Jeremy Tanner Life in Boulder: Every day an adventure.

Hate the Player It’s Not a Game

“Don’t hate the player, hate the game” refers to jealousy over success that’s attained by operating within the rules. People operating outside the rules… Well, hate away. Earlier in the week I was talking with a few friends about Twitter Spam / Blackhatting twitter. (The old “Force follow” trick, grinding / churning accounts, probing for accounts set to auto-follow) I’m all for people using Twitter and other services for whatever purpose they want, so long as they’re honest about it. Sure, build an “Elite Power Account”, but don’t call yourself expert, maven, guru, or coach. Spamming Twitter does not make you a Premier Thought Leader. It makes you an Idiot. A paper millionaire with a fistful of Enron stock. The numbers are impressive, but have no value outside of impressing people who don’t know any better. Sure, being legitimate is slow going, but there’s really not an alternative. When it comes down to it, wouldn’t you prefer an address book full of people that matter rather than a stack of phonebooks full of people who couldn’t care less?

“Sure, build an “Elite Power Account”, but don’t call yourself expert, maven, guru, or coach. Spamming Twitter does not make you a Premier Thought Leader. It makes you an Idiot.”

Amen.

I propose a filter that simply eliminates anyone with “expert” or “social media” in their bio-line. Too harsh?

When I think about how quickly social networks like Twitter allow us to build relationships it seems awful silly to try to push the river. If you just work it by being interested in others and *their* work, things really can take off despite any number of mistakes you might make while wading in. Just try to connect others with the people and things that are important to them. Period.

You summed it up brilliantly with your question, “When it comes down to it, wouldn’t you prefer an address book full of people that matter rather than a stack of phonebooks full of people who couldn’t care less?”

Well put — you rock!

@Grant The site that aggregates favorited tweets, Favrd runs a no-webcock algorithm that weeds out the experts, mavens, gurus and charlatans. It’s nice.

Great post — short and to the point. I love the Enron stock analogy. And the phone books.

My advice to fellow Twitter users: DON’T auto-follow ANYONE and DO block any obvious spammers. If we all played by these two rules of thumb, there would be a lot fewer Twitter spammers out there.

Amen, Jeremy. I was introducing a bunch of marketers to Twitter this week, and the thing I stressed over and over was that you have to treat it like building an old-fashioned word-of-mouth business. Nobody wants to talk to the guy at the cocktail party (“That Guy”) who shakes your hand with his business card at the ready, only to cycle on to the next person immediately.

I’ll point out your post to the group I talked to — it’s much pithier than what I said!

Another great post. The twitter ‘glitterati’ are becoming harder to distinguish when half of their followers are not legit. I may have less than 75 followers, but I know each by name.

I saw a post on andrew hydes blog similar to this one. What I can’t wrap my head around is why anyone would care who followed them. I don’t care if one person or 60,000 people follow me. I don’t care if they are spammers or gurus or n00bs or you. How do spammers who follow you affect your experience on twitter? Is it bad (i.e. ruining your twitter experience) that others are following people without discretion? Is it bad if others use twitter as a popularity contest or vanity tool. How is this ruining your experience? And lastly why would you care what they call themselves?

Don’t get me wrong, I think the people who conducting in this “spamming” behavior are doing themselves a disservice. But I’m really not too concerned about them.

@hubs How spammers affect me: I get no-value emails from people who’ve already unfollowed by the time I open it. More and more all the time. Why do I care what people call themselves? Spammers poison the well and cast doubt upon legitimate users. Carried to the extreme, not just anyone can call themselves “Doctor”. This prevents a plumber who needs some extra cash from performing open heart surgery. By not calling out spammers who leverage their spam-built numbers to claim expertise, people who don’t know any better are led down the wrong path. That may be becoming spammers themselves or hiring one of these charlatans.

Jeremy

[...] Hate the Player It’s Not a Game – Jeremy Tanner Jeremy gives a great break down of a growing phenomenon in Social Media where people are using blackhat techniques to game Twitter. Anyone who just started on Twitter and has more than 10K followers is either a Spammer or already famous IRL. (tags: twitter spam) [...]

Jeremy

I happen to be the premier, leading expert, maven, thought guru on blogs posts about Twitter Spamming. Although I agree 100% percent with what you are saying at least 65% of me does not. If I could use a ratio 4 out of 5 parts of me agree and 6 out 7 do not.

If you would like some more info about my confusing mathematical equation please send me $500 to

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[...] Hate the Player It’s Not a Game – Jeremy Tanner tells it like it is Re: Twitter spammers who call themselves gurus, mavens, etc. [...]

[...] coach. Spamming Twitter does not make you a Premiere Thought Leader. It makes you an Idiot.” Jeremy Tanner [...]

[...] that this buys them protection or leverage.  And they are wrong on both counts.  As my friend Jeremy likes to say: “Sure, build an ‘Elite Power Account’, but don’t call yourself [...]

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