SimplyZesty lists spam the Twitter stream

So, last Wednesday a shitstorm regarding Twitter lists hit the Irish Twitterati and as we’re a hot-cold bunch, it blew up in predictable form.

SimplyZesty launched their lists and they had taken a similar approach to signup to TwitIreland. It seemed so anyway. But no. They hadn’t. It appears that they only way you can ask to be added to a list they create is by public hashtagging tweets. These hashtagged tweets are necessary. They are prerequisites.

Not very different from the Moonfruit spam bullshit that happened last Summer, except in SimplyZesty’s case their lists appeal to the ego and not to the Macbook-Pro-shaped hole in your life, right?

These lists represent social capital that SimplyZesty is producing. They are also appear to be visible demonstrations of SimplyZesty’s understanding of the Irish tweeting community, Twitter and beyond. But they are really not.

Spam, spam, spam

The really disappointing thing about SimplyZesty lists requiring users to send that hashtagged message is that it transforms a participant from being part of a community to be part of a cynical PR campaign. And plenty were fine with that.

The sad thing about this is that SimplyZesty are an online PR agency that specialise in giving advice about Social Media. They sell themselves as experts that businesses call into give advice about engaging online. Now, if experts in a tiny field treat their own users as mere meat in a flat, old-school PR approach of mention inches, not ideas then the industry is fucked before we even start.

I took issue with the way SimplyZesty posts were constantly pimped on Twitter untagged and RTed in a circuit of circlejerkery and now I take issue with the way that SimplyZesty are using people as word of mouth pawns. I don’t care if it’s a one-time thing. If SimplyZesty create a service that ends up in spamming the Twitter feed to talk about their stuff, it’s still spam. I’m kind of wondering where they go next because parts of the team seem resistant to learn a damn thing – I took issue with iFoods spamming my email many months ago. A case of blame the intern?

Flawed Thinking

It’s not just the spam issue, SimplyZesty’s list approach has a few major flaws:

Lists are limited

So what happens when a SimplyZesty list outgrows the account it belongs to? The USA and UK lists are perfect exemplars. Do we add ’1′ or ’2′? Adding numbers to the end of the name of a Twitter account really means that the atomicity of the original account is lost – so I want a full list of people that live in London, perhaps I’ll have to browse SimplyEngland1′s (or 2, 3, etc) Greater London for London users. Suddenly, the easy 1-click approach of lists that SimplyZesty is advocating is lost in conditions – one must search, read and find now? Scalability is