Darren Rowse Announces PayPerTweet
I would have thought better of Darren Rowse. he has done some good things over the years. His newest way of making large piles of chump change, in my opinion, is not among them. One day after I warned about chnges a brewing in Twitter, Darren has announced PayPerTweet.
Darren posts some highly hyperbolic numbers that stretch his credibility the way strained credibility stretched Pinochio's nose. He claims there are 10s of millions of people using Twitter daily. No one, absolutely no one has produced any data to support numbers like that. He talks of Tweeters having 10s of thousands of followers. Perhaps a handful have over 10,000m followers. But according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, the average Tweeter posts three times a week and has about 10 followers.
Darren has not asked me what I think of this new endeavor, but I'll tell him right here, what I told Ted Murphy when he urged me to review his PayPerPost. I wrote "I hope you crash and burn."
Same at you, Darren.
((I guess it's time to tell Shel it's April 1st in Australia... ;-0))
Posted by: BarbaraKB | March 31, 2008 at 01:40 PM
Oh, so it is legit despite the April 1 dateline?
Posted by: Andy Ruff | March 31, 2008 at 01:41 PM
hey shel. i really think better of darren too, which is why i suspect this is an april fool's joke. we'll find out tomorrow, i guess. :)
Posted by: julien | March 31, 2008 at 01:41 PM
So is your April Fools Day post early too?
I was under the impression it's already 4/1/2008 in Australia - hence the "email address" at the end of Darren's post (which, albeit, is 142008 - the reverse of our 412008)
:)
Posted by: GeekMommy | March 31, 2008 at 01:43 PM
Press Release: For Immediate Release
Contact: Darren Rowse
1 April 2008
1 April 2008
1 April 2008
Posted by: A Fools | March 31, 2008 at 01:43 PM
Shel,
In (UK) classified adverts, there's a legal requirement to identify if you are a "trader" rather than a private seller.
How about Twitter making it mandatory to declare (at the account or the post level level) whether you subscribe to such a programme / are being paid for such a tweet... and flagging up a "sponsored tweet" banner on ALL tweets of such a person, and kicking anyone who was shown to have broken the rules?
Good for 99.9% of Twitter's customers? I think so.
Posted by: Mark Harrison | March 31, 2008 at 01:43 PM
(My comment stands, whether this one proves to be a 1st April spoof or not.)
Posted by: Mark Harrison | March 31, 2008 at 01:45 PM
Ouch.
Harsh response.
Why?
Because its a venture seeking to monetize a service by exploiting it for purposes other than what its creators intended?
Because it muddies the Social marketing waters with marketing messages?
Such harshness, such biting words.....Where does the hate come from Shel? Where?
Posted by: Seocracy | March 31, 2008 at 01:45 PM
OK, OK. My chain got pulled and I should have looked at the calendar. I am relieved, really relieved to hear it was a joke.
Posted by: shel israel | March 31, 2008 at 01:46 PM
So Seocracy, do you do all your pontificating under the cloak of anonymity? Come out from the shadows so people who can see who you really are and then I'll consider talking to you. If not, I'll simply take down any comments you leave hear. Go to Google and look up my Living Room Policy.
Posted by: shel israel | March 31, 2008 at 02:44 PM
thanks for the feedback :-)
btw - this 'idea' actually came from a real interaction that I had over the weekend when someone did ask me to tweet about them for $20 - no jokes.
I would predict we'll see these types of services launched for real in the coming year. My response to them will be quite similar to yours Shel :-)
hope this was taken in the spirit of the day and didn't cause too much confusion or blood boiling :-)
Posted by: Darren | March 31, 2008 at 03:23 PM
Funny joke. Not funny or productive in reality. Hype tweets tend to be ignored, and Twitter users who post only hype, promo, self-marketing, product sales type tweets are shunned if not despised.
Posted by: vaspers aka steven e. streight | March 31, 2008 at 03:29 PM
Someday you trolls will wake up and realize that people are sick of ads and sales hype, and go to places like Twitter to escape crass commercial consumerist propaganda from the mammonists.
Posted by: vaspers aka steven e. streight | March 31, 2008 at 03:32 PM
I'd poke fun at you, except I got taken in by TheUnFunded.com ... so I have no legs on which to stand whilst poking. Sorry compadre!
Posted by: Jeremy Wright | March 31, 2008 at 04:25 PM
Well, Hell Jeremy, I feel better now knowing my naivete has company... BTW, I have this Bridge in Brooklyn I'm trying to sell.
Posted by: shel israel | March 31, 2008 at 05:01 PM
Why didn't you take the time to contact him about this before posting a derogatory blog post? Just curious.
Posted by: Steve Bostedor | April 03, 2008 at 01:04 PM
Steve, You raise a good point. But Darren was the source of info on Darren. I am not a paid journalist, but most newspapers would take his published for what he's doing. Someone who blogs mostly for free, is unlikely to get to that level of fact checking. Even if I had made the effort, my guess is that Darren would have just pulled my chain further.
That being said, bloggers should be more vigilant in fact-checking.
Posted by: shel israel | April 03, 2008 at 01:22 PM