DISQUS

Sara · 1 year ago

Hi Christopher,

Excellent post, especially like that you have an inside perspective on the buying and selling of "people."

First, you bring up an excellent point comparing the usefulness of Twitter information to a standard contact database. Right now the auction is at $255 which is already more than 10% of that $1.50-a-head number you mentioned. The auction is a 10-dayer so I imagine he'll get much more than where it currently sits. The bidders really should take into account that the information they are getting is useful only in the Twitter environment.

Sure, Twitter is huge right now and it could end up being incredibly lucrative for the right buyer, but it sure is a lot more risky than finding someone in your niche who has a large email list and "renting" their list for an email or two. And that method generally brings much more targeted traffic to your site if you choose wisely.

Second, your concise writing was very effective. By the time I got to "You are for sale" I was seriously creeped out. Just the way you framed the article and your word choice really made it clear how often and easily our personal information is thrown about.

Thanks for a great read!

Sara

P.S. I follow you on Twitter, that's how I found this post. I'm sarach

Whitney · 1 year ago

I just look at it not only for what you can do with the data, but how people could damage Andrew's brand if they were so inclined. Send messages that seriously annoy his audience, and people on twitter (messages go to friends and all followers and the public stream as well....)all start to develop a very different sense of what the man behind rocketboom might be like. And what if I work at a VC where Andrew is looking for money? That creates a very different perspective all together. And how long could this go on before "everyone" knew the twitter account wasn't "really" Andrew himself? Would everyone remember that when reading the tweets? Would that really mitigate the damage to Andrew and his brand?

This is all about whether you can sell your reputation with others on the open market for a "profit". But I think you'll find that some things, like trust and reputation, can't be measured well in currency (although it is measured in opportunities that come your way every day).

If someone has become so jaded as to assume trust and reputation can be commidified, perhaps social media is no longer a good place for them to be hanging out. And I don't mean this in a snide way, but sincerely- if someone is only looking to collect and sell their social contacts to others, the value in those relationships- the strength of the chemical bonds, so to speak, must be pretty low. Or it will be, shortly, once the commodity relationships begin to fracture.

Sarah Meyers · 1 year ago

Hey Chris, love you post! I'm trying to find your email or phone number to contact you about your opinion for pop17 so when you get this comment please email me: Sarah@Pop17.com

Warren Whitlock · 1 year ago

Of course there is nothing wrong with him selling what he has to anyone foolish enough to buy.

But they would be better off to pay him twice as much to build a network for them.. that disclosed who was who and what was what.

I think it will go over about as well as selling your job. When we get a tweet from a different person than we expect, we'll just unfollow (fire) them and be done with it.

Dr. Wright · 1 year ago

I think more sales are coming and there will be a market place where you can buy and sell your social networks

John Johansen · 1 year ago

Chris, you bring up an excellent reminder that privacy isn't really private anymore.

I agree that someone buying the Twitter account could get value from it by analyzing the conversations that have happened, the @s and the DMs. There is definitely information that would be useful to an advertiser.

To me, that feels like it would be a breach of the social contract. There are only 2 things that Twitter doesn't make publicly available, your DMs and your Followers. (With the obvious exception of protecting your account.) You can data-mine the tweets, searching for keywords and @s to specific people. There's a rich source of information that can already be gleaned from Twitter.

Chris Brogan (besides starting this interesting debate) wrote his eBook on the Trust Economy. If selling any kind of social networking account becomes a trend, I think we are going to see the currency of trust rise in value. Right now it's easy for people to make connections, often with people they don't know. This can be a good source of discovery for people looking to network. But, if the default assumption becomes that people are looking to build large networks so they can 'monetize' them by selling the account, then making connections with people is going to diminish.

This may be a symptom of the walled-garden networks that exist today and will disappear if social networking becomes like air.
Or it may have the effect of killing off conversational spaces like Twitter. That would be very disappointing.

Rick Wolff · 1 year ago

When I'm asked for my zip code at a retail checkout counter, I quote my rate, which is a meager 2% discount from my purchase. I'm never taken up on it. I know the retailer gets much more value from it than that.
Chris, if you get value from my following you on Twitter, and you're keen on what's happening with this auction, I must ask you what you're willing to pay to keep me from disconnecting you.
There's your Trust Economy.