Dear TweepMe member. I wrote this article especially for you. It may help you understand why Twitter seems to have changed so much. To summarise: It’s not Twitter, it’s you - but I am getting ahead of myself. I’ll try explain the changes you are experiencing in easy to comprehend, byte-sized chunks.
First of all, you misunderstood Twitter, and not just a little bit. You misunderstood it big time. You totally missed the point. Twitter is not a numbers game. It does not matter how many people follow you. If anything matters at all, then what matters is whether the right people read you.
Admittedly, number do a play a small part in that. Picky readers are likely to only follow those who built up a respectable following already. No need to explain that. We all started with zero followers. Most people have no trouble understanding that you’d like to hurry your Twitter status along.
Services like Twitter Grader are a highly popular. It would sure be nice to be seen as part of its so-called Twitter Elite, at least for your own home town. It would be nice to able to brag about on your blog. You don’t need to explain that either.
Really, don’t bother explaining yourself. We totally grok your motivation for your despicable decision. It tells us a lot about you. Among other things, that you did think this through at all.
There are perfectly natural explanations for the weirdness you are experiencing right now. All these things that seems, you know, just a little bit off, are the result of your new-found status as a TweepMe Turd.
You had no trouble convincing yourself that not signing up would be denying yourself the followers you so richly deserve.
You understand perfectly well that is simply unrealistic to expect the instant gratification of overnight success.
When you saw the TweepMe spam, you knew there had to be catch. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. You decided to join anyway. What you are experiencing now is just a consequence of that decision.
You did not find it hard to rationalise your decision; a free lifetime subscription for the first five thousands people smart enough to make a quick decision, how can you beat that? And if you were too late to qualify for this fantastic early bird offer, you would at least get five thousand extra followers for a nominal fee. You had no trouble convincing yourself that not signing up would be denying yourself the followers you so richly deserve.
Maybe you joined for free, maybe you are affluent enough to regard TweepMe’s rather steep monthly fee as mere pocket change. Anyway, even if you never paid a dime, joining TweepMe may be the most expensive mistake you ever made.
Not only did you just throw away your credibility in exchange for a few followers, the real catch, the one thing that is going to make you regret your decision, is the TweepMe Effect.
You joined TweepMe out of greed for social status, and that is exactly what you are not going to get, that it what it is going to cost you. That’s the catch. That’s the TweepMe Effect.
You are reading this because you are beginning to feel the TweepMe Effect already, and are worried about the strange way Twitter seems to be changing around you, the odd things that seem to be happening, and the things that are not happening. You do not need to be paranoid to notice changes. Perhaps it helps to be paranoid, but rest assured that the changes you are noticing are real, that those changes are because of you, and yes, everyone is out to get you. Well, it is really more accurate to say that everyone is out to lose you, but you get the idea.
Did you join TweepMe hoping for the TweepMe Effect to launch you into the Twitter stratosphere? Then take some time out to prepare for the real TweepMe effect to kick in: You smartest followers will unfollow you. Twitter rating services will give you a big fat zero. Tweeple suggestions services will actively remove you from their follow recommendations. Twitter clients will filter you out. While you are reading this, others are busy erasing you from the Twitterverse. Really.
See, there may be five thousand of you, but there are millions of us - and we don’t like you. We don’t like you at all. We want nothing to do with you.
You threw away the last remains of your self-respect when you decided to spam all your followers in exchange for a free membership in this disservice.
Joining TweepMe is expensive, very expensive. You threw away the last remains of your self-respect when you decided to spam all your followers in exchange for a free membership in this disservice.
Some followers who fell for your spam may be less than pleased with you for recommending this disservice to you. Okay, let’s be honest here, that was an understatement; all of them are less than pleased with you and some are truly pissed at you for leading them astray. Others, who who did not follow your suggestion, are likely to lose whatever respect they had for you as soon as they figure out what all the TweepMe talk is about, and replace it with deeply felt contempt for you and your ilk.
You may be about to gain thousands of followers, but that journey is likely to start with many of your current followers, the ones that actually followed you to, you know, read your tweets, deciding that you have proven yourself so untrustworthy that you are no longer worthy of their follow. don’t blame them for that; if you so clearly don’t trust your own tweets to be follow-worthy, why would anyone else?
Now imagine for a moment what may seem like the ideal TweepMe scenario to you; many other people join TweepMe, you all gain thousands of followers, and you all get an enviably high Twitter Grade as a result. Soon, the entire Twitter Elite consists of nothing but TweepMe members ruling the Twitterverse. Wonderful picture, isn’t it? Dream on for a while, cause it is not going to happen.
See, if this were to happen, those few million users you are trying to fool would notice that most tweeple with high grades are nothing but TweepMe Turds, that fill their profiles with nothing more interesting than boring tweets bragging about their Twitter statistics and grades and how influential they fancy themselves now.
Sure, you merely had one weak moment - and besides, TweepMe came highly
recommended from a trusted source!
Well, you are admittedly the exception to the rule, the one interesting user
in the boring bunch that made the unfortunate decision to use TweepMe, but you
do not need worry that about anyone noticing that. Rest assured that as
soon as they notice the familiar bunch of TweepMe follower icons, they will
simply back away from your profile without reading a word - and that is what
happens on one of your better day. I’ll explain in a minute or two that many
people are likely to never see your profile at all.
Let’s entertain the notion that you do manage to game the system by joining TweepMe for while - it still wouldn’t do you any good. See, if TweepMe were successful at manipulating Twitter Grader, people would notice that the rankings it produces have become untrustworthy and irrelevant. So, people would no longer trust Twitter Grader and look around for another, better grading service. Thus, TweepMe’s success is would destroy the relevance of that success. How is that for irony?
