A Twitter user who has effectively spammed himself senseless reaches out to us for help. And we’re going to oblige. The only trouble is, he’s making yet another error in judgment, because my guess is this is going to make things worse.
Ryan Barr started a petition on Twitter to ask AT&T to “offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices.” And even though it’s unlikely that AT&T cares even a little bit about this or any other petition, it’s getting some traction. Nearly 10,000 people have “signed” it.
The problem is that every time someone signs the petition it autotweets the message “Petition: AT&T to offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices http://twitition.com/f96aq @ryanbarr,” which sends a message back to Barr and absolutely pollutes the reply stream (the only really useful way to interact with Twitter).
Anyway, here’s Barr’s message. I just signed the petition myself and I’m guessing a lot of you will, too. But don’t worry Ryan. It’ll slow down eventually, probably.
Dear TechCrunch,
My name is Ryan Barr, known on Twitter as @ryanbarr . If you may have noticed, I started a petition (or twitition) found here: http://twitition.com/f96aq .
I want out.
When I first started the petition, it was due to a rant I was having about the price of the phone. It didn’t take long for me to truly not care about the prices as much as I had. And it didn’t take much longer for the petition I started to go out of control.
At the time of this e-mail the petition just passed 9200 signatures. For each signature, a message is tweeted as follows:
“Petition: AT&T to offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices http://twitition.com/f96aq @ryanbarr”
That’s right, 9200 @ryanbarr’s over the span of two (going on three) days. This does not include the unnecessary retweets people also make. I can no longer stand not being able to see real replies in my timeline. I have AT&T employees following me and saying stuff behind my back when I was just ranting on a site that seemed to have little activity.
I completely, COMPLETELY regret pressing the submit button. As the petition nears the 10000 mark I fear even more. As at that mark, TweetMeme will show me as a TM_10000 (@http://twitter.com/TM_10000) … the first, ever.
TechCrunch — you have the power to make businesses grow. You have the power to make or break the reputation of a new device. Please, help me find a way out of this petition. The attention I am receiving is unwanted — I just want to be able to come clear to all the signers and say, “I don’t want in this anymore. I didn’t mean for it to last this long.”
Thanks for anything and for the great reads over the longhaul.
Best Regards,
Ryan Barr
simple… get a new twitter account and close this one…
Don’t you think “Twitter” is getting more than required coverage from TechCrunch.
Just remembered this: “When a Dog bites a Man, its not news but when a Man bites a Dog, its News”.
In my humble opinion, this article is not worth reading (neither posting).
“Twitter” is the first word in the title. It’s not like you didn’t see a twitter article coming. thanks for commenting though. we take this kind of feedback very seriously.
Hey that was very prompt reply, so it seems you guys are really behind Twitter.
well, i was just kidding about taking feedback seriously. I hate feedback. it gets in the way of what i want to do.
Whoooooosh!
Nice, Arrington, nice!
same here mike.. d less feedback on code the better it is
All products are so much better without anybody using them, right?
<9000!
Mr. Zuckerberg, how many times have I told you not to take over Mike Arrington’s body?
I don’t see a problem with the number of Twitter articles, many people like to read them, so you are serving those people.
If others have had their fill of Twitter, they can simply not read the articles… with some of these comments it seems as if people feel obligated to read every single article, which I guess is kind of a good thing because it shows how loyal the readership is, but they shouldn’t let it get to them.
Personally I say: keep them coming!
No hard feelings against Twitter, if I’d any, I would have deleted my account from there
(which i don’t see happening in near future), but the point is about… Journalism
Just getting a new account will solve the problem ! and this was not worth of posting.
Sounds like smart PR to me
Just change your ID in twitter settings and you’re safe
Though I’m sure somebody will just re-register that ID, to use the attention
I think it’s funny. Yep, not news worthy but entertaining. It’s good to have such post once in a while (of course, this is my laid back Maui attitude speaking
I think it’s hilarious. The email is classic…live, emasculating pain.
This young man is suffering, yet he took the time to thank Michael for “all the great stories over the longhaul.”
Good stuff.
The only thing he is suffering is a huge influx of popularity. Anyone who believes this wasn’t the user’s intended result got played.
“Please, leave me alone.. I’m about to be the most popular thing on TweetMeme and there’s nothing I want less than e-fame!”
Um, I don’t get it. Just change the code on the petition to not include the @ reply. This letter was a waste of time. You’re not helpless, sir.
The article was worth reading Ryan should be asking people to stop including @ryanbarr. I can imagine the pain having your @replies filled with this amount of spam.
At least he didn’t build a doomsday device just as a proof of concept.
Kind of amusing, but I don’t pity the guy. Think of all the followers he’ll get out of that…and all he has to do is take a break from twitter for a week to avoid the replies.
You of course know very well that posting this as news in Techcrunch makes it even worse for the guy, because internet is full of idiots who now will head straight to sign that petition. This is internet bullying, something that Mr. Arrington should be very familiar with himself.
