E-Media Tidbits

On Twitter right now, there is a storm of viral something-or-other around a site called Viraltweets.com. Like a Bernard L. Madoff pitch, the site doesn't ask you for any money. But online, where reputation -- in the form of your support for a social networking site, or your tweet about a URL -- is currency, the site asks you to spend your authority.

To get the free download, you must retweet this advertising message: "RT Here's The FREE Software I Used To Make Over $4,000 With One Tweet ... http://viraltweets.com"

I'm not a marketing expert, but I think Viraltweets' e-mail, YouTube and online campaigns to "dominate" Twitter are going to be all over: First, all over Twitter in one day. Then, all over for Viraltweet's marketing scheme in a couple of days.

All they're doing so far is a video pitch asking for a "retweet" of a message. In return, you will find out about a mystery product that can make you $4,000 per tweet "in a few days." There is a site that can track who clicks on items in your tweetstream called twitclicks.com -- but its connection to the promised viraltweets.com is unclear. The download part is not transparent enough to convince me that this isn't a Trojan horse or a hack.

A Twitter search shows a viral storm of retweeting this currently empty marketing message. If you retweet items like this, don't you squander some portion of your online reputation? When I was checking this out there were 32 pages of retweets of the same message, with about 15 tweets per page -- more than 500 tweets. More were coming in even as I tried to count them all. That's hundreds of retweets of this marketing message in about five hours. By tomorrow, it will most certainly grow exponentially, at least for Ryan Wade and Viraltweets.com.

Wade is bragging about the Twitter storm he created (see linked screen grab). Only one lone tweet among all the retweets that I could find observed: "I just took a look at the RT http://viraltweets.com. I find it hard to believe one Twitt can generate $4K?"

I wonder what the ratio was of people who heard of Madoff's ponzi scheme versus victims who fell for it. I expect it is similar for the retweeters of the message that supposedly could bring them $4,000.

Giving Wade and his partner the benefit of the doubt, this might be a great tool for making money off one's 140-character epiphanies. But in the age of social networking, reputation and one's electronic "vote" are as good as currency.

Voting for anything -- and putting your reputation, even in the form of a silly little tweet, on the line -- can end up costing you dearly. Signal-to-noise ratio is too important to click too quickly or to retweet just any old pitch.

The viraltweets.com pitch might be dominating Twitter for now, but the site's style of pitch calls its message into question. Transparency -- not a promise of riches in a few days -- is a more effective online strategy. Consider who would follow your tweets in the future if you were to lead followers to promises, but no substance.