If you can’t beat them — that is, get annoyed at the ludicrous nature of follower obsession — join them.
Who made money in the gold rush? The hundreds of thousands of folk who went to find gold? Or the people who sold’em spades?
😉
Enter my new business.
I will sell you 1,000 followers for $99 on-off fee. Payable by PayPal.
You won’t get 1,000 added to your list in 20 seconds. Oh no. That would look suspect.
Instead we’re going to automate the following process over 2 weeks. You’ll get 15 joins in the space of two minutes.
And then you’ll see join notifications come in every 20-45 minutes until you’ve got a glorious 1,000 new followers.
But don’t worry, each of the accounts that will follow you has it’s own picture, biography and publishes one or two updates per week. They’re all given genuine names so that if I look down your follow list, I’d never know you’d bought 1,000 of them.
If you’d like to upgrade your account to ‘GOLD’ status — that’s $100 a month — every follower will click on any links you provide in your Tweets. For a one-time $500 fee, we will also provide you with 250 extra Facebook friends and 200 LinkedIn contacts.
Further, on a random basis, a random number of your 1,000 followers (between 56 and 367) will retweet your Tweets to their followers. Helping boost you up the charts and make anyone following you think you’ve got a massive, massive cock.
We’ll be launching soon.
Not quite.
I’m just working on the messaging now:
Are you rubbish? Do you have only 200 followers or less?
Do your friends look at you in the gym and think, ‘what a shit number of followers he’s got?’Well, no longer. Not with our new patented TwitFollowGrow service. YOURS for just $99.
But order now.
Supplies are limited!
You and I both know that if I actually did this, I’d make a ton of money. How many PR firms, social media experts and bloggers would take one look at this offer and get their PayPal details out?
Tons. Tons. Tons.
You'd make a ton of money… but a little bit of your soul would die 🙂
Sounds like something Time Life sells.. It can be all mine for 5 easy installments of £19.99.. Plus £19.99 p&p. But wait, what's that you say, if I buy now, I also get 50 bonus Facebook friends, 200 LinkedIn 'e-recruitment specialists' and an invite to 78 other shitty business or social networking tools? BRILLIANT. I'll get my coat.
(Possibly your greatest EVER post)
I completely forgot the other sites. I'm going to do an update…
Fabulous idea! Beats £12k to read a blog 😉
Incidentally, the technology for this would scale quite well, since you wouldn't have to have a distinct 1,000 for each of your customers. Some of your daemons could follow multiple clients (and some non-paying people too… just to blur the social graph out a bit).
Seriously, you could run this off a few hours of coding and a few dollars month. I know you're joking, but I bet someone's thinking about it… 😉
James, I actually gave quite a bit of thought to this. I agree with you, it would be a piece of piss to knock-up. And what's more, it would be 100% valuable and accurate. No one would notice. You could easily prevent Twitter from recognising what's going on.
I gave a lot of thought to it. It would have been highly, highly ironic to have made a pile of cash from this. I estimated at least 1,000 orders in the first 30 days. It's just not me.
It's the same reason I walked away from the ringtone market back when it was a booming business and no one had really noticed. It was just shite. I don't like doing shite business.
Heh…. Good luck to he (or she) who makes the service.
You don't even need to make fake profiles.. Just outsource the profiles to be real people… Call centres are already there, just get them all to join twitter.. Oh I love this concept. I'd do it just for the pure amusement… no financial gain needed. I'm speccing it for rentacoder now.
Anarchy2.0
Excellent idea (in a selling-your-soul kinda way). Reminds me of http://www.usersubmitter.com, which claimed to do the same for Digg.
Love the way you think Ewan. Keep up those great ideas coming even if they're toungue in cheek
this is funny: http://is.gd/nAjj I liked the comments too. **My new business: 1,000 Twitter followers for $99**
Thanks Jim — super to hear from you!
I'm not going to tell you how far I'd got before I realised you weren't completely serious, and were in fact only a little bit serious. Too good.
RT @Moof: RT @Ew4n: My new business: 1,000 Twitter followers for $99 http://bit.ly/SYKW5
My new business: 1,000 Twitter followers for $99: Just plain funny..and I agree people may pay for that! http://tinyurl.com/dnzvlx
dick.
Sorry were you looking for the sign-up link?
can you automate my feed too
Yeah for an extra fee we can run your entire online life…
RT @mobilezeitgeist Reading: “My new business: 1,000 Twitter followers for $99 | Mobile Industry Review” ( http://tinyurl.com/cenyh7 )
I'm not so convinced that anyone who knew what they were doing would buy into that. It's pretty widely understood that quality of follower (right demographic etc) is of much more importance than quantity. But then i guess the key phrase is “anyone who knew what they were doing”, and there are many thousands who don't.
