@THE_REAL_SHAQ This Pepsi is delicious

April 11, 2009 5:33 PM

Magpie wants to roost in your twitter feed. (via Jon Lebkowsky , who has an opinion)
posted by Pants! (40 comments total)

No sir, I don't like it.
posted by educatedslacker at 5:39 PM on April 11

Ads on weblogs? Never happen.
posted by nitsuj at 5:42 PM on April 11

This sounds great! I can't wait to start placing ads in my Twitter feed about how great George W. Bush is for kicking kittens!

Everybody agrees with me, right? I'm not foreseeing any backlash or negative feelings about any of the things I mentioned.
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:47 PM on April 11

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam
posted by Lucubrator at 5:49 PM on April 11

Wait, are you saying this isn't the real Shaq posting?
posted by mannequito at 5:52 PM on April 11

Um, why does Magpie think that people will continue to follow Twitter feeds that turn into a series of ads? Am I missing something here?
posted by DiscourseMarker at 5:55 PM on April 11

I'm seeing anyone who uses this getting unfollowed and/or blocked. So it manages to accomplish little more than ensuring you become a Twitter of One. GJ!
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 5:56 PM on April 11

I unfollowed a woman I know for using Magpie a while ago.

Because she makes a lot of @replies to people I don't follow, it got to the point where every other tweet I saw from her seemed like an ad even though the ads were supposed to be spaced out so you didn't see them very often. The ads all showed up from one of the feed-generating applications instead of her phone or the web site or a desktop application when I looked at them on her twitter page, too.

Looking at her page right now, she seems to have dropped using them, probably because a lot of people unfollowed her over it.
posted by immlass at 5:56 PM on April 11

Eight comments and no peep from the get-off-my-lawn brigade. Is twitter finally being accepted or is there a Rod Stewart concert tonight?
posted by stavrogin at 6:00 PM on April 11 [9 favorites]

Given that something like this will be the eventual revenue stream for Twitter, Magpie is visionary.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:01 PM on April 11

Eight comments and no peep from the get-off-my-lawn brigade.

Twitter is the lawn.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:07 PM on April 11 [2 favorites]

Eight comments and no peep from the get-off-my-lawn brigade. Is twitter finally being accepted or is there a Rod Stewart concert tonight?

Not so fast, sonny-boy.

"Oh God, how I wish Twitter would die already and never resurrect."
posted by ericb at 6:07 PM on April 11

Just got back from my Rod Srewart concert and there's more bullshit about twitter on Metafilter. Have you people no standards
posted by dydecker at 6:11 PM on April 11 [10 favorites]

Magpie is annoying. I saw it a while back and thought it was old news. Guess not.

The real Twitter issue of today is what the hell is this StalkDaily madness. People are freaking the fuck out. It's like "don't click on their website", then it's "don't click on their profile." Then "don't click on anybody's profile who has been infected." Then it's "don't even type the name!" And on and on.
posted by cashman at 6:14 PM on April 11

I totally loved it when he did Every Picture Tells a Story. I wasn't expecting that.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:15 PM on April 11 [3 favorites]

It's bad enough that since I signed up to Twitter I've had to block three of four "followers" a week with names like @loseweightnow without this. (I am perfectly happy to admit that I like Twitter a whole lot for one reason: I get to eavesdrop on some musicians [Ed Droste, Nico Muhly, Colin Meloy, Robin Pecknold] I admire. The end.)
posted by jokeefe at 6:15 PM on April 11

I remember when I saw the first ad on a search engine (yahoo, webcrawler?) and thought "NO! This is wrong!"...

it's all about the money, it always will be....
posted by HuronBob at 6:19 PM on April 11

The real Twitter issue of today is what the hell is this StalkDaily madness.

Looks like word got back to the site creator.

For everyone wondering, I did NOT promote and/or was involved with the spamming ON Twitter. All bad things you are hearing about this site is not true. Please reconsider as I am not the person who did this.

It's bad enough that since I signed up to Twitter I've had to block three of four "followers" a week with names like @loseweightnow without this.

One of the things I like about Twitter is that when someone follows you, you see it immediately. Then you can check their profile and see, "Oh, he's selling diet pills" and hit the "block" button. It's really not a very conducive site for spam. I don't know what's the thinking behind Magpie. Destroy Twitter from within?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:20 PM on April 11

Given that something like this will be the eventual revenue stream for Twitter

It's not even given Twitter will find a revenue stream, much less that this is what it will be.
posted by scottreynen at 6:59 PM on April 11

Why does Magpie think that people will continue to follow Twitter feeds that turn into a series of ads?

Because we put up with them on everything else. Remember how awful it was at first when they started popping up on websites? Now we accept ads along with our e-mail, even.

We're conditioned.
posted by rokusan at 7:07 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

Because we put up with them on everything else. Remember how awful it was at first when they started popping up on websites? Now we accept ads along with our e-mail, even.

We're conditioned.

The difference with twitter and other content is that twitter is all in small bites, and other internet communication comes in larger pieces. It's as if every few FPPs on MetaFilter were spam, instead of inserted banner and text ads for those who aren't logged in (and blocking everything they can).

People ignore ads that are on the sidelines, or in the middle of articles. But when the articles are ads, people generally stop reading.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:15 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

And I still don't like twitter
posted by filthy light thief at 7:15 PM on April 11

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing: "One of the things I like about Twitter is that when someone follows you, you see it immediately. Then you can check their profile and see, "Oh, he's selling diet pills" and hit the "block" button. It's really not a very conducive site for spam. I don't know what's the thinking behind Magpie. Destroy Twitter from within?"

