Dishonesty Hits Twitter

Twitter is a wonderful community as you should know by now. There are lots of interesting people to network with and learn from. But just like every other social networking site on the planet, marketers are finding ways to monetize this community. There is nothing wrong in making money online. But there is something wrong about claiming that you have “unlocked” a Twitter formula that allows you to gain thousands of followers fast when you are just gaming the system. There are people who have a lot of followers. Some of them have grown their followers’ list organically, while others have used gimmicks to get people to follow them. Not all of these people have unlocked a hidden formula for success on Twitter.

There are many ways to gain followers on Twitter. The easiest way is by following lots of people and hoping for them to return the favor. You can then use a service such as FriendorFollow to remove those folks who are not following you and go at it again. There is nothing wrong with this approach as long as you are not following just about everyone. If you truly want to follow super interesting people in your niche, this is the way to go. But, this is not a tactic that should be monetized. It’s dishonest for someone to claim they have unlocked a winning formula on Twitter when they haven’t. It’s one thing to have 20,000 follow you when you are following only 1000 people. It’s another thing to have a 50K/20K following to followers ratio.

Another dubious tactic used by marketers on Twitter involves them abusing the website URL section on their profiles. It’s one thing to enter your site and have a landing page about a product you are hoping to sell. It’s another thing to follow thousands of people and hope for them to check your affiliate link and get you some passive revenue. As long as you are providing value to others, the community may not mind you making some money in the process. But it’s really hard to tell what your intentions are when your profile link is a Clickbank affiliate link!

Ultimately, the Twitter community is very smart, and it rarely falls for aggressive marketing tactics. If you provide value to the community, you are going to get value in return. But if you just want to go in there, and promote affiliate products, you are going to lose your credibility. And that is something you can’t get back that easily.

Your take: what’s frustrates you the most about Twitter?

Can Twitter Get You Fired?

Can you get fired using Twitter? Yes you can. There are two way you can get fired using Twitter or any Web 2.0 service for that mater:

• Tweeting @ Work: You can indeed get fired for tweeting at work, and there is no way really to hide it. If you think that you can cover up your monitor and nobody will find out, then you are mistaken. If you use Twitter heavily at work, there is a good chance that your IT will see the outgoing traffic, and they will notify you and your boss about your situation. If you can explain it away, then there will be no issues. But if your job has nothing to do with Web 2.0, twitter, or anything close to that, then you can get reprimanded or fired.
• Status Tweeting: I had a friend who got fired for using Twitter to show what he was doing during a particular day which he was supposed to be sick. He had this whole twitter thing going on from the beach. Sure enough, the employer checked the twitter account and called him up the same day to fire him. I know it’s cruel, but if you lie about your situation to your employer, then anything is fair game. I never get why people need to update their status on Twitter or FaceBook when they are clearly lying. Not that I condone lying to your employer, but if you must, then go do your thing, and don’t put it on FaceBook or Twitter. These sites are public places and there is a good chance people will find out what you are doing there, and you could get in trouble.

When it comes to using the social networking sites, don’t disclose anything that you don’t want to and you don’t have to. Once you put something up on Twitter and people see it, you may not be able to take it back! I did that once on my GTalk and I learned my lesson the hardway.

FaceBook Means Business

So what’s wrong with having the ability to poke your friends with a knife (digital knife)? No harm no foul, right? Wrong! Facebook showed today that they mean business as they killed an application that allowed users to superpoke their friends with a knife. I am not going to argue whether FaceBook is right or wrong here. There is a good lesson here for all of us to learn. Social networks are public places, and whatever you do there can be seen by employers, colleagues, and your enemies. So if you are a politician and are having an affair, you don’t change your marital status to complicated from married as you sure going to get some coverage for doing that. That’s an extreme example but do not use Facebook to:

You may try to hide your identity and do the above things, but if a connection is found between you and these comments, you can pretty much kiss your future goodbye. And you can be prosecuted to the full extend of law for harassing others on the Internet, so don’t think for a second that FaceBook is a playground that anything goes. Play it safe and avoid nasty surprises.