Is The Twitterverse A Wee Bit Gullible? New Premium Account Idea Goes Viral!
The other night I was up late (as usual!) and came across a hilarious spoof post by humorist Brian Briggs revealing Twitter’s supposed new business model.
Not wanting to put a tweet out to something so fun while most of my compadres in the US were sleeping, I used Tweetlater to program the tweet to go out at 7:30am (PDT) the next morning:
I certainly wouldn’t want to mislead my peeps, so made sure to emphasize that this was a *hilarious idea!* 
Within an hour, Co-Founder of AOL, Steve Case retweeted me (this was a first, as far as I know - what an honor!)
Shortly after Steve’s RT, Founder of Digg, Kevin Rose, retweeted Steve retweeting me. LOL! 
Kevin has over 320,000 followers, so I was glad he left the tweet intact with the *hilarious idea!* part! (Unfortunately, the second RT ran into Steve’s Twitter ID though - making that link @SteveCaseRT. I actually DM’d Steve suggesting he set up a “park and point” new Twitter ID at stevecasert!)
The tweet then went flying around the Twitterverse.
I’m fairly sure the vast majority of people who saw this particular tweet realized it was a hoax. However, it seems Brian Briggs‘ hilarious spoof post actually caught the attention of more people who believed it to be true! Oops!
I’m guessing most peeps didn’t actually read through the fun post, as it’s just so silly - here’s Brian’s satirical revenue model:
- Sparrow ($5/month): 145 character limit, 5 extra random followers.
- Dove ($15/month): 160 character limit, 25 extra random followers, 1 random celebrity follower, auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” T-shirt.
- Owl ($50/month): 250 character limit, 100 extra random followers, 2 random celebrity followers, 30 minutes on recommended list, auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” hoodie.
- Eagle ($250/month): 500 character limit, 1000 extra random followers, 3 celebrity followers of their choice, 5 hours on recommended list each month, Twitter Concierge for Tweeting while user is asleep or busy (and more), auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” tuxedo, custom “Fail Whale” page when service is down.
I mean the Fail Whale hoodie might be fun… but a tuxedo? That was a giveaway. hehee!
While you’re laughing anyway, check out this fun video - with plenty humor, but - um - kinda close to the truth too! (Love this line, “If we can’t Twitter, we don’t exist!”)
As I’m writing this post, I just saw Brian Briggs wrote a fabulous “Chronicle of Yesterday’s Twitter Insanity”
I saw a Tweet from @MariSmith and didn’t think much of it, until I saw it being retweeted repeatedly. I checked out her profile and saw that she had over 20,000 followers. Not long after that Steve Case, former CEO of AOL, retweeted Mari. Steve only has 6,000 followers, but a lot of influential people follow him. The next spike in traffic though came when Kevin Rose of Digg fame retweeted Mari. Kevin has over 300,000 followers, and the spike in traffic was noticeable on the charts.
Ahh, gotta love Twitter!
On a more serious note, what are your thoughts (viable or otherwise!!) on how Twitter can create a monetizable business model? Share below:
Make A Comment: ( 4 so far )
4 Responses to “Is The Twitterverse A Wee Bit Gullible? New Premium Account Idea Goes Viral!”
Karen Kay
March 20th, 2009
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[...] So I RT (Re-Tweeted) to pass along - think of it like passing a great joke in email. Yet, little did I know this ‘joke’ was making it rounds already in the twitterverse as @MariSmith writes. [...]
Reading Between The Tweets | Driven To Nvizion Life
March 24th, 2009
hahaha. Mari that is SO hilarious I was cracking up….
…What’s even funnier is that I recently signed up on the RSS feed for a bunch of different blogs…As I was reading yours, I didn’t actually realize it was YOURS since I was on my RSS Feed…
…I then saw your face in the pictures you captured, and I thought, “Does Mari know she’s on this post?! I’ve gotta DM her on Twitter!”
…And I was ABOUT to do that when I suddenly realize you wrote the post! lol.
Great stuff! Way to go!
–Sean Patrick Simpson
***The Mindset Apprentice***
Sean Patrick Simpson
March 24th, 2009
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I enjoyed that post a great deal also.
That anyone would take it seriously is a testament to Twitter’s great sense of humor, most likely.
We’re talking about the same team who produced shirts that say “Wearing my Twitter T-shirt”, so why not a fail-whale tux?
BTW, I believe Twitter’s monetization strategy is very simple: Be bought by Google.
Cheers,
Scot
Scot McKay
March 25th, 2009
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I saw this but without the humor disclaimer part! So I naturally thought it was true. Funny how easily stuff can get misconstrued,even in print!