Gaming the System: #ff @elisesreview #twitter #cool

6 Apr

For me, this is one of those if-everyone-jumped-off-a-bridge-would-you moments. As far as I’m concerned, yes, everyone is jumping off the bridge, so I might as well, too.

Tristan Higbee

Bridge JumperYou may have been noticing something different popping up in your Twitter streams in the past month or so. I noticed that a lot of my contacts were including links with a new URL shortner, tribr.it. The thing was that it wasn’t just one or two, it was almost an entire list full of tribr.it links with the exact same message attached (here is my list of great bloggers for example). It turns out that they were coming through a service called Triberr.

It’s a service where you sign up for a Tribe, and then your members automatically retweet your links out to people without them actually knowing what’s happening.

This is a great idea in order to build traffic, but it also tends to spam your Twitter lists.

Over at the Blogging Bookshelf, I made the comment to Tristan’s post about using Fiverr to create backlinks to a site, that the links weren’t authentic. The value of the link has diminished, because they are being used to boost his traffic rankings, not direct people to valuable content. The content may be valuable but would someone click through if it was surrounded by garbage? Worst yet is that the Fiverr gig in question had complaints from someone saying that they were using their own content from the web page they were supposed to be directing to.

In the case of Triberr, the links mentioned in the statuses are not authentic, because they are not being properly curated by that user. I have no idea how many of these links are getting posted on my own Twitter feed, nor have I even read a good 90% of them (just a rough guess).

Similar to how people have been gaming the Google search rankings, you could conceivably do the same with Triberr. Since it pulls out the Title from the blog post, adds the short link, and your Twitter handle, it is a quick way to attach your name to some #hashtags and popular searches.

But why would I want it to only benefit myself?

I was joking with @ElisesReview that we could make her a Twitter/Internet meme through the use of Triberr – so, why not try it?

This post is mainly an experiment in how gaming systems may bring you the results you intended, but end up creating more junk and spam that have little value in the end. If it gets me banned from Triberr, fine with me. If I lose readership from this experiment, that’s alright, I will keep trucking along.

So, here goes.

Time to make @EliseReview an Internet meme.

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  • Anonymous

    Bad day?

    A tribe is nothing less than a micro-community. Gaming your community (micro or otherwise) is inauthentic. And disappointing. Big time.

    Auto-posting tweets from your community is not inauthentic per se. Unless you don’t value and honor your community and/or the contribution of individual members of that community.

    Why are you online?

    I ask that question in my post, How to Succeed in The Thank You Economy. http://wp.me/pbg0R-8N

    Yeah, it was one of those blog posts where the link was auto-posted to your Twitter feed via Triberr. [grin]

    Triberr may not be for you. You may not be interested in getting to know, share and collaborate with others. Or you’re just having a bad day.

    I hope it’s the latter, because I really enjoyed your comments on my blog. And I’d like to imagine that we can build a friendship. And, yeah, it’s all thanks to Triberr.

    • http://www.foursides.ca James M

      It has been a rather frustrating week for me, let alone day, but this post had been building up within me for a while.

      Having a tribe is great. I was part of a Mastermind group put together by Murray (murlu.com) that highlighted some people that I had not heard of before. There was some great conversation happening in the background, people were sharing links, and then commenting on people’s blogs.

      My issue with Triberr is two-fold:

      1) There is no ability to curate the tweets that you send out via others.
      2) There is no way to curate your own posts from being sent out (ie I didn’t really want my Survey post getting spammed out there to everyone)

      I do want to get to know, share, and collaborate with others. I sent out requests for short interviews with several people in late February. Everyone responded with enthusiasm at first, but then people were too busy to respond to the question. The idea for the series fell through.

      I also get bothered by the pure volume of posts being tweeted. Some people are posting multiple times a day which clogs up my own stream, burying my tweets into obscurity. If there were a way to work around some of these issues, I would have nothing bad to say about the service.

      It’s funny that you asked why I am online, because it’s a question I have been asking myself lately, as well. I am not creating the deeper friendships that I did when I first started using the internet back in ’96. I’m not getting nearly the amount of interaction I would like on this site, despite my efforts to reach out to others, but it has been improving a bit in the past few months. The biggest thing is I find I am more interested in reading books or my RSS feeds on my phone than I am sitting down trying to write or exploring affiliate marketing techniques, etc. I take life seriously, but I don’t take the online life seriously enough.

      Meds are never a good solution for people. I feel a lot better after a walk outside and a good meal sans white carbs than I ever will popping pills.

      Maybe I’ll write more about this for the weekend, as it is a reoccurring theme on other sites – digital sabbaticals and talking about the social crash.

      • Anonymous

        Myself, I’m actually against meds for the most part. I was trying to tease you in a friendly manner. However, I may have failed to accomplish my friendly poke. [laughing]

        I agree with you that a walk and a good meal are not just preferable but they are, in fact, healing. And not just.

        Triberr is a beta. Actually, it feels more like an alpha. For me, alphas usually take a month or longer. Anyway, my point is that it’s kinda on us, the testers, to help Dino and Dan elaborate a killer solution.

        There is (and has been) a manual setting to quality control Triberr posts being posted to our accounts. The control for that is not in your face so it’s easy to miss. On the other hand, Dino has mentioned it on the Triberr blog.

        I’d like to see a hashtag or something on Triberr posts such as #sharez or #Triberr so that eventually my followers can distinguish between my community sharing and my personal sharing.

        I’d also like to see values added to the Triberr posts.

        For example:

        #awesome reading: Triberr 1.1: Interview with Triberr co-founder Dan Cristo by @Faryna http://wp.me/pbg0R-8Y #sharez

        #DOH! Gaming the system #ff @elisesreview #twitter #cool by @four_sides #sharez

        Note to Dino and Dan: If you even like the concept with #sharez, src: Triberr or src: [tribe name], I expect 1000 bones in my Triberr account tomorrow.

        Anyways…

        Experimenting is generally a good thing. I love SCIENCE! (said with Bill Nye the Science guy’s enthusiasm)

        But there’s a fine line. And your attitude counts.

        Carry on my wayward brother…