Around noon Pacific time today, a small meme broke out on the Internet. At nearly the exact same time, over a dozen Twitter accounts all tweeted out the message “Oh i had the day off work lol. thats why im home.” All were sent out from what appear to be the Twitter accounts of cute girls. Why? Because they’re all automated spam accounts set up by some lame online dating site.
Spamming a social network by creating fake accounts with pictures of cute girls is as old as social networking itself. But this one on Twitter is tricky because when you look all the accounts individually, they look like they may be legit. All use different names, have different pictures and use different bios. But all link to the same site (with the same BS ad campaign URL) and all have tweet streams that are exactly the same, word for word.
It looks like this Singlesnet site (or someone trying to reap the affiliate benefits) built a grass-roots spamming campaign of Twitter with these girls. But what’s odd is that it seems to be working somewhat. While most of these accounts seem to be following a good number of fake accounts — ones with no profile pictures and no updates — they all appear to have a good number (in the hundreds) of what appear to be real followers. Whether its the cute icons, mundane fake updates or number of legit followers that leads others to follow them, I couldn’t tell you. But people are following the fake girls.
And if you were only following one of them, it’d be hard to know that they were fake. Some have the same pink flower background (seen in the screenshot below), but not all do — tricky. But the two tell-tale signs are if their bio links to that Singlesnet site, or if they tweeted the magic words today, “Oh i had the day off work lol. thats why im home.”
Previous fake tweets included “Getting ready for work! Hehe just got out of the shower 
pervs” — always a winner.
I’m not sure that the bios in these fake Twitter accounts aren’t populated from real bios for real girls on the dating site, but the tweets are definitely all BS. Hope you didn’t try to set up a date with one of these girls.
I don’t want to see spam on twitter. I don’t want to read about the spam I don’t want to see on twitter on techcrunch. Might be time to start broadening horizons here.
Couldn’t agree more. Come on, get something more valuable for us–I don’t care about the spams in Twitter.
I totally disagree. Thanks MG for exposing online whores.
Everything on Twitter is spam.
Come on Twitter is the order of the day.
Let more articles be there.
Its good to know what’s happening with twitter.
Ask for your money back.
MG no one cares about twitter find something else to write about thanks~ your techcrunch readers
I’m confused, didn’t you just say you wanted more Twitter stories yesterday?
How would you know that these spam tweets were occurring unless you (or someone you know) was following them? You don’t mention that part.
Twitter is undoubtedly the hottest trend on the web. I’m interested, and going by twitters traffic graph so are millions of others, thanks for the insight on it
MG and readers,
I am sorry to spam but wanted to let you know that we have released new features on WallPipe ( http://www.wallpipe.com ) today.
You can now create Public Walls (visible to everyone), follow public walls and user status. Not only that but you can also upload/edit wall icons now to make your wall look cooler.
Oh! and we have started working on this small but very cool feature (specially for TechCrunch Readers who hate TechCrunch spamming them with Twitter Post) which will definitely blow few minds.
And yes, we dont have spammers on our website yet. But if we come across, we will take them out immediately for quality purposes.
You aren’t sorry.
Give it up Petey.
I bet you guys have got shares in twitter, that could be the reason why you are writing so much about twitter…
MG, Seriously, it’s obvious that there will be hell lot of stuff about twitter, and it’s not really necessary to post about everything that happens with twitter… if you go on with these twitter stuff on techcrunch, it would be plain boring… as an alternative you could ad twitcrunch to the techcrunch network and keep on posting there…
How could you say something like that? There’s just nothing else happening in online business right now. It’s really is just that simple: Twitter is the only thing happening, and the only thing worth paying attention. Unless there’s some controversy about Facebook that day, or there was a ripple in the iPhone market.
Just looking at the last 30 headlines in my RSS sidebar here it’s plain to see that TechCrunch is more about the marketplace than the business, than it used to be. Hey, we’re all subject to pop culture, just think of TC as the Daily Webbies. Tiffany Shlain should be proud.
Come on man… With more than a trillion pages on the net there has to be something great to report other than twitter!
Spam is a way of life on Twitter.
There are much more interesting topics to cover such as why the Nielson Twitter stats are wrong (wait you did that, but missed the fact the 1,000/following a day limit is making this problem worse).
Or that the 3% that follow all @ replies are the ones in the right and Twitter should flip the switch that way.
Or the very fact TechCrunch is covering sockington is turning the cat into a celebrity.
Anyway, keep the Twitter stories coming…
you are so late on this one. i actually manually block these pages from even following me yeah i am anal like that.
like it!
Well, for the creepers out there, there’s bad news and good news. The bad news is that someone probably got stood up for a date. The good news is that at least Chris Hansen wasn’t waiting for them… this time.
MG-
Singlesnet itself is not doing the spamming, but “affiliates” through CPA companies. Basically you sign up to a ad network ( like affiliate.com / azoogle.com ) and then you can promote offers that they have. You get paid x$ every time someone signs up to the offer. Its different than CPC as its strictly performance based, but as you can see clever people figure out how to make money off of it.
