If you know my background, I am all about making products, and campaigns viral. But there is a proper way to do this, and a SPAMMY way. The devil is all about the details.
If you are part of the Twitterverse, than you already are likely familiar with needing to share your Twitter credentials with third party applications in order for them to function. Most of the time, this is safe. Some of these third party applications, in an attempt for them to become more viral are Tweeting on your behalf. One example is www.wefollow.com WeFollow is a simple directory of people who Tweet, that you can add yourself to. After adding yourself to WeFollow they REQUIRE that you Tweet to your followers that you have added yourself. I would prefer that they allow you to Opt-out from this, however at least they make it clear that you will be tweeting a message. So it is my (your) choice in the end, if you want to stop the process in order not to send out their viral Tweet.
A few days ago, I had the misfortune of entering a contest for a Hyatt Hotel in Chicago. They had hired a third party application to run their contest, "Twitter-Contest.com". Twitter-Contest did NOT make it clear to me that they were going to Tweet on my behalf. WORSE, and this makes me furious, They continued to Tweet their message to MY follows, using MY credentials every two hours, non-stop. To stop this, I was forced to change my Twitter password, so their spam app. could no longer Tweet their spam using my Twitter ID.
Spam apps. like Twitter-Contest.com RUIN it for the apps. (majority) that do NOT abuse using your Twitter credentials. As more and more third party Twitter developers make an attempt to be viral, be VERY careful about this *new Twitter spam*.
You can follow and discuss this with me on Twitter, I am @A_F
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