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Is Twitter Working With PR Firms & Secretly Adding People To Your Feed?

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Sun 8th of Mar, 2009 10:00:13 AM

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been seeing some strange people pop up on my list of those who I follow and I’m not quite sure why.

As you can see from my Twitter profile HERE (and follow me but only if you want (Unlike some, I won’t force you or promise to follow you back…pathetic), I keep my followed list pretty slim with 370 people–most of whom are in finance, just for entertainment and to judge how much noise is actually out there since few/if any actually trade the stocks I like to trade.

But when I notice I’m following Alicia, a PR person from Honda, I get a little suspicious. After I quickly unfollowed her, it dawned on me that this was not the 1st, 2nd or 3rd, but the 5th or 6th PR person I’ve had to unfollow (I didn’t save the others as I didn’t connect it all until Honda Alicia (who is more unforgettable).

Now I’m not usually one for conspiracy theories, but this seems a bit ridiculous. I KNOW, yes I KNOW I’d never willingly follow a PR person, especially one from Honda, so that begs the question is Twitter doing deals with PR people as a precursor to some form of business model?

I must stress, I have no idea if this is true, so I publish this post as a question–have any of you had similar experiences? I hope this is just my cynicism acting up, as I don’t even know if it’s technologically possible for Twitter to implant people who pay them into my stream, but let’s hear what you guys think…

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  • LP
    I am straightforward but my Twittering is gay.
  • thanks for clearing it up alicia!
  • Timothy,
    Bummed to see your post and implications of wrongdoing. No conspiracy or trickery here. I can honestly say that I have no idea why you'd be unknowingly following me if you didn't choose to follow me. My twittering is straightforward.
    -- Alicia_at_Honda
  • Yep - you caught us. We are in a super conspiracy with Twitter to infect your Twitter stream.

    Damn, foiled again....devising new evil plan to take over Twitter.
  • More likely, instead of Twitter adding followers it's one of the many services out there that you hand your user id and password to in order to use some neat gizmo. Most do not have a TOS and are free to do whatever they wish with your account.
  • matt
    Just wanted to say, StockTwits is a really cool program offered when using Tweeter. It has a sweet program where you can real time chat with others on specific stocks.
  • u can change your twitter name and still keep your followers? all the PR people in the world then are probly the ones signing up each day, creating 50 fake names each, inevitably to promote their clients when they have enough followers
  • Ann
    Since its fairly easy for someone to change their user names, I've seen cases where folks would create one of those fake twitter profiles, generate popularity, a la "fakesarapalin" and then later change it to some other name, or even sell accounts with a high # of followers (not saying fakesarahpalin did that, just an example). That may account for you 'following' people you're sure you didn't follow. Then again, that's not to say that Twitter is autofollowing for you on the sly.
  • not saying its weird to get followd, people can find u any # of ways, what is weird is the people i am following sometimes goes up, as i would NEVER follow someone like alicia from honda
  • Max
    Hey, I post on stocktwits once in a while. I have random people follow me and it seems very unfounded. On days where i haven't tweeted, I get notifications that people are following me. I find it weird.
  • younggunz
    There's only been 2 full months past so far this year it is not like you can't see all his trades listed on the website and do the math yourself. I don't know why it is that hard for you to do if you really want to know his YTD. Something tells me thats not really what you want you're just trying to call him out thinking it will make him look bad or something. You're making yourself look bad asking for such a trivial thing that you can figure out in a couple minutes.
  • I randomly pick up twitter adds..and it does seem like something "dirty" is going on..
  • Saadi
    Mary,

    Here, I will help you out. http://timothysykes.com/tim/ All you had to do is turn your head about 15 degrees to the right.

    How can you not compare yourself to longs when your strategy has you up 243% in a digusting market like this and their strategy has them down 30-50%. Have you not seen the John Stuart's video on CNBC http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?v...

    Read up on Tim some more, because unlike learning from the long traders (i.e. Cramer), by learning Tim's strategy detailed in his DVD ( http://www.timothysykes.com/store ) you can actually start making some money like the rest of us.
  • adrian, i linked alicia's profile:

    http://twitter.com/Alicia_at_Honda
  • pl, stop using diff names, dont u know i can see your 1 IP address? i dont care if u're disappointed, disappointment is a part of life so i'm glad i'm teaching u an important lesson. u can see all my 2009 trades right on the right
  • pl
    TIM-

    i’M JUST SAYING I’M DISAPPOINTED BECAUSE YOU SAY YOU ARE TRANSPARENT YET REFUSE TO POST 2009 YTD RESULTS. YOU ARE A SHORT SELLER, AND SHORT SELLERS ARE UP 20% THIS YEAR. HOW CAN YOU COMPARE YOURSELF TO A LONG TRADER?? MAKES NO SENSE!

    MARY
  • Adrian
    Not sure... if there was a way to search through your friends list like Facebook has, it would a lot easier... versus having to click through each page of the peoiple you are following and looking for a suspicious name like "Honda Alicia." I don't think a lot of people go through their list of people they are following on a daily or weekly basis, especially if they are following a lot of people. I am sure Twitter knows this and might take advantage of it by targeting people who have >100 people they are following.

    By the way, I can't find a honda_alicia or hondaalicia on Twitter. You sure you aint smoking the peace pipe over there?
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