Twitter, YouTube and Communities via spam bots
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
In today’s society the fights we get into online often materialize in the real world, sometimes resulting in negative social interactions all together.
Lisa Nova likely used bots to build her friends and subscribers on YouTube and despite the backlash, is currently one of the most subscribed-to on YouTube.
I appreciate Ze Frank’s Color War approach, however I’m more fascinated in the relationship and the connections we make online. Ze started the game and everyone joined in to pick a team. Rocketboom founder, Andrew Baron, put up an auction on Ebay for his followers and has since taken the auction down. Both Ze and Andrew have a lot in common. They are creators of popular online shows, have the same birthday, went to the same schools and are currently experimenting with twitter to find the meaning to it. Weird.
At the time Twitter announced closing series A funding with Union Square Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and other angel investors - Andreessen, Costolo, Conway, and Ravikant - they also changed their terminology from “friend” to “follower.” It seems like they made the right move based on the low barrier to entry.
Chris Penn of financial aid podcast is an online community expert who shared his thoughts on what the relationship of a connection is worth and the recent Andrew Baron twitter auction on ebay. Just today, Andrew deleted the auction.
At the end of the day it’s interesting to see how many followers, connections and friends online actually translate to the real world.
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woo hoo first to comment. Sarah is the best.
ok i just watched the video… and again… ARGH i cant get enough of you. Damnit. Why are you so cute.
I’m getting on the plane (virgin Atlantic) going to London!
its for a web 2.0 conference held at a bar. Kevin Rose would love it!
cool, good luck with that.
Great show, best one yet that I’ve seen.
Congrats
Hey Sarah you should subscribe to me on YouTube :) http://www.youtube.com/ohmightyblog
@digitalbrian, you got it! Have you subscribed to me yet? Http://youtube.com/pop17
I am going to be the best subscriber!
Hi Sarah, I don’t get what all the controversy is about with selling a twitter account. If the new owner does use it for spamming or any other weird or uninteresting purpose then the followers just block that account. It’s not like your email is being directly given out that could be compromised.
And the same can be done for MySpace or Facebook, just cancel the friend or follower link.
I think the damage would be done with the seller and his or hers reputation rather than any issue with privacy of the follower. The only annoyance is receiving some initial spam or uninteresting message from the new owner.
Am I missing something? Maybe it was a slow internet day, and people wanted to complain about something.
Just take a look …it’s in a book …the Reading Rainbowwwwwww. II cannn do anythinggggggg. Great show, but don’t take my word for it….
Awesome video! You hit on a few topics but didn’t get as deep as I had hoped. You could do 5 more shows on this topic alone.
1) Using bots to create “bot” friends only makes you look popular. I wonder how many fake “bot-driven” users you need to have, to attract real users. Obviously it depends on the network. YouTube would be harder to “game” at this point than Twitter would be, I’d think. But I’d love to see the “add curve” of friends (real vs. bot).
2) How much is a friend worth? I think I saw your comment on TechCrunch Sarah, that you put it at $1. (Aw, Sarah, I thought I was worth more than that to ya!) I guess some friends are worth more than others, too.
3) How do you monetize friends? How are other people doing it?
4) How much do some of these friends-gaming sites cost that were mentioned on the video? I don’t want 1000 FAKE bot-friends. Say I want 1000 real followers; how much do I need to pay to build that base?
But yeah, the whole concept of a “market” for friend collections is fascinating. Don’t go selling me off, Sarah.
Wow that one was really funny Sarah. Loved the claws, lol
bleu
Sarah Meyers is awesome!
Hey, I will answer your questions asap. I have been traveling and at a conference and just now leaving out to do stuff and then go on a plane so I will brb.
@spaceguy, I don’t think it is a contraversial issue. Andrew says that people are interested because they want to figure out how to make money doing twitter.
http://news.google.com/news?oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&um=1&tab=wn&hl=en&q=%22andrew+baron%22&btnG=Search+News
*I mean controversial
@Chris, I was commenting on TechCrunch about the current bit on Andrews account. I don’t actually think my followers on twitter are worth $1 each because it is only what someone is willing to pay and I wouldn’t sell you guys!
If you were to built a base of friends on a social network you would have to go to a marketing agency that specializes in social networks. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of them. They would probably put together a campaign for you and depending on the size could range from 500-3,000 dollars.
I don’t know how to monetize friends and I think others don’t know either. That’s why this story is so fascinating to so many people.