The Twitter Scam: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About TweepMe … But Were Afraid to Ask

I usually post my blog entries in my native language (German). But, since writing my initial post on TweepMe (“There’s a sucker born every minute”), I’ve been pretty active in the English-language Twitter debates. And I’ve saved quite a few bookmarks (on TweepMe and Twitter in general) which I’d like to share here.

Let’s recapitulate (for those who still haven’t heard of TweepMe): In a Twitter message dated March 11, 2009, a web designer and programmer from Indianapolis, Robert Ullery of bobbr.com, first promoted his new service TweepMe as „the fastest way to get Twitter Followers“: „When a new member joins, every other member automatically follows the new member, and the new member follows them back. The process is gradual and happens over the course of weeks or months depending on the number of TweepMe members.“

In the first few days of the TweepMe promotion, new users were only able to obtain the „free lifetime subscription“ by sending one of the following two spam messages via Twitter (see screenshot below). The spam was being sent in their name because they were naive enough to give up their Twitter passwords to TweepMe.

TweepMe: No. 1 Twitter Spam Generator

The TweepMe spam started to become a major annoyance on Twitter around March 16, 2009 (maybe earlier).

Here is a (biased) selection of tweets about TweepMe:

Cory O’Brien: >> I can confidently say that I don’t want 99% of the people that would use a service like #TweepMe to follow me. << (7:49 PM Mar 16th)

Suzanne Azzopardi: >> Twitter-help for those who don’t write interesting enough tweets/who don’t have any friends. Pointless. << (6:13 PM Mar 18th)

Alex S. Brown: >> found http://www.tweepme.com – A new, useless twitter-follower scheme. Who needs random followers who do not really read your posts?? << (6:05 PM Mar 18th)

F. Andy Seidl: >> The one thing all tweepme members have in common is followers that have nothing in common. << (9:23 PM Mar 18th)

pjebsen: >> The free #TweepMe memberships are gone. 5,000 suckers gave up their #Twitter passwords to spammin‘ bobbr (who lost his Twitter account). << (11:35 PM Mar 18th)

pjebsen: >> VirginIncVuture #TweepMe doesn’t even work yet. I have test accts. with disposable Twitter IDs. In 2 days, they gained <20 followers each. << (6:19 PM Mar 19th)

Joel Berger: >> @carlywalasinski Simple, TwitPic adds value, #TweepMe highlights what a loser you are. If you want to friend-whore, go back to MySpace.<< (about 17 hours ago)

Tamura Jones: >> TweepMe member directory: a public display of twits you should not hesitate to unfollow. << (about 8 hours ago)

pjebsen: >> Since the 5000 free subscriptions peak, #TweepMe’s user count declines. @bobbr may be stuck with the server costs but w/o paying customers. << (about 2 hours ago )

Additional reading material:

March 16th, 2009

Cheryl Harrison/Being Cheryl: „Twitter is not a numbers game, TweepMe“
(A sensible first look a some twitter-ers‘ ranking mania)

March 17th, 2009

Skinny White Boy: „#tweepme = scam“
(I agree with SWB’s point of view, although – contrary to him – I wouldn’t call the people behind TweepMe „Spammer Assholes“. For whatever reason, he posted hostile tweets in my direction – but I still recommend his blog post.)

Arleen Anderson/Aloha Arleen: „To TweepMe or Not to TweepMe“
(A sloppily researched puff piece which quite a few of Arleen’s <60,000 followers praised for its supposed research, for reasons I’d rather not delve into – I don’t want to post personal insults here.;-) )

Nikki Pilkington/Business on Twitter: „@TweepMe suspended by Twitter – not a moment too soon!“
(A look into the reasons behind the suspension of Robert Ullery’s @TweepMe account. Bobby’s @bobbr account was suspended as well. He now is promoting TweepMe with a third account, @Tweep_Me.)

March 18th, 2009

Edward Lewis/SEO Consultants Directory: „Twitter Self Replicating Human Virus“
(A convincing anti-TweepMe rant)

Arleen Anderson/Aloha Arleen: The Real Scoop on TweepMe.com
(Unreal! An embarrassingly sycophantic interview with Robert Ullery, spiked with Arleen’s ecstatic „Fabulous!!!“ exclamations.)

Edward Lewis/pageoneresults: The Unreal Scoop on TweepMe.com
(A convincing anti-AlohaArleen rant)

Kevin Palmer/Social Media Answers: „Aloha Arleen Misleads Readers with TweepMe Promotion: TweepMe is like every MySpace friend train utterly worthless“
(Puts the current ranking game into a historical perspective.)

Alister Cameron: „Twitter: get as many followers as you can, as fast as you can!“
(I don’t agree with his arguments in favor of TweepMe, but at least he is able to argue rationally – contrary to uncritical TweepMe promoters like AlohaArleen.)

March 20th, 2009

Tamura Jones/Modern Software Experience: „TweepMe“
(A must-read! An insightful, well-written overview of @bobbr’s project.)

About 260 TweepMe customers are participating in the Customer Support Community for TweepMe. Unfortunately, @bobbr is deleting posts he seems to consider too critical.

Finally, an explanation of Twitter which TweepMe lovers and haters may agree on. 😉

*******

Here are some additional blog posts which may make sense to you even if you don’t speak German. 😉