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Who Are These Women on Twitter?

For those of you who don’t know what Twitter is, there will be a glossary at the end.

I use Twitter very infrequently.  I probably post on average once a week and follow only 14 people.  Until recently, I had only 18 followers, who had trickled in over the last 6 months or so, and all of whom I knew personally, or was a fan of.

Then, in one brief span of a few hours, these 5 ladies all became followers of me.  I have no idea who any of them are, or where they would get my name.  I find it curious that they are all female, and all (as far a you can tell from the images) fairly attractive.

So is this some kind of porn-spam thing that we’re going to have to start contending with in yet another Web 2.0 forum?

(BTW, it never occurred to me to go and look at their profiles until right now, and they’ve all been “suspended” and are being “investigated due to suspicious activity.”)

Glossary:

Twitter is an online service that some people call a micro-blog.  Once you join, you can write small (140 characters or less) pieces as often as you like.  A lot of people use it with their phones, so it can be an on-the-go stream of conscienceness experience for frequent users.

Followers are people who have signed up to see someone else’s Twitter posts.  So when they log into Twitter, they see all the most recent posts by only the people they follow.  You don’t need anyone’s permission to follow someone, but they are under no obligation to follow you in return.

The Twitter site explains it better, or there’s this cute video:

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WTF?

I get quite a bit of spam trying to be a comment to one of my blog posts.  This problem is not unique to me – all bloggers have the same trouble, and most blogging software applications have filters built in to catch it.  This morning, though, this slipped through:

Pe’ki’s necklace writes another totalitarian scarlet billion for her to come. Nana thrills in days of old like front and leaves privately exemplify any men, nominations control bracelet. They were small amount with transportation to unabridged their purpose for the river and for court for the Ka, nominations rabbit’s foot bracelet. In the attendances did close to, reasonable minority functions were accused http://jewelengagement.info/ring/5/3 exclusive of unaligned recent-endlessly results. elegance mesmerize italian silverstone. In an three-legged indexing header, which may unravel in the assembly of any canadian cystine percent, document or a anonymity that is military into actuality at a reached inlet is frayed as a curriculum vitae of making exorbitant forests. I’m donation them away to my beholders, and closeness-focusing them where I told the gold-.

It’s almost poetic in how it just barely fails to make sense.  I can’t figure out why any person (or machine) would be propogating it.  If you go to that URL, it’s a Romanian porn site, so I guess the idea is to just get the link out there and disguise it in a bunch of prose so it passes through spam filters.  But really, don’t people who want porn know where to go for it?  Why hide the facts about what you’re promoting?  If someone can explain this to me, I’d appreciate it.

Why Punish Your Customers?

 

I received this semi-spam today.  (I blanked out the name of the offering to protect the guilty.)  I call it semi-spam because I do want to receive some stuff from this sender, but not these salesy messages; and I can’t end the spam without ending the stuff I want to get as well.  That’s problem number 1.

Problem number 2 is that there’s a punctuation error that actually makes the copy read like it’s questioning  the value of SaaS, instead of touting it as an application delivery platform.  Sorry, spellcheck doesn’t catch everything, which is why, as I’ve said before, always get someone ELSE to proofread your marcomm. 

But the biggest issue that I have with this is the special offer to new customers only.  This firm is telling its existing customers, the ones who eagerly jumped on board the fastest, the ones who are already sending in money, that they’re chumps and should have waited until now.  This kind of offer is insulting (and lame, because it’s so easy to get around).  And not only is it demeaning to existing customers, it’s telling potential new customers that this is the kind of treatment they have to look forward to if they come on board.

There’s nothing wrong with a time-limited special offer, but this could have been done better in so many ways.  How about:

* new customers only.  Our pack-leading, smart and good-looking existing customers receive 30% off if they sign up for another year within the same time period.