The chief executive of an Australian company that sells packages of Twitter followers to clients claims the social networking giant has attempted to shut him down.
Leon Hill says Twitter has used Melbourne IT, the Australian firm that manages the company's domain names, to contact uSocial and demand it stop "spamming" the site.
"They've basically used Melbourne IT to send through to us all of these spam notices to both our hosting company and to us. Melbourne IT manages their domain names, so it's all been done through them, not through Twitter directly."
uSocial brands itself as "innovative advertising", and offers businesses and individuals the opportunity to gain thousands of Twitter followers for a fee. It also sells votes for social news site Digg.com, allowing a client's news story to be pushed to the front page, in front of millions of viewers.
While the company is looked down upon by a large number of Twitter users, it reportedly has some important clients, including the family of deceased pop star Michael Jackson.
But Melbourne IT has requested the site to stop operating, apparently citing rejections to uSocial's use of "spam". But Hill says uSocial is doing nothing wrong.
"I know that Twitter doesn't like what we're doing in regards to our Twitter services, but for all intents and purposes we don't use Twitter as a platform for unsolicited messages. We're simply doing things for other followers that they could do by themselves in their own time, so this reaction is a bit odd."
Hill says he isn't too worried about the objections, and says that if any action is taken against the site he will simply move it to another server.
"None of this worries me too much. I've tried to contact Twitter but haven't heard back from them, but if anything does happen there's nothing they can do to hurt me. If they do shut down the site, I can just move it to another host. If they take some legal action, I am more than willing to face them in court."
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written by Dave, August 17, 2009
written by Walter Adamson, August 19, 2009
If uSocial is breaking the law or MelbourneIT's or Twitter's terms of service then that's that - get it fixed. If not then uSocial have taken advantage of a niche business opportunity. It's the latter I want to address.
If you see Twitter as a "broadcast" channel then uSocial's service offers you some potential value. For 99.99% of businesses it is a waste of money, but hey that's up to you to figure out not for uSocial to teach you!
Celebs and twitter rockstars gain hundreds of thousands of follows by their nature. They don't "build" or buy those followers. Then, by nature of the sheer dint of numbers they have to manage their Twitter stream as a one way broadcast channel - think "PR".
For everyone else, the 99.99%, treating Twitter as "just another channel" will fail. They usually don't know any better and are being advised by agencies, marketers and PR folk who also don't know any better.
When you acquire thousands of names of people that you don't know and have no relationship with you are acquiring spam targets. For Twitter the ultimate conversion rate for spam is much lower than spam mail, but the broadcast cost is lower.
If you are a "genuine" business acquiring these names then you are saying that you joining the ranks of irrelevant advertisers who are simply pushing out messages and hoping something will stick. You hope to take advantage of your "customers" ignorance, and uSocial sells to you on the same basis - taking advantage of your ignorance.
OK that's all fine, that's one type of business and while it lasts it can even be branded as "innovative".
The vast majority of uSocial's customers will have wasted their money - that's their choice. The final answer will hopefully be with Twitter who are increasingly finding methods to locate and kill the spammers on Twitter. I look forward to when the Twitter spam filter is as effective as my email spam filter.
Walter Adamson @g2m
Social Media Academy, Australia
http://www.socialmedia-academy.com.au
The 'social ethicists' and the 'anything legal goes' camps both make excellent points and have gaping holes in their arguments.
I'm certainly not game to predict which way this will fall. How about you, Patrick? Does journalistic integrity permit you to lay a tenner either way? P. :)