One of the things I like about Twitter e-mail is that when someone follows you sends you a message, you see it immediately. Then you can check their profile read their message and see, "Oh, he's selling diet pills" and hit the "block" button add him to your killfilter. It's really not a very conducive site methodology for spam. I don't know what's the thinking behind Magpie spam e-mail.

One of the things I like about Twitter most blog software is that when someone follows you responds to a post, you see it immediately. Then you can check their profile read their comment and see, "Oh, he's selling diet pills" and hit the "block" button. It's really not a very conducive site methodology for spam. I don't know what's the thinking behind Magpie spam comments.

Put your message in front of enough eyeballs, it doesn't matter if you piss off the majority of those eyeballs and only a small minority responds: if the total number's large enough, that minority will be enough to make a living off of.
posted by WCityMike at 7:35 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

Eight comments and no peep from the get-off-my-lawn brigade.

Why would we care? There's no unwanted fliers being tweeted onto our lawns.

ReadWriteWeb has some collected examples of Magpie ads, if any other crabby nontwitterers are interested. It seems to me that part of what makes these ads so objectionable is their fake informality.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 7:37 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

It's not even given Twitter will find a revenue stream, much less that this is what it will be.

I really don't understand what their problem is.

They should just charge people for a premium service. $15 a year for unlimited. If you don't join the premium service, you are limited to, say, 100 tweets a month, no archive of your tweets beyong 6 months, that kind of thing.

It worked brilliantly for Flickr. Why are they so fucking opposed to just charging people for the service they provide?
posted by Jimbob at 7:50 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

Fucking hell the concert was tonight?
posted by From Bklyn at 7:57 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

Twitter silver: We won't lose your posts.
Twitter gold: This time, we mean it.
posted by boo_radley at 8:22 PM on April 11 [3 favorites]

I don't think that's a very good analogy, WCityMike. If you don't follow another Twitter user, you don't see any noise they may be posting. Whereas anyone on the Internet can email you any time they like. Strangers can't message you on Twitter, and they can't inject themselves into your feed*. All they can do is follow you and hope that you follow them back. If you do, of course, then it's open season.

*Unless people you follow are infected by Magpie or something like it, which is what's so unpleasant about this idea.
posted by Songdog at 8:24 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

At home.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:21 PM on April 11

Twitter silver: We won't lose your posts.
Twitter gold: This time, we mean it.

Twitter Platinum: Fail Rainbow-Farting Unicorn being carried by Comet-Puking Albatrosses!

Image used under Creative Commons License
posted by Ufez Jones at 9:21 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

Well, now StalkDaily says I have came clean and have accepted the responsibility for the worm....
posted by dhartung at 10:58 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

Aw, damn, box.net is one of the companies using Magpie to advertise. I use their service and like it, why do they have to go and do stupid spammy shit like this? Makes me embarrassed to mention them legitimately now.
posted by harriet vane at 1:43 AM on April 12

This Space For Sale.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:36 AM on April 12

Regardless of any of the sort of moral concerns, tt's hard to imagine you could make enough money to twittering ads to make it worthwhile as an individual.
posted by ph00dz at 8:34 AM on April 12

it's not Apple or box.net using Magpie. it seems like affiliates are using Magpie in a way that totally tarnishes the brands they're trying to make money from. they're impersonating Apple, Cisco and other but the links go to websites that are just about affiliate ads.

totally not cool.
posted by liza at 8:40 AM on April 12

I remember following the twitters for The Brits live using search on #Brits and somebody started spamming ads with the same #. The was insanely annoying.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:50 AM on April 12

rokusan: Now we accept ads along with our e-mail, even.

"We" do???
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:02 PM on April 12

they're impersonating Apple, Cisco and other but the links go to websites that are just about affiliate ads.

This is not the case with Apple, at least for the topmost two examples in the RRW post. The links go: is.gd redirector --> be-a-magpie.com redirector --> affiliate redirector --> the Apple Store's page for refurb iTVs (affiliate ID included in the URL, of course).

The impression given to the follower who clicks the link is that the poster simply provided a link to a good deal on the Apple Store (via is.gd, a URL shortener commonly used for entirely non-commercial purposes) out of goodwill toward their followers. The whole affiliate-redirect thing is obscured entirely from users who aren't carefully watching for it; you can see in the RRW examples that some tweets omit the #magpie tag, leaving no clue that the tweet was paid for.

Given how protective Apple is of its image, and that this has been going on for at least a month now, you'd think Apple would have told its affiliate "cut that shit out" by now, if this were being done without Apple's approval.
posted by [user was fined for this post] at 12:09 PM on April 12

rokusan: Now we accept ads along with our e-mail, even.
"We" do??? -- posted by Greg_Ace

"We" being that portion of the Internet who uses at least a little HotMail, GMail or Yahoo, or receive mail from someone who uses Yahoo or Hotmail.

I don't think it's possible to use the internet without seeing some e-mail ads now. What do you do, block Hotmail users from sending you anything?

(Hmm.... now there's an idea.)
posted by rokusan at 11:42 PM on April 12

rokusan - I won't get into an involved tutorial; there's plenty of advice available on minimizing spam and advertising. But in short, it's not hard to implement a few utilities, add-ons, and settings to avoid the vast majority of that kind of thing (a good firewall and antivirus software kinda goes without saying). Gmail, for instance, will let me block auto-display of images in the bodies of emails - that plus setting spam filters to high sensitivity and using whitelisting works well for me (I'll admit I don't have a huge number of friends who use free email services...YMMV); and using Firefox with Adblock, NoScript, and Flashblock solves the bulk of the non-email issues. Yes, there's a bit of work up front, and I won't pretend those add-ons are perfectly seamless or unobtrusive or free of the need of occasional tweaking, but I'd rather deal with a bit of that than submit to the incessant onslaught of advertising that some people seem to feel is an inevitable part of the online experience.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:00 PM on April 13