MyTwitterButler.com has posted on their site that they received a letter from Twitter claiming several violations of the Twitter terms of service.  The details including a PDF of the letter sent to the site owner can be viewed here.  While the site owner claims they are being sued, that does not yet appear to be the case.  In fact, the PDF outlines the various violations this site has in regards to Twitter and their terms of service.

Site Background

A quick background on MyTwitterButler is that they sell a desktop application to help Twitter users get more followers.  Twitter has been known to be against “aggressive following” and it appears that is what they consider this application to do.  While Twitter never clearly defines what “aggressive following” is, it leaves it up to speculation of the developers and users. Looking at the developer terms of service, it simply says:

Do not create a bot to promote mass following. Twitter enables users to find and connect with people. Mass following does not help users find interesting connections. Applications found to be promoting valueless mass-following or following-ponzi schemes will be promptly blacklisted. So please, spend your time developing something that helps users find people with interesting connections.

As you can see, the definition of “mass following” is not clearly defined. However, alot of Twitter activity is based on third party apps that make the use of Twitter more efficient.  What is the real difference if you manually go through the Twitter search to find new users to add based on your interests/keyword opposed to using an application that automates the process for you?  You can save countless hours with the help of an application that does this.  In fact, MyTwitterButler allows you to search for users based on keywords. Therefore, I would think this application could be classified as “something that helps users find people with interesting connections” in reference to the last sentence quoted above. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I shared my thoughts on the use of automated direct messages on Twitter.  I do take the time to read each message in my Twitter inbox, which unfortunately most of the time are pretty lame.

For example, the ones where you can learn how to get 16,000 followers from someone who themself only has a few hundred followers.  Or the ones where you get the “free gift” after signing up for a crappy newsletter/autoresponder series.  However, I have been around long enough to have seen some pretty creative DM’s.  Below I will share some of the better ones I have come across.

If you hate getting catchy songs stuck in your head, this one was derived from a McDonald’s commercial.  You know the one with the singing bass on the wall talking Read the rest of this entry »

Or is it?  An interesting comment was brought up that I thought I would like to address regarding direct messages on Twitter.  This is not the first time this question has been posed, but it is one that always seems to have a “gray” area in my opinion.  Should Twitter users utilize automated direct messages within their account?

The Rundown

There are several sites that you can use to setup automated welcome direct messages in your Twitter account.  I am not going to beat around the bush and say that ploked does not use this tool.  For those who don’t know what an automated DM is, it is basically an automated/scheduled welcome message that is sent out to welcome your new followers.

The Pros

Face it, anything that helps automate or save you a few minutes of time can be a worthy tool if PROPERLY used.  When I say properly used, I mean this in that you use it to engage your follower with some information about who you are, what you do, or what you think about a certain topic.  Not something about getting rich quick, gaining 16,000 followers, or seeing more scantily clad pics of you.

Most of us probably do not have the time to manually go through all our new users and send them a welcome message, so this can be a Read the rest of this entry »