It is important to note though, that it is almost definitively NOT singlesnet doing this themself.
Possibly a good call dan, I’ll update the wording to reflect that possibility.
how about doing your own research proir to posting??? You twit
-tering fool!
Does MG make anyone else miss Duncan Riley?
Does that line get old for you Marlo? I hope not cause I appreciate you coming back every day to comment with the same thing while implying that you won’t come back.
Please stop talking about twitter all the time. Register twitcrunch and put all the twitter stories there.
Why would an investor stop talking up their book?
That actually isn’t a bad idea.
Or, what about a social media channel separate from the main startup feed?
It could work.
Just as I appreciate coming back every day and seeing a poorly written Twitter post.
Well good. All that matters is you keep coming back.
so user expierence does not matter to you MG? You are a twit
No I don’t, but I do think MG should be given the pink slip
I take it back, I am a moron.
…and that is saying something.
“All use different names, have different pictures and use different bios. But all link to the same site (with the same BS ad campaign URL) and all have tweet
streams that are exactly the same, word for word.”
That kind of automation is called minimum wage by the way.
You speak as if you’ve never read the personals ads on craigslist. They’re FULL of minimum wage spammers.
http://www.crai.../533096562.html
Just ask Richard Stallman
Another non-story on TC. Congratulations.
TechCrunch takes a lot of bs from people. If you don’t like something stop coming, don’t waste everyones time by commenting on how you don’t like it.
STOP MENTIONING MY NAME ON TWITTER
ha.
oh twitter.
“At nearly the exact same time, over a dozen Twitter accounts all tweeted out the message “Oh i had the day off work lol. thats why im home.”
Wow. A whole dozen spam accounts on Twitter. Like in … 12 accounts. Who all say the same stuff. And a couple of hundreds are following them. Wow.
OMG the sky is falling the sky is falling, our new way to comunicate is being invested with fake comunicators…. help what will we do?????
MG is a TWIT that should be fired
Wait, there’s spam on Twitter? I thought they were all Social Media Experts?
Social Media Experts haha! Yes there are a few of them.
Dude, enough about writing on stupid Twitter crap. I don’t mind posts on Twitter, but this provides little to no value to TechCrunch readers.
Common!!!!!!!
I’m gonna have to second this. To be honest, I’ve been annoyed at the user complaints regarding the over-coverage of twitter. Quite often there is very relevant information coming out about the company.
I’m not going to “stop reading” techcrunch, or make some other adolescent threat. But common guys, this is getting out of hand. MG in particular, I think you’re doing great – but look at the ratio of your articles about twitter vs. all other articles. It’s quite staggering.
Writing about Twitter is fine, and responsible. But only when it’s relevant.
Well, you could be an adult and not threaten, but actually leave. What on TC is exclusive AND useful?
It seems evident that Arrington came back from his little spitty-party and decided that he wanted more of that, to be the Tech TMZ.
who ya callin’ common?!
I recommend they have a section for twitter
+1
+1, or just fire MG, and when your other writers write about twitter have it be about something important, gamechanging, sales… not about a 100 Year old, and some spammers… please
WTF?! What a waste of time – oh geez there are spammers on Twitter. No shizen sherlock! Arrington you need to start filtering post by your staff. We won’t come back if this is what this site will degenerate into.
How am i getting their spam if I don’t follow them??? Let them spam on their own? If anyone is bothered just unfollow ~ as simple as that!
MG, if you want something to twitt… eh… write about…
Write about Twitter dropping their direct message function because 99.9 % of my DM’s are friggin’ automated.
Maybe TC drops posts on articles that people ignore and don’t comment on. As long as we post or complain about it, the more articles we may see, that’s why it’s still “news.” I don’t believe deserves it’s own section. This will pass, they all do when the next big thing comes.
Hey MG, we hit this page to read the good stuff: the comment section.
Locator dude sets the spam standard.
Followlocator.com – get attention
You are a poison to this publication and the community that supports it. Your technology is terrible, and your methods of promoting it is even worse.
You are a complete ahole. Go the F away.
annoyinglocator.com — people hate you
locator guy, can you post one link that works? just ONE?
like:
carlocator.com and it shows me cars?
I can’t seam to find one that WORKS, so quit pitching your crap sites they are broken ning sites, big deal, takes all of 5 minutes to deploy a ning site
The Game: You Just Lost It
How can we know who is a spamer an let me people that twitter is a good thing if you know what you are doing, come on you can make money on twitter there are few step you ofto take
You forgot that mambo dogface in the banana patch.
I love watching people get so bent out of shape about Twitter coverage. Do you people have nothing better to do than cry about one topic out of many this site covers in a day?
If you don’t care, then don’t comment! If no one cares, I’m sure they will stop doing stories about it. The true facts are that the Twitter stories get eyeballs. So they will keep being talked about. Stop giving the stories eyeballs & activity and maybe MG will move on to something else.
