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OP here. Ultimately I want access to the Twitter Ads API, at which point I'll switch from favorites to serving promoted tweets/accounts. I think I've innovated
by mkrecny 13y ago
OP here.
Ultimately I want access to the Twitter Ads API, at which point I'll switch from favorites to serving promoted tweets/accounts. I think I've innovated on the Ads UX and the form which the impression takes is secondary. This is a surrogate impression. It has allowed me to build an Ads product and an Ads customer base in anticipation of Ads API access.
- MartinCron 13y agoI think I've innovated on the Ads UX What you've done is move ads from the place where they're supposed to be (promoted tweets) to the place where they're not supposed to be (your interactions). Innovative spam is still spam.
- maxbrown 13y agoI'll play devil's advocate to this one... you're saying "interactions" are places where ads aren't supposed to be? Isn't any interaction between a business and individuals on Twitter really marketing?
- tomkarlo 13y agoArguably, but there are social bounds to what's considered acceptable, as well as bounds enforced by Twitter to prevent abuse of the medium. Any phone conversation B2C is similar, but in general, we don't like businesses calling us on a false pretext just to get our attention. It's like those annoying snail mail envelopes designed to look like a federal government notice so you'll open them.
- MartinCron 13y agoEven if all business->individual interactions are marketing, that doesn't mean that all marketing is spam. Marketing and customer engagement is fine. Spam isn't. The distinction for me isn't between marketing/non-marketing but between humans and robots. If a human representing some business favorites my tweet because they feel that it's worth favoriting, that's great. In fact, it makes me feel good that some human at an organization is reading and caring about what I have to say. Wonderful, I write things so people can read them. Robots just going out and marking things as favorites just to get attention and followers? That's the kind of spam actively undermines the value of the example above.
- __derek__ 13y agoThat's a non-sequitur: marketing and advertising are not the same thing.
- aranjedeath 13y agoCan you provide a definition of either that excludes the other?
- MartinCron 13y agoEasy. Advertising is a subset of marketing. Marketing also includes product design, customer service, research, etc.
- alphakappa 13y agoI agree - It degrades the experience of the product (in this case, Twitter) for the users. There are versions of this approach all over Instagram too - I 'll wake up to a large number of favorites, only to find out that most of them were bots. (Although, with the OP's approach, the accounts that are favoriting this are real accounts, so I wouldn't be able to tell easily by going to their profile) If I get a favorites notification, I want to go go their profile and find out if they share similar tastes. If it's just an automated system, they have ruined this for me by lowering the signal-to-noise ratio. Regardless of how innovative this is, Twitter shouldn't get any flak if they decide to shut him down.
- GigabyteCoin 13y agoYou're missing the point. You shouldn't have existed (or been allowed to) in the fist place.
- catshirt 13y agodid you read the article? or even the title for that matter? seems like what you are saying is crystal clear to OP.
- GigabyteCoin 13y agoYes, as a matter of fact I read it in it's entirety. Did you read the article?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- zem 13y agoyes, but the OP thinks he should have been barred on the grounds of cannibalising twitter's ad revenue, not on the grounds of spamming people's favourite notifications.
- smtddr 13y agoI respect you because you admit that you're probably violating Twitter's TOS and you even posted to HN about it so you're not trying to be sneaky like click-fraud schemes. If Twitter doesn't shut you down after this, you deserve every penny you make. Just make sure you save that money, don't go buying a bunch of stuff you don't need.
- ignostic 13y agoYour customer base? You mean the people who "favorite" stuff they may not have read, in hopes of manipulating people into thinking they care? The people who want more followers at any cost? Yes, your customer list may be useful to Twitter - as a list of accounts to suspend for violating their ToS, devaluing favorites, and hurting any legitimacy Twitter had.