You may like to think you are buying followers, but you are only getting a number.
There are many way to calculate some kind of Twitter rank. The current thinking is shifting away from numbers such as how many followers and tweets you have, to indicators of how interesting you are, such as how often you are retweeted.
I am not calling attention to this trend to extol the virtues of a ReTweet Rank, but merely to drive home the point that all that TweepMe really offers you is a number on your profile. You may like to think you are buying followers, but you are only getting a number.
Having to read the tweet stream of the entire TweepMe Tribe should be classified as cruel and unusual punishment.
I should not have to explain this, surely you already know and understand this, but for the sake of completeness, here goes. You are the one interesting user who simply made an honest mistake, but the rest of the TweepMe Tribe is an incredibly boring bunch. These bores all joined TweepMe to increase their numbers, not because they expected to find your tweets engaging. It is natural that you do not plan to waste your time by reading their twits, and we can hardly you blame you for that. Having to read the tweet stream of the entire TweepMe Tribe should be classified as cruel and unusual punishment.
Problem is, these bores not only know how boring they are, they expect
every other TweepMe member to be as interesting and follow-worthy as they are.
They will never notice your brilliance, because they are not going to
read your tweets. They are not even going to look at your profile. They had already decided to unfollow your or
filter you out before they even knew your name. You will have thousands of
followers, but zero readers.
That’s the trouble with TweepMe. You can get ten thousand followers, but if none of these followers are actually reading your tweets, none are going to retweet them either, so your ReTweet Rank will be zero, and as the authority of grading systems swifts towards retweet rank, you will discover that being part of the TweepMe Tribe has made you even less relevant than before.
You spammed your followers with a scam. For that, you deserve to be unfollowed already.
Twitter may not bother to punish you for being a spammer. Twitter has shown
remarkable little interest in doing anything about spam yet. Yet, you are likely
to be punished for joining the TweepMe Tribe, not by twitter, but by all the
services around it.
The list of tweeple who spammed that message make up the TweepMe Tribe, and membership is for life.
Some of your old followers will unfollow you spontaneously when they understand what you did, but That’s nothing to what follows next.
Your Twitter fate was sealed the moment you allowed TweepMe to spam a message. You can delete that message from your personal tweet stream, but it continues to show up in Twitter search. It continues to show up on Google. Various services who monitor the Twitter stream have a complete list, and you are in it. The list of tweeple who spammed that message make up the TweepMe Tribe, and membership is for life.
I have little doubt that the various third-party Twitter ranking and follow suggestion services are busy creating a database of all who spammed a TweepMe sign-up message. They compile that information into TweepMe Trash database, and you are already in it. They use this database to keep their service as reliable as before.
don’t even think of blaming them for that or calling it unfair. They have little choice, They have to do this. After all, if TweepMe were to succeed in skewing their results, all their users would flock to another, more reliable ranking service.
They just believe in numbers just like you do, and when faced with a choice between retaining the trust of a few million users and pleasing the inflated egos of few thousand scammers, they make their choice without even bothering to explain it to you.
Various Twitter services compile that TweepMe Trash database in ready-to-use form and then use it to stay ahead of the TweepMe game. They use their TweepMe Trash database to avoid TweepMe from skewering their results, and improve their results instead; and that is when the TweepMe Effect kicks in.
What’s already happing to you to is a fate much worse than merely having your
account suspended. Grading services will give you a big fat zero. Recommendation services
will filter you out. Twitter directories will move you to the bottom of their list.
Leading Twitter clients will use their TweepMe Trash database to offer an Filter TweepMe Trash
option - and it will be on by default. The TweepMe Trash database will
be used to filter out your every tweet, and every link to your profile. More and
more tweeple will experience Twitter as if you were never there.
Your can cancel your TweepMe subscription, but not your TweepMe Turd status. Membership of the TweepMe Tribe is for life. Inclusion in the TweepMe Trash database lasts forever.
Your can cancel your TweepMe subscription, but not your TweepMe Turd status. Membership of the TweepMe Tribe is for life. Inclusion in the TweepMe Trash database lasts forever. It is a matter of public record, that will shame your family for generations to come.
There is no way out. It does not matter that you unsubscribed already. It does not matter that you understand you were wrong to join in the first place. It does not matter that you regret spamming your followers. Of course you’re saying all these things now that the Twitterverse seems to be dissolving around you, but those services are not going to bother trying to find out whether you are truthful. It does not matter to them.
What matters is that you joined the TweepMe Tribe. You were a willing and eager participant in a large-scale attempt to inflate follower counts. The evidence that you are a TweepMe Turd is incontrovertible. You created that evidence yourself. Your name is in every TweepMe Trash database now, and you have only yourself to blame for that.
The respect you were hoping to gain by scamming your way towards a huge number of followers to make you seem popular and interesting will not materialise. The masses that you were hoping to impress with your huge following with not even notice your profile. You are being blackballed. Tweeple are unfollowing and blocking you. Many are not even bothering doing it personally, but - oh, irony - using a bot that unfollows every TweepMe Turd they happen to follow.
There is a lot of irony here. You were hoping to game the system by joining TweepMe, but all you that really accomplished is a spam a message that let the world know you were trying to do so. You thus enabled others to compile your name into TweepMe Trash databases, which are being used to blacklist you. To summarise: You just managed to blacklist yourself.
Smart tweeple will use the various Twitter tools and services to filter and
route around the TweepMe Tribe. They will use bots to unfollow all TweepMe Turds. Many Twitterers will never be aware that you exist at all. By joining the TweepMe Tribe, you’ve doomed
yourself to a life of isolation, with nothing but other TweepMe Trash for company.
don’t blame TweepMe.
TweepMe did what you wanted it to do; it got you the followers you so richly deserve. Awesome!
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.