Avoid Twitter Pyramid Sites At All Costs

2 July, 2009 - 07:00 AM - 11 Comments

In reviewing Twitter applications I delved into a few Twitter Pyramid sites, mostly on accident not realizing what I was joining, but I should have known better.

TwitterTrain.info and Tweeterfollow.com and tweeteradder.com are all examples of Pyramid Sites, where you join and follow a bunch of people and each person subsequently joins and follows the train. You cannot attract quality followers this way, and whats worse, these sites hijack your twitter account and password. Instead of registering as an application you can remove from Twitter connections directly, these programs save your account/password and post tweets to your followers automatically promoting their site.

This type of spam message can lose you followers you had before, so when I tried to figure out how to remove Tweeterfollow.com, I went to the Contact us link and they post the following disclaimer:

Contact:

* IF YOU WANT TO STOP US FROM PROMOTING ON YOUR ACCOUNT PLEASE LOGIN THE SITE AND AT THE BOTTOM HIT CLOSE ACCOUNT. PLEASE DONT EMAIL US ABOUT THIS ISSUE. ONCE YOU LOGIN AT THE BOTTOM YOU WILL SEE CLOSE ACCOUNT AND YOU WONT GET THE MESSAGES AGAIN. IF THAT DONT WORK JUST CHANGE PASSWORD AND NEXT TIME READ THE RULES ON THE SITE BEFORE YOU SIGN IN AGAIN.
* CONTACT US AT CONTACT@TWEETERFOLLOW.COM

This type of disclaimer clearly means many people signed up, joined without reading the fine lines, and wanted out. I closed my account, but not thinking it sufficient enough I changed my twitter password as well.

Be warned some sites don’t even provide the ability to remove your account, or have you sign in again with your twitter ID/password to remove the account, but don’t actually remove you. There are only 2 ways to recover your account if you are sucked into some of these sites:

#1 – Go to your Twitter Profile Settings, click on Connections and revoke any applications that you don’t know
#2 – Change your twitter password to something different & secure (use alpha, number and special characters in your password) something like B0bc@t would be a good password. (don’t use that one)

This should prevent other apps which had your old password from using your account, but they may still make attempts which can cause your twitter account to get locked out, I have not figured out how to resolve this part yet.

Let this be a lesson to everyone, don’t try to join Twitter trains, mass follower sites, or anything promoting getting mass followers, it is like one big Twitter Ponzi Scheme.

-Dragon Blogger

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Written by Justin Germino (1518 Articles Published)

Working in the IT Industry for over 10 years and specializing in web based technologies. Dragon Blogger has unique insights and opinions to how the internet and web technology works. An Avid movie fan, video game fan and fan of trying anything and everything new.

Follow Justin Germino on Twitter @dragonblogger

Right on the money!
I was looking at ways at first to increase followers but realised like many here what is the point if they are not interested in following you. I use "related tweets" which for the most part is a great tool to let your users know what you have posted and articles that might be relevent. Unfortunately there are a few "junky" links getting through. I notice you use related websites which I also use. Great tool, but you've probably noticed the odd crappy blog getting through selling stuff.

Fortunately you can flag them on this. Sorry to blabber on, just a thank you for a great post that hopefully those considering dramatically increasing their followers quickly will come across and not go through with it.

P.S Twitter also keeps an eye out for accounts with a big increase of followers in a short time, and you'll only be followed by annoying spammers.

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dragonblogger

Good tips, always check out who you follow, if they are following lots of people but have very few followers they are most likely spam accounts.

My Journey

Thank-you for this excellent article. I BioTecK on Twitter so found your article though that post. I've been very leary of these twitter pyramid sites and there are more tweets about how they basically hijack your Twitter. Not good!
.-= My Journey´s last blog ..Wordless Wednesday - Diamond Crystal Salt Company =-.

Thanks, yep I decided to try some sites out myself to research my article and had my account disabled and taken over by these services for several hours.

Blazing Minds

I did notice recently that your tweets have been coming up with these "Twitter trains" it is best to steer clear, just gain your followers the natural way, if people like your tweets they will follow you and most are worth following back, but it is always best to use something like TweetLater to "vet" your followers as spammers still try to follow you no matter what!
.-= Blazing Minds´s last blog ..Why Iâ€™ve started using Twittley instead of Tweetmeme =-.

Deborah Katy

I actually donÂ´t use twitter really for promoting things but more to show up how I feel and what i am doing. I never felt like trying these kinds of things that put merchandising on my tweets.
Oh, by the way. Thanks for the visit and I fixed your name mister Justing Germino :-)
.-= Deborah Katy´s last blog ..DRAGONGLY POEMS. =-.

Damien

Thanks for posting that. I wasn't sure why anyone would need that many followers they didn't even know. Seems like it would defeat the purpose for me.
.-= Damien´s last blog ..Where is Amy Winehouseâ€™s Father? =-.

The higher the followers the higher your % chance a link you post will get clicked, which could lead to more blog traffic or CPC, but my logic tells me only followers you build a relationship with are likely to click and trust anything you promote, most of your tweets will be endless white noise to twitter followers who don't know you.

Automation in Blogging? | Fuelmyblog - The blog for the exclusive blog community. says:

July 5, 2009 at 11:02 pm

[...] of meaningless followers they didn’t know and who didn’t want to follow them. These are Twitter pyramid schemes. I found this out recently. Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but I often feel the responsibility [...]

SEOKudos says:

July 8, 2009 at 9:51 pm

Avoid Twitter Pyramid Sites At All Costs | Dragon Blogger…

Kudos for a great SEO article – Trackback from SEOKudos…

Mentioned in an MSNBC Article about Twitter Followers | Personal Blog of Justin Germino says:

July 22, 2009 at 5:33 pm

[...] article slants toward the same point of view that I mentioned in my Dragon Blogger article about Twitter Pyramid Schemes, which talked about the negative experience I had while experimenting with such sites for research [...]