Is posting this on TeechCrunch supposed to reduce attention? Ha! the guy obviously wants more attention, wonderful PR stunt!
I am proud to be #9408. And I suspect (like others here) that this guy rope-a-doped Michael into helping get him 10,000 signatures for this lame petition that doesn’t even make sense.
Reverse psychology much?
@TechCrunch – Can you do similar PR for our web service for free?
Yes, but did you pay for the Pre?
I’m infuriating!
As we say in Dutch, when you burn your ass you have to sit on the blisters (wie zijn reet brand moet op de blaren zitten)
Pff.. he’s only doing this to get into the tm_10000, the exact thing he’s saying he’s avoiding.
The fact that he mentioned that would happen and that he’d be the first one is exactly why he sent this story to Techcrunch.
He wants you all to sign the petition.
Yeah, seems so!
Well, that guy should look at it by the positive side… with so many ppl replying and retweeting his message, at least his “Twitter Grade” is likely to go up
internet is serious business!
I am the person who started the UK petition and I figured out a way to remove the tweets from my replies – just set up and save a search for “ryanbarr -petition”
That’s exactly what I was thinking. I don’t see what the problem is. I wouldn’t mind having that much exposure for my Twitter account.
You’re so smart, Patrick. That’s why I like you.
Until I read all the comments, I had written this “tentative” comment which I’ll post anyway:
Here’s an idea:
use search.twitter.com with negative matches until it all blows over.
e.g. @ryanbarr -petition
http://search.t...nbarr+-petition
Don’t be so dependent on http://twitter.com/#replies.
This is just going to fan the flames, of course.
just change your twitter handle dude.
Wouldn’t the simplest thing be to just cancel the petition on the Twittion.com website? No petition to sign means no more onslaught of tweets ABOUT said petition. Sounds like this guy made his bed, now let him lie in it.
Instead of emailing techcrunch, he could have simply used Filttr till the petition thingy fizzled out!
Was this more of a ploy to be featured on techcrunch? You never know!
Hmm, I seem to be able to get his @replies minus the petition ones, so why can’t he. All he has to do is search for “ryanbarr -ht tp://twitition.com/f96aq” (minus the space) http://search.t...ion.com%2Ff96aq
I love petitions on Twitter. It’s like when you were in high school and people put together a car wash to raise money – worthless. IF 10,000 protesting in Washington (mind you, actually being there) isn’t going to do anything, why would this?
No offense random dude, but you deserve it! LOL
I think he better get a new twitter account. It just went over 10100. quite humorous
way to go spam it up, if this will help promote anything hes doing with out destroying the system cool
urgghh
I think Ryan sent the letter to Arrington to get even more publicity for the petition. Clever.
This is hysterical, and of course, I signed the petition because of this article. I do feel somewhat sorry for the guy who created the petition, but, come on, what did he expect?
What an IDIOT, I have no respect for this kid. Now he just brought even more attention. If I hadn’t already signed it…I would sign it again.
The idiot is the one who thinks this kid didn’t want his petition signed, e.g. you.
You can create a saved search for to:username and you’ll get only tweets that are actually replies to you, the way replies used to work.
I’m going to sign the petition just to annoy him. I may even sign it twice.
Petition: AT&T to offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices http://twitition.com/f96aq @ryanbarr
Check out the one on Facebook at http://apps.fac...com/att_iphone/
This goes to show don’t start something if you don’t plan to see it thru 100%.. He knew by starting that it was going to be a big thing its his own fault.. In my book he gets the Here’s Your Sign award… The iphone whiners are tweeting useless stuff pay the price or don’t get the freaking phone end of story.. kthxbai
He should just change his twitter name for the time being so that people just type the responses to a username that isnt his. make it like ryanbar with one r. duh.
Meh, the guy made a mistake. This petition would have died down in only a week or so. He might have saved himself a lot of trouble if he just filtered out these messages (any ones with the word “petition”) from his stream. That way he could still gain a lot of Twitter popularity, but only see replies for him not from the petition.
Too bad he’s only some foolish 18year old kid, and not someone with a big reputation we can all see fall from grace. Now that would have made for a good story!
1) ryanbarr signs AT&T contract
2) ryanbarr wants out of AT&T contract
3) ryanbarr sets up petition
4) ryanbarr wants out of petition
Seems like he’s a whiny idiot.
So did they actually lower the price?
I pray Taliban hurl the next grenade on Twitter..now, curse me.
Spammers are the most annoying people
Hello Mr. Idiot. Welcome to the wonderful world of technology. Perhaps you’ll think twice next time before doing something as ill-conceived. Unfortunately, you probably won’t.
LOL.. I feel bad but it’s kinda funny….
Just create a new account !
Why doesn’t he just write a Greasemonkey script for Firefox to eliminate all of those posts from his view?
he could have looked for two spesific guys:
– “twitition was built for fun by a couple of developers at Branded3.”
and get over here (the url says it all)
http://www.bran....com/talk-to-us
instead of..