Mashable and Moonfruit – Championing Spam Since 2009
July 3rd, 2009

If you’re a Twitter user, you can’t help but have noticed the term #moonfruit popping up in your stream of late. A bit of digging around will lead you their site (not linked on purpose), where they are offering a free MacBook Pro everyday to a random user who includes the #moonfruit hashtag in one of their Tweets.

This is following on from another company, who did a similar thing with #squarespace and iPhones last month.

Hmmm, over we head to check out Wikipedia’s definition of spam:

“Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems … to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately”

So the the #moonfruit promotion is spam, pure and simple, right? Well, unless you’re Adam Ostrow, Editor in Chief at Mashable. Apparently polluting your followers’ stream with bullshit is actually “Twitter promotion done right” and to hell with the fact that it will soon render Twitter’s trending topics functionality a spam blacklist. It’s disheartening to see that no matter what the medium, there will always be bad marketers around to apply scummy techniques.

Here’s an idea for “Twitter promotion done right” – make a great product, and release it with a clever launch. If it’s smart, everyone talk about it. Get to the top of the trending topics legitimately, not by dangling carrots in front of keyboard-equiped imbeciles who don’t know better.

As The Guardian’s @katebevan put it this afternoon “(I’m) fed up with moonfruit spam and considering unfollowing anyone who adds to it”.

Count me in on that one too Kate.

posted by Kev at 16:02   _comments (9)
9 Responses to “Mashable and Moonfruit – Championing Spam Since 2009”
July 3rd, 2009

There’s one reason these tweets should not be considered spam. By clicking “Follow” you have opted-in to a user’s everything – their thoughts, their profanities, their brilliance, even their ignorance. So why are you so opposed to getting what you asked for? If you don’t like it then by all means opt out.

Believe it or not the Internet and all those who use it are not here to cater to you.

By nowrap
 
July 3rd, 2009

nice twitter tip :)

By ad trade
 
July 3rd, 2009

I think its great they managed to get people talking. They even had their managing director and marketing director on hand to give quotes to the media. They’ve managed to reach people who once had no idea who or what “Moonfruit” was!

By Nadine
 
July 3rd, 2009

NoWrap – thanks for the comment. I do agree the internet isn’t here to cater for me, and the great thing about the net, and Twitter especially is that you create your own experience through using it.

With Twitter, I find people who I share some common interests with, and look forward to reading their Tweets. But when they start spamming advertisements for a company, it’s akin to getting a chain letter or sales pitch in my mailbox. And so I unfollow.

You can pick who to follow, but you can’t predict who is going to spam you!

By Kev
 
July 3rd, 2009

Spamming is, when I hit 100,000 forums with cialis links. Spamming is when I hack your WP accounts and insert thousands of hidden links on your blog. Spamming is when I hijack your browser to post comments around the web.

Complaining about what people post on Twitter, that you followed – is not spamming. It’s being a cry baby.

By Mark
 
July 3rd, 2009

Hi Mark

Thanks for the comment. Not being a “cry baby”, just a shame that another great service is in trouble of becoming ruined thanks to marketers executing bad ideas.

Or as Read Write Web put it in a much better way than I can:

“What’s frightening about this “it’s not spam, it’s a message from your friend” is that it’s really not. My friend isn’t actually telling me that Moonfruit is this great new company they have just heard about and that I really have to check out. This isn’t a word-of-mouth recommendation – my friend just wants to win a new laptop. They know this, I know this, and the company knows this. And that makes the message just as spammy to me as any other in-stream tweet from an actual spammer.”

http://bit.ly/ZF5zd

By Kev
 
July 3rd, 2009

This is only the start. For now it’s useful/fun. Tomorrow this will be deemed spam. Brands will start to flood this space. Unless targeted and relevant I expect this kind of thing to die a very quick death.

RR

By Random Ranger

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