My guess is you can’t because you all secretly love his coverage. I know I do.
Consider the possibility that you have no life.
I’d like to recommend a great program called “Shortkeys Lite” for TC commenters.
You can set it up to hit something like “r5″ and it will type out what you have stored there.
So you can have one that is
“MG no one cares about twitter find something else to write about thanks~ your techcrunch readers”
or
“I don’t want to see spam on twitter. I don’t want to read about the spam I don’t want to see on twitter on techcrunch. Might be time to start broadening horizons here.”
or
“Another non-story on TC. Congratulations.”
And all it takes is 2 keystrokes! You could get those on each and every post in under a minute.
Just a time-saving suggestion.
stop the twitter propaganda
And by posting this garbage here you’re giving them even more free traffic.
Duh. That’s the point.
I don’t understand what are you all people bitching about, Twitter topics bring traffic and spread via Twitter itself a lot. I fully understand why is TC (or MG) posting Twitter stories.
If you don’t wanna read it, why are you here?
[Raises head above parapet]
Perhaps this is less about Twitter and more about the problem of spammers – i.e. pretty much every service\technology\fad isjumped upon by an army of black-hatters as soon as it threatens to become popular.
Overall, it infects the medium and reduces its value.
Take blogs for instance – Askimet reckon that at least 80% of blog comments are spam, while who knows how many blogs out there are actually splogs?
ack WHO speaks ill of the Twitter?
as one of those “slow” laggards or whatever you call em (NOT first on the tech bandwagon). its gonna be/is bigger than ANYTHING on the planet.
i said that when cell phones got cameras that THEY were gonna explode and they did. if you are bored on TWITTER or think its all spam then its YOU who is out in left field.
i find all kinds of amazing posts… funny or educational or sad or uplifting or whatever. or finding where my man – #rpattz – is kicking it (sorry rob pattinson forgive me – almost FORGOT you ack – enjoy cannes k) its ALL there. you suddenly realize how ALIKE the world is.
best thing since fire was invented. will have LONG shelf life. the prob right now is overflow of info and no ability to sort. tabs would be nice. maybe in time…
It is up to MG what he writes about. All of what he writes is informative as there are some people, quite a few people, who don’t know what he’s talking about or are hearing the ‘twitter stories’ for the first time. If and when you see a twitter story there’s something very simple you can do….don’t click on it!
Clicking on it and posting bad comments on it that aren’t constructive leaves me puzzled to say the least. Comeon people, sheeez. Chill out
That is a good point about why people who have no interest in Twitter still click on all the Twitter stories. I mean when I see a story I have no interest in, I pass it by.
Why are constructive comments necessary? It’s just a (self-professed) blog.
It is about time that the issue of Spammers attacking Social Networks was fully addressed.
There is an urgent need for all of the big boys of the web such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook to set up an official Body in partnership with Global Crimebusters – which attacks cyber criminals that abuse and infiltrate Websites and Users PC’s.
Spammers along with phishers and virus infecting scumbags need to have their jacobs completely hacked off for causing so much misery to millions of Web and PC Users.
Heavy punishment should be given to anyone that attacks these Sites and Users PC’s.
Its time to declare war on CyberPests
i think Techcrunch should be renamed Twittercrunch…. that is all they talk about nowadays. Come on, it’s getting old. Enough with the darn twitter stories already. Even when there is nothing to report on twitter, you try to create something to write about (like this one). Pretty lame— this is NOT cutting edge tech news, is it?
To think that Techcrunch was a really good site talking about a multitude of new tech startups at one time; instead of its current concentration on Twitter and Facebook.
wow that’s crazy
damn it. I thought all those hot girls following me were real. FML Twitter needs a spam option, if not a spam directory where people can report bots and spammers.
It gets even worse! I found out last night I was being followed by @ChelsieGMullins. If you go to her Twitter page, it’s a pic of a cute hipster girl, and all her posts are like:
God I miss him. :/ This 14 hour time difference is not okay. haha.
We’re dorks. I love it.
However, they are all followed by urls that take you to porn or dating sites. And if you click on her personal url, http://revtwt.com/, it’s a place where you sign up to post bogus tweets, and get paid everytime someone clicks on them.
But the crazy part is how authentic her page looks. Like, you would have NO idea it’s fake. These people are f’in tricky.
I have seen what I thought were fake accounts with hot girls where they follow tons of people and only have a few tweets and few followers but they never had a link in the bio.
Isn’t this what happened with MySpace?
Twitter, please, please figure out a solid method of keeping this off.
Thanks
–Dean
Twitter is great for leadgeneration, or should I say spamming!
im shocked, shocked I say! spammers on twitter. Thanks MG or informing me.. i dodged the bullet there.
“Getting ready for work! Hehe just got out of the shower pervs”
Pervs – well deserved, as this surely was written by a guy. You know, someone from marketing… with a weird beard…