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A good use for True Twit Spam?

 

Woman on a computer saying "I wouldn't mind the spam half as much if they would send me more pictures of naked men."

Spam is unwanted email. Are you sending spam before you send your spam?

Finally a good use for True Twit Validation! As you probably know I do not like True Twit Validation. In my opinion it is the most commonly accepted form of Twitter spam. However, today I received a True Twit email that actually made good use of the application.

True Twit advertises itself as helping you prevent spammers and to keep you from having your DM’s and newsfeed filled with spam bots. However, the only way it does this is if you auto-follow people back. Otherwise someone following you does not affect your spam at all. You cannot receive DM’s from people who you don’t follow nor will they be in your timeline. Only people who you follow are in your timeline.  So now you are the person sending the unwanted DM to the person who is trying to follow you.  Not only are you essentially cock blocking their follow, but you are generally being annoying for no real reason.  But that changed.

I received a True Twit email that said:

Please verify your Twitter account so they can follow me afterwards.

That little bit at the end was the first time I felt a validation email gave me real reason to validate. If you auto-follow people back, you are ensuring that you do not auto-follow bots.  However, you are now giving the person a reason to validate because you are promising a follow back.

I still think that True Twit is spam.  I still think that no one should use it and that the only reason most people do use it is because they get really tired of filling out the stupid CAPTCHAs. There are still many people out there who will never fill out the validation and would rather not follow you than go to True Twit.  So even if you are using it to vet your auto-follows, you are still propagating the spam. In fact, most people think that if you are willing to start off a Twitter relationship with spam, that it is likely you will continue to send spam for as long as I am following you.

If you really need to vet all the people you follow, use a tool like socialoomph.com which lets you do that before following people but without clogging their email box with spam.

/by

TrueTwit: how to turn yourself into a Spammer

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Tweet Bot
Bots? What bots? Illustration by Steve Talkowski

TrueTwit Validation is a service that lets you verify if the person following you is a bot or not. Of course I am getting these verifications from people who use their accounts for spam as well as real tweets. You just have to love the irony.

If you wonder why I would follow anyone who spams, when you follow people in the adult industry you are often risking a little spam.  I follow the person to vet them. If they are all spam, I unfollow. Plenty of people I follow are a mix of spam and real tweets.

If you sign up with TrueTwit, every time someone follows you they receive an auto-DM that asks them to click a link and fill out a Captcha to verify that they are human.

Anyone can sign up with the service for 30 days for free. Then you no longer have to receive these annoying DM’s or fill out a “verify you are human” Captcha. And after the free trial, you pay $20.

I have received an increasing number of TrueTwit Validations from people. I believe this is because by signing up they don’t have to receive the auto-DM’s anymore.  However, they are now perpetuating the spam by avoiding it themselves!

Ironically a lot of the people who are sending me the TrueTwit validation auto-DM’s are people who use their accounts for Twitter spam. The whole point of the service is to help you avoid it – they even advertise that it does this. That doesn’t actually make sense. If someone follows you, they cannot DM you. They are not appearing in your Twitter stream. So what spam are you getting from them?  The only way you would get spam from them is if you auto-follow people.  Here is an easy solution: don’t auto-follow!

And by the way, this is not a sure-fire way of preventing bots from following you.  If the bot owner signs up with TrueTwit they will not have to fill out the Captcha.

I read a great blog post about TrueTwit. It essentially answered my questions.

Basically, why would anyone want to use this?

  1. Who cares if a bot follows you?
    If you have quality tweets and engagement, the majority of your followers will be real people. So if you have a couple of bots, does it really matter?
  2. Why do you want to spam your new followers?
    If you are using TrueTwit then you are sending an auto-DM to your new followers that is basically spam.  Except now you are not spamming them with your own site, you are spamming them with someone else’s.
  3. How many followers are you losing?
    How many people don’t click that link? How many don’t fill out the Captcha?  Because if they don’t then you are not getting their follow.  So how many people are you losing because you are trying to prevent a bot that can get around the validation anyway?

So do your followers a favor, and just say no to TrueTwit.

/by

How often do Porn Stars do it?

How often do you do it?  You are a porn star.  The biggest question on everyone’s mind is: how often do you do it?  Once a day? Three times a week? Once a week? Once a month?

Yes, I am talking about blogging.  How often do you post?

If you want to get traffic to your site, frequency counts!

It is pretty simple. The more often you post, the more traffic you will get.  This is a case where quantity counts more than quality. I am not saying that you can post complete crap. You need to work on your writing. Make sure it is grammatically correct and that it is spell-checked. Get someone to review and edit it. Make sure that your topic is relevant to your blog subject and that it is interesting.

Some tips for writing often:

  • Write short posts

    A post that is about 300 to 500 characters long is plenty.  It is enough room to get an idea across but you are not writing a novel.  When it comes to reading blogs we have short attention spans.  So write something short, sweet and to the point.

