worth $50?

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Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. He has a website you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

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Posted in Opinions, Top stories, Tweets |

http://www.lonseidman.com Lon
I have to disagree with you there.. It’s superb marketing by both companies and a great use of Twitter to help grow their businesses.
Twitter is a very Democratic place with the freedom to choose. I chose to participate in the program, and my followers can choose to unfollow me if they disagree with my decision to participate. I don’t see this destroying the community as ultimately people will vote with their feet if this becomes a trend that degrades the quality of a person’s feed.
Matt Parker
I personally find Twitter somewhat obnoxious and so stopped using it after about a week late last year. Maybe I’m missing the point… But since it offers so little value in my life, the $50 software license is worth WAY more than “pure” Twitter.
Earl
What prevents me from opening up a new twitter account and get the licence without spamming all my followers?
Chris
On the other hand, the thing has turned into a bit of a debacle. Loads of people aren’t getting the DM link to the software, the staff has gone dark, and Devon is starting to look bad by association.
Rob
I say, “Get over yourself.” It’s Twitter, a microblog service, and nothing more.
Unfollow the people who used the Tweetblast, or block them entirely. Simple.
http://torley.com Torley
Agreed, Rob. No need to overcomplicate matters. I like Twitter for rapid messaging fun.
Antonio
this comes just as twitter jumped the shark
tim lees
twitter jumping the shark……?????? that’s debatable as it’s used in so many different ways by so many different types of people.
squawky
Obviously, this is a personal thing – it’s your Twitter, you can do with it what you like.
As for advertising via Twitter, we do that at the university I work at – I’ve set up a Twitter to advertise free public events in my department (and share the occasional relevant current news story)… where’s the line between this kind of advertising (aimed at increasing attendance), the paid blogger who posts links to posts (to get more hits – and then possibly re-tweeted by followers), and MacHeist giving away a free app if you tweet them?
Twitter is as twitter does – what someone else uses it for and what I use it for may be two different things… if that someone else would prefer not to see the kinds of updates that I’m posting, then please don’t follow me – you won’t hurt my feelings :).
BD
Isn’t the default behavior of Twitter to /not/ receive @replies from friends unless you are also following the person they reply to (i.e.- why get only half of a conversation)? In which case, probably no one else in your followers even saw the tweetblast unless they were also following MacHeist and already knew what was coming.
Doesn’t seem like a particularly worthy way of advertising to the unknowing. More like a “hey, is this thing on?” type of survey.
IMHO,YMMV
Majken
You are dis-comforted way too easily. How is “I’m participating in MacHeist” any worse as a Tweet than “I’m eating cereal”. Frankly, if my friends want to let me know how to get free software, I say have at it.
Twitter is an evolving phenomenon. At some point, you have to just let it be what it is.
pListOFF
“Damaging the community”? Most of what you see on Twitter is insipid banter that is much more pointless than the TweetBlast. And this is from following “professionals” – not average everyday people – but people who you’d think would express themselves with more tact. Twitter is becoming “mySpace without the wait”.