As a test, about 2 years ago, I created ~50 completely automated Twitter profiles. The Tweets were generated using Google Alerts for a subject (say, “urban apparel”) and were filtered through Yahoo Pipes to remove certain types of useless content from the RSS feed. Then the feed went plugged into an rss-to-twitter web app. I didn’t ever try to friend any other user, but waited for users to find these accounts, perhaps through Twitter search. I used another web app to autofollow those who followed me.

Now, about 20 of the 50 were shut down by Twitter. Maybe 5 I shut down myself, for various reasons. About 25 are still running, and gaining followers on a weekly basis… I estimate about 25,000 followers across these 25 profiles right now.

These 25,000 followers still engage with the profiles through replies or RT’s or DM’s somewhat frequently (and, occasionally I reply, though infrequently and through DM). I’ve received praise on them from my followers a few dozen times. I honestly believe I’ve helped people with my newsfeeds, even though at their creation, I never intended to. In fact, I’ve even contacted local PR and journalism students for my regional accounts in recent efforts to de-automate the accounts.

So, was it ethical or appropriate to use automated tools? I think, in the case of these profiles, it absolutely was. But only because I haven’t abused them… I haven’t been pumping them full of affiliate links or using them to try and connect with everybody and their mother. That stuff deserves a quick ban from the lords of Twitter.

It all depends on the delivery. The experience. The expectations.

Hey, thanks for the extremely thought-provoking article. All the best,

Glenn Friesen

AL

What could I do with 5348957823462378 new followers which I don’t know, which are not interested in what I do or which are bots ?

And there’s nothing wrong with unfollowing. Following is for free, unfollowing as well

Filter, filter, filter. And if you remove someone really important by mistake, you’ll certainly stumble upon him or her later on.

Birdie

Thanks for your comments. I’ll have to agree with you that you will get better quality followers if you do it all manually yourself. You say if you’re busy you’d rather pay someone to do it for you.

Well, that’s the same thing as automation isn’t it? You have no control of what goes on. You’re either at the mercy of some software or a person. Granted, if given a choice I’d choose the person if I knew I could trust them.

Later,
Jeff Sargent

To answer your question Omar, whether or not these automated tools let you identify the types of people you add is a very good one. Unfortunately one I can’t answer because I don’t use them. But, I’m going to venture a guess that some of them don’t because of the type of people that are following these huge lists. There are people out there that have as many as 500,000 followers. I go in and look at some of the followers and they are selling porn or some other undesirable product. So when I see this I have to assume that either they don’t get to see what type of people are following them or that they just don’t care. It’s clearly a numbers game to see who can get the most followers. Let’s face it, who really needs half a million followers.

Later,
Jeff Sargent

A question I have is, don’t these tools let you identify the types of people you would like to add? This would eliminate the problem, and be beneficial for everyone…