  • Write a long post and break it up

    Many of us can’t write short posts. When we sit down to write, we write a lot.  This can be great for increasing your frequency. Take your long post and divide it up into two or more posts. Maybe one topic can span several posts.

  • Build a blog bank

    A blog bank is a reserve of blog posts that you have ready to go live at any moment.  This is really great if you are blogging every day or even multiple times a week. Lets face it, sometimes life gets in the way and we don’t have time to write. If you have a blog bank, you can pull from that for your posting.

  • Blog ahead

    I don’t usually blog bank, I do something similar. I blog ahead.  I will write up to 10 blogs ahead and get them scheduled.  I try to continue writing to keep up my scheduled reserve, but if I fall behind I know that I have wiggle room because I already have them scheduled.

  • Guest bloggers

    If you are posting frequently it can be hard to keep up with your own posting schedule. A way to help relieve some of the responsibility is to have guest bloggers.  This is a great way to expand your readership, grow your network and give you an occasional break from writing.

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Nice Form Baby! Too bad I can’t read your blog.

bedazzled pubic area and it spells <hr/>

Sexy HTML code: <hr/>

Form over function?  This is an essential life question.  But let’s just look at this question in relation to your blog or website.  A website is a balance between form and function. You want it to look beautiful but you want it to be usable. If you cannot read it, can’t navigate it or can’t understand it, then what is the point?

Navigation is a key issue everyone talks about.  People have to be able to move easily around your site. They have to be able to find where they are supposed to go.  Selling products? They must be able to figure out how to buy.

Ads can clutter up a page.  We have all seen sites where there are so many ads we cannot distinguish the site content from the advertising content. 10 years ago that might have worked – to get people to randomly click ads as they were trying to find their way to the content they were looking for – it doesn’t really work now.  We are all much smarter than that. Most of us know not to indiscriminately click on ads in a web page and if we see a page that is so overrun with ads as to be confusing, we just leave.

Content is King. Ultimately, once people have figured out how to move around your site without being bombarded with ads, then your ability to convert your people into readers, subscribers, followers, fans, clients, sales, customers and colleagues is the quality of your content.  It must be relevant to your topic, informative and interesting. It must be written well and checked for grammar and spelling.

If you are an adult star you might be thinking, my content is primarily video and images.  The same rules apply.  The parts of your site that include text must have good text.  The part of your site that has images must have good images.

Images. Your images must come through. They need to be sized properly for fast loading and if they link, the link must be good.  A bonus you could add would be to write good alt tags, so that screen readers can read  a good description of your image to a blind viewer.

Frequency. Quantity is almost as important as quality. If your site is based on communicating information and you update sporadically you will not build a solid audience.  You need to be regular with your updates, even if the information is pictures or video.  Set a schedule.  If people know that you update weekly, three times a week, daily, twice a day, then they are more likely to come back to see your updates (here is where quality comes into play). This will build a loyal audience which can translate into a loyal customer base.  But they have to be able to rely on you before you can rely on them.

Though form is important, function will ultimately prevail.  Your audience will stay longer and come back more often if you provide them with quality content. If your site only has a pretty face then you might get someone who comes once, but they won’t come back.  A pretty face will get people to the door; it won’t deliver the sale.

/by

Porn not Verified on Twitter?

Are you verified on Twitter? Does it matter? Is it important?

For some people getting verified on Twitter is extremely important. Twitter verification is essentially a big blue check mark that says you are the real deal! It is Twitter’s way of establishing authenticity behind a well know and public persona. It is used for public figures, ie. politicians, celebrities, rock stars, etc.

Jenna Jameson verified on Twitter

One issue that a lot of adult stars face is the inability to get verified. Maybe someone already claimed your name and won’t give it up, not doing anything with it, just cyber-squatting.  Maybe they claimed your name to spam.  Maybe they are just posing as you.

Your name is a brand. You have worked hard at getting name recognition and you should be able to reap the rewards, not some random person in cyber-space who doesn’t know you from Adam. What is even worse than someone squatting on your name is if they are spamming or misrepresenting you.  Are they damaging the good name you have built?  This is, of course, why Twitter started verifying to begin with.  But many people in the adult industry have had great difficulty getting verified, or getting Twitter to help them resolve issues of cyber-squatting or spam/misrepresentation.  And yes we speculate discrimination.

Pornstar Tweet felt strong about this issue as well and created their own verification system for the stars they list. They vet the stars on their list and with any they can without a doubt authenticate, the readily offer their own check mark. Though unfortunately their check mark only appears on the list on their site and doesn’t translate to the Twitter avatar.

However, Twitter not verifying is quickly becoming a mute point because they are no longer verifying accounts. Since the change to New Twitter, many verified accounts have even lost their prized check mark.  Though support@twitter does say they are restoring them to their rightful owners.

The change to new twitter seems to come with the promise of a change to the verification system.  Apparently the verification system was in its beta form and Twitter will be rolling out a new and improved system.  Maybe this new verification system will be more open to verifying adult stars who have worked hard for name recognition and deserve to have that little blue check mark!

/by