TrueTwit Is The Devil
Update: Seems that TrueTwit has brought out their “premium” paid model where you aren’t forced to TT your potential followers. Sounds more like blackmail than a service.
Update 2: How are you supposed to validate if the fraking site is down? Screenshot at very bottom. FAIL.
There are many great services popping up in the Twitter ecosphere, but there is one that I fail to understand. This wouldn’t be a big deal if I could just ignore it, but it is forced upon me. There is also a viral mechanism in play that is causing this dreadful service to propagate and I can barely stand it anymore. I left a comment on their blog and sent a message to their Twitter account about this negative viral impact. The blog comment was deleted within 24 hours. The service I speak of is TrueTwit (no link for you!).
This is what the service does:
Stop wasting time with spammers on twitter. We will validate your followers so you don’t have to.
Use Case
A bit of head scratching later, I realized this service is catered to those that auto-follow. If you didn’t, you could weed out the spammers/bots yourself.
Flaws In This Model
- Auto-Followers are most likely to be spammers/bots themselves.
- Putting up barriers for followers is only going to turn people off.
- If you don’t auto-follow, what difference does it make that a spammer is following you?
Negative Virality
This is where things really start to suck. According to the site, you can bypass all this CAPTCHA nonsense if you sign up with the service. What isn’t apparent is that when you sign up, you become one of them, now making your potential followers jump through hoops. And on it goes.
Much anecdotal evidence points to these facts:
- Using the service will greatly decrease your followers
- People aren’t always aware that they have been assimilated
I’ve attempted to discuss these problems with the service, but they are unwilling. I could be wrong about all this and this service could be the best thing since sliced bread, but I don’t see the light.
Please post a comment on your thoughts of this service. I’m very interested in what you have to say.
Comments RSSComments
If your profile is not protected, a bot can follow you whether you like it or not - either through a regular web request or through the Twitter API. A CAPTCHA slows me down when a) when usually all I have to do to follow back is reply to an email and b) when TrueTwit goes down (which is pretty frequent).
I am interested as well.. I have never seen the point of these services as well as the auto-reply DMs when you follow them. If anything it's extra spam and quite annoying!
I hate TrueTwit. It's like a slap in the face to anyone wanting to follow somebody new.
Who in the hell cares who's following you? I'm far more concerned with who I'm following.
On the "If you don’t auto-follow, what difference does it make that a spammer is following you?" point, I've found that i get more spammers following me if I'm on another spammer's follows list so using this service might make it so I get few to zero spammer follow notifications flooding my inbox and only get relevant ones. But I find that just blocking/reporting spammers quickly keeps these to a minimum and means legit followers don't have to jump through hoops.
Hmm … I can't find where they let you post on their blog. And when I've asked them questions in Email, they always respond.
I guess they removed the ability to comment on the blog. I've only attempted to contact them through twitter.
The block/report as spam features work well and Twitter is usually quick to respond.
But isn't that the point? Decide who to follow? TrueTwit tries to give you information to make a better decision.
I don't ever remember there being a way to comment on the blog. I could be wrong. Not sure contacting somebody like TrueTwit through Twitter will be too effective. They likely get zillions of DMs per day.
What information do they provide beyond the follower's ability to fill out a CAPTCHA. The only case where this would be sufficient is if you auto-follow.
It was with @ messages. This was a while back when. I'm not too interested in contacting them anymore.
I don’t do auto following, so question: Who wants a computer autobuilding a profile of them, from their tweets, so it can more effectively do it’s masters bidding? Since when did filling out a CATCHPA slow anyone down?
TrueTwit is PITA. Just unfollow anyone who bugs you with it.
Any thoughts on this? Is it good to have this service or not? #TureTwit http://bit.ly/5S1×7J
This comment was originally posted on Twitter