4 ms·

A couple of quick questions if you don't mind, since I don't use ig but I'm trying to understand your post: > Basically you get meme accounts to do a promotion

A couple of quick questions if you don't mind, since I don't use ig but I'm trying to understand your post: > Basically you get meme accounts to do a promotion of a profile that is currently private Is this as crude as looking for large accounts on socialblade and sending them DMs? Or is there some kind of marketplace? Are there popular forums or something I should know about? What kind of pricing are you looking for? > all the followers to a private profile get queued up, you can queue them up in the thousands or hundreds of thousands Why would people follow a private profile anyway? I don't see what the user gains from that. Maybe this is an instagram culture thing that I'm out of the loop on? > For myself I have used one of the popular quickly and cheaply grown accounts to slide into the DMs of local women. What kind of content would your accounts post? Do you have some kind of feed of popular content (imgur maybe?) where you can copy content and repost? Do you automate that?

vmception 6y ago
Think of it as an economy. The venues for communication are definitely all of the above, but there are also group chats in instagram where meme and large accounts hang out and like each other's post and reshare each other's content. So for getting started there are cold DMs, there are forums, there ARE marketplaces mostly for the buying and selling of accounts, and there are also DMs. The otherside of this economy is the ROI of the account. If you paid money for the account, or for promos, or analytics tools, you should be able to know how fast you can break even doing your own promos. Can you account charge $10 or what. When YOU want to do promos for other people, you should already be in a position to DM meme accounts and individuals directly. The individual market has its own tiers, anyone under 10k followers is out of the loop, but is doing okay at the social popularity game which is the crux of instagram: A follower casino where few people actually win. Many will pay $10 for a promo. More will do a reciprocal promo for free. Regarding private profiles, people want to know what they are missing. Is it explicit and erotic tantalizing content that will be short lived before it gets taken down!? Is it hilarious content that only the cool people get to know about!? Maybe there is a sneaker or consumer electronics promo happening on this secret page, maybe a secret society that conveys long lasting advantages if you happen to be there. Yes its an instagram culture thing. Yeah what to actually post on the account is hard work. But you don't actually have to do it much if you just want a profile with authority and power in direct messaging or real world trading for free stuff (you promise exposure, real luxury businesses give you their service). But for active posting, there are various tools to automate it, but it is really hard work either way. If you want to create a very valuable account to generate cash flow from more expensive one-off promotions, to funnel many users to a real subscriber business of your own or something you partner with, or selling the account at a revenue multiple, then you have to figure this out. You have your niches and you can have original content or not. Being able to quantify 3% engagement is a gold mine. Higher? Palladium.
- anon9001 6y ago
  Fascinating stuff. If you wrote a series of blog posts detailing how you manipulate the world of instagram, you'd probably frontpage HN. Last question: If I wanted to throw a few bucks at it and play in the sandbox, do you think there's any actual legal concerns? Do you use a burner phone number and proxy for dealing with your accounts, or is this all so normalized now that it's fine to tie your real identity to meme accounts? (from ig's point of view, not publicly, of course)
  - vmception 6y ago
    Yeah only reason you want a burner phone is because Facebook is obsessed with SMS 2-factor because they care more about aggregating user data than security. Do they allow OTP systems yet? People that know your phone number will try to steal your popular account with SS7 attacks if they find a way to put two and two together. I think you can still sign up with email. OH you mean to use the instagram app. Yeah thats not a problem. Just create the account however you do it and login on your normal device. No proxy necessary. No legal concerns with the state. With private persons you are dealing with a lot of creatives and media people, so although reposting is a fun thing, if you ever brand a page to actually look like an actual business then people will threaten to sue you for copyright infringement for random unilateral reposting. Just asking is ok, but not a standard that anyone else has to think about. Facebook slowly lets Instagram facilitate its economy as you can have as many instagram accounts as you want logged in at the same time, and it is easy to switch between them. They should really be brokering the promotion and account trading transactions too, maybe its not as big as I imagine? But it could be much bigger too if they added confidence to the market. So IG won't care. If you mess up with objectionable content, only that one account will get sanctioned in isolation. Although it is still possible to get an IMEI banned. > Fascinating stuff. If you wrote a series of blog posts detailing how you manipulate the world of instagram, you'd probably frontpage HN. I'm working on more lucrative things right now, so I'm just answering questions because the comments have gone this direction! I knew this edge would diminish if I ever wrote about it, and on HN specifically I just figured a bunch of Gen-X people would really miss the point and only see objectionable unrelatable social media stuff they don't want to think about, a "get of my lawn" attitude, with the idea of a social media economy they can't perceive being something they would just argue the semantics of. So I had imagined it was only downside.

vmception 6y ago

Think of it as an economy. The venues for communication are definitely all of the above, but there are also group chats in instagram where meme and large accounts hang out and like each other's post and reshare each other's content. So for getting started there are cold DMs, there are forums, there ARE marketplaces mostly for the buying and selling of accounts, and there are also DMs. The otherside of this economy is the ROI of the account. If you paid money for the account, or for promos, or analytics tools, you should be able to know how fast you can break even doing your own promos. Can you account charge $10 or what. When YOU want to do promos for other people, you should already be in a position to DM meme accounts and individuals directly. The individual market has its own tiers, anyone under 10k followers is out of the loop, but is doing okay at the social popularity game which is the crux of instagram: A follower casino where few people actually win. Many will pay $10 for a promo. More will do a reciprocal promo for free. Regarding private profiles, people want to know what they are missing. Is it explicit and erotic tantalizing content that will be short lived before it gets taken down!? Is it hilarious content that only the cool people get to know about!? Maybe there is a sneaker or consumer electronics promo happening on this secret page, maybe a secret society that conveys long lasting advantages if you happen to be there. Yes its an instagram culture thing. Yeah what to actually post on the account is hard work. But you don't actually have to do it much if you just want a profile with authority and power in direct messaging or real world trading for free stuff (you promise exposure, real luxury businesses give you their service). But for active posting, there are various tools to automate it, but it is really hard work either way. If you want to create a very valuable account to generate cash flow from more expensive one-off promotions, to funnel many users to a real subscriber business of your own or something you partner with, or selling the account at a revenue multiple, then you have to figure this out. You have your niches and you can have original content or not. Being able to quantify 3% engagement is a gold mine. Higher? Palladium.

anon9001 6y ago
Fascinating stuff. If you wrote a series of blog posts detailing how you manipulate the world of instagram, you'd probably frontpage HN. Last question: If I wanted to throw a few bucks at it and play in the sandbox, do you think there's any actual legal concerns? Do you use a burner phone number and proxy for dealing with your accounts, or is this all so normalized now that it's fine to tie your real identity to meme accounts? (from ig's point of view, not publicly, of course)
- vmception 6y ago
  Yeah only reason you want a burner phone is because Facebook is obsessed with SMS 2-factor because they care more about aggregating user data than security. Do they allow OTP systems yet? People that know your phone number will try to steal your popular account with SS7 attacks if they find a way to put two and two together. I think you can still sign up with email. OH you mean to use the instagram app. Yeah thats not a problem. Just create the account however you do it and login on your normal device. No proxy necessary. No legal concerns with the state. With private persons you are dealing with a lot of creatives and media people, so although reposting is a fun thing, if you ever brand a page to actually look like an actual business then people will threaten to sue you for copyright infringement for random unilateral reposting. Just asking is ok, but not a standard that anyone else has to think about. Facebook slowly lets Instagram facilitate its economy as you can have as many instagram accounts as you want logged in at the same time, and it is easy to switch between them. They should really be brokering the promotion and account trading transactions too, maybe its not as big as I imagine? But it could be much bigger too if they added confidence to the market. So IG won't care. If you mess up with objectionable content, only that one account will get sanctioned in isolation. Although it is still possible to get an IMEI banned. > Fascinating stuff. If you wrote a series of blog posts detailing how you manipulate the world of instagram, you'd probably frontpage HN. I'm working on more lucrative things right now, so I'm just answering questions because the comments have gone this direction! I knew this edge would diminish if I ever wrote about it, and on HN specifically I just figured a bunch of Gen-X people would really miss the point and only see objectionable unrelatable social media stuff they don't want to think about, a "get of my lawn" attitude, with the idea of a social media economy they can't perceive being something they would just argue the semantics of. So I had imagined it was only downside.