Go for it.
Sounds like something Time Life sells.. It can be all mine for 5 easy installments of £19.99.. Plus £19.99 p&p. But wait, what's that you say, if I buy now, I also get 50 bonus Facebook friends, 200 LinkedIn 'e-recruitment specialists' and an invite to 78 other shitty business or social networking tools? BRILLIANT. I'll get my coat.
(Possibly your greatest EVER post)
I completely forgot the other sites. I'm going to do an update…
Fabulous idea! Beats £12k to read a blog 😉
You doggie dog you.
Incidentally, the technology for this would scale quite well, since you wouldn't have to have a distinct 1,000 for each of your customers. Some of your daemons could follow multiple clients (and some non-paying people too… just to blur the social graph out a bit).
Seriously, you could run this off a few hours of coding and a few dollars month. I know you're joking, but I bet someone's thinking about it… 😉
James, I actually gave quite a bit of thought to this. I agree with you, it would be a piece of piss to knock-up. And what's more, it would be 100% valuable and accurate. No one would notice. You could easily prevent Twitter from recognising what's going on.
I gave a lot of thought to it. It would have been highly, highly ironic to have made a pile of cash from this. I estimated at least 1,000 orders in the first 30 days. It's just not me.
It's the same reason I walked away from the ringtone market back when it was a booming business and no one had really noticed. It was just shite. I don't like doing shite business.
Heh…. Good luck to he (or she) who makes the service.
You don't even need to make fake profiles.. Just outsource the profiles to be real people… Call centres are already there, just get them all to join twitter.. Oh I love this concept. I'd do it just for the pure amusement… no financial gain needed. I'm speccing it for rentacoder now.
Anarchy2.0
Excellent idea (in a selling-your-soul kinda way). Reminds me of http://www.usersubmitter.com, which claimed to do the same for Digg.
this is funny: http://is.gd/nAjj I liked the comments too. **My new business: 1,000 Twitter followers for $99**
RT @Moof: RT @Ew4n: My new business: 1,000 Twitter followers for $99 http://bit.ly/SYKW5
Love the way you think Ewan. Keep up those great ideas coming even if they're toungue in cheek
My new business: 1,000 Twitter followers for $99: Just plain funny..and I agree people may pay for that! http://tinyurl.com/dnzvlx
Thanks Jim — super to hear from you!
1000 Twitter followers for 99$ !!! what do you think? http://snurl.com/dyfxu
I'm not going to tell you how far I'd got before I realised you weren't completely serious, and were in fact only a little bit serious. Too good.
RT @mobilezeitgeist Reading: “My new business: 1,000 Twitter followers for $99 | Mobile Industry Review” ( http://tinyurl.com/cenyh7 )
dick.
Sorry were you looking for the sign-up link?
can you automate my feed too
Yeah for an extra fee we can run your entire online life…
I'm not so convinced that anyone who knew what they were doing would buy into that. It's pretty widely understood that quality of follower (right demographic etc) is of much more importance than quantity. But then i guess the key phrase is “anyone who knew what they were doing”, and there are many thousands who don't.
Go for it.
1000 Twitter followers for 99$ !!! what do you think? http://snurl.com/dyfxu
I will sell you 1,000 followers for $99 on-off fee. Payable by PayPal. http://tinyurl.com/cenyh7 LOL
I will sell you 1,000 followers for $99 on-off fee. Payable by PayPal. http://tinyurl.com/cenyh7 LOL
how not to use twitter: guy selling $1000 followers for $99 http://tinyurl.com/cenyh7 sheesh!
RT @whatsnext: how not to use twitter: guy selling 1000 followers for $99 http://tinyurl.com/cenyh7 sheesh!
RT @whatsnext how not to use twitter: guy selling $1000 followers for $99 http://tinyurl.com/cenyh7 sheesh! – I thought it was real at first
how not to use twitter: guy selling $1000 followers for $99 http://tinyurl.com/cenyh7 sheesh!
RT @whatsnext: how not to use twitter: guy selling 1000 followers for $99 http://tinyurl.com/cenyh7 sheesh! <Now, that’s just WRONG>
RT @whatsnext: how not to use twitter: guy selling 1000 followers for $99 http://tinyurl.com/cenyh7 sheesh!
RT @whatsnext how not to use twitter: guy selling $1000 followers for $99 http://tinyurl.com/cenyh7 sheesh! – I thought it was real at first