I hate crapware. I’ve written and spoken about how much I hate it. It’s the reason why Twitter numbers mean nothing, it’s why you can’t just look at someone’s account and say “wow, they’re doing great!”, and it’s why you should be suspicious if an agency or consultant you’ve hired shows explosive growth for no real reason.

Another reason I detest crapware so much is that one of the corner stones of the social media evolution is transparency; using this stuff is anything but transparent. It’s a way of being lazy, of gaming the system, and turning social media into nothing more than a meaningless numbers game; reducing it from communications and relationships to a high school popularity contest.

However, I’m not an unreasonable man. Maybe, just maybe I’m not giving this stuff a fair shake. Maybe I’m not really doing it justice and I’m jumping to conclusions. Maybe there really is some hidden value behind these systems.

The Crapware Experiment

A while ago I created the Twitter account SMFeeds to constantly feed me, and anyone else who cared, posts from what I consider to be the best social media blogs on the web. Using this account I amassed a staggering 84 followers without doing anything more than just existing and retweeting posts from it.

The account has no business or popularity objective,  it has no real reason for existing other than that I want it to. That is why it’s absolutely perfect for this experiment.

10 days ago I signed up for a newcomer in the automated follower arena followATHON. This is a free service that supposedly helps you “Get tons of followers for free!” and “with followers who actually want to follow you”. It’s free because it places an ad for itself in your Twitter stream 3x a day.

Sounding too good to be true, I signed up SMFeeds for it and in the last 10 days it’s gained 10 whole followers, but is now following over 300. As of right now It’s not exactly a run away success.

The Metrics

Every Monday I’m checking the account and taking stock of what progress has occurred in the last week.

1. Following
2. Followers
3. RTs
4. Positive @s
5. Negative @s (people upset at the account using followATHON)
6. Average link clicks
7. Total link clicks

I took stock of each stat the week before to establish a base, and I’ll be running it for 3 months. Each month I’ll give an update on the progress with the stats. At the end of 3 months I’ll switch to another crapware and let it run for 3 months. My current plan is to just keep doing it, until I run out of crapware to test.

How you can help

In the comments below list some of the crapware you come across so I can test them here. Depending on how many programs I get, I might adjust the scope and duration of the testing. Right now I’m planning on using followATHON, Tweet Adder, Twitter Adder, Twillow, and then some kind of simple auto-follow service before returning to normal.

I realize it would be better to test each one head to head, and I have plans for that kind of test down the road, but first I want to see how they all stack up using the same account and how they build on the “success” of each other.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

image by rzrxtion

Hashtags, people, conversations, topics, etc. Sometimes it can be a bit daunting to look for what you need on Twitter. However, having the right tools sure helps a lot. I’ve put together a list of 50+ sites that you can use to help you find who or what you’re looking for. Enjoy

Keywords / Conversations

People

Twitter & More

The book is going to be called “Twitter Says” and I’m not going to be writing it so much as compiling it. For the next 2 months I’m going to be asking various questions via Twitter about all kinds of subjects. I’ll be using the hastag #TwitterSays so you can follow along if you’d like. It should be a very interesting little book that is filled with all sorts of crazy answers and hopefully even some good advice.

What I need from you
Here’s what I would like from you. It’s pretty simple actually. Answer the question and RT the question. Then, once the book is finished, I’d like you to please spread the book around through your own networks. That’s it.

What you get
At the end of the book I’ll have a place where I’ll have a list of all the Twitter users who helped out and contributed. This book will be spread out through networks and I’ll be placing it in prominent spots to get spread around so hopefully it will be something that will help you also find some new, good quality, followers.

BUT WAIT! THAT’S NOT ALL!
Not only will I include you in the “Thanks / Should Follow List” at the  end of the book, but everytime you answer AND everytime you RT a question you will be entered into a drawing to win one of these prizes:

1. A signed copy of TwittFaced

2.Twitter Revolution and a signed copy of TwittFaced

3. Grand prize = a copy of Trust Agents, Crush It, Marketing in the Groundswell, and a signed copy of TwittFaced!

So you get some recognition AND be entered to win some pretty sweet books. All for about 60 seconds of your time. Not too shabby ‘eh?

Thanks for reading, and thank for helping,
Josh “Shua” Peters

UPDATE: There are even more prizes and info found on the TwitterSays page of my blog

When it comes to avoiding Twitter phishing scams (or any for that matter) there are 3 “Common Sense” things you can do to avoid getting swindled.

1. If you don’t know them, don’t click it. It’s really that easy, if you don’t know the person, or haven’t been in a social situation with them before then chances are they’re not going to have a “vid” or some “picz” of you.  Just like you’re not supposed to click on email from people you don’t know don’t click on links from people you don’t know.

2. The links usually hold some clues as well. Look at the url on this one: videos.dskjkiuw.com does that really look like a trustworthy URL with the garbled mess in the center? No one would remember that if it was a serious site. If it isn’t a shortened URL and contains a string of letters like that, chances are it’s no good.

However, lets say one of your friends got duped, sent you the link because their account became compromised and they are sending you a legit looking link… then what?

3. This is the easiest way to tell if it’s a phishing site. If it looks just like a site you’re familiar with, but the URL in the address bar is all wrong. In this latest phishing scam the above URL will take you to what looks like the Twitter sign in page, but when you look at the URL it’s that same garbled mess.

Twitter, FaceBook, your bank, etc are never going to have you log into their site through videos.ghjghjgy.com or twitter.lameurl.com or YourBank.scamcentral.com or anything else.

If you use a little common sense, and only use the accepted and sanctioned routes to access your accounts then you will never have a problem.

Thank you for reading
Josh “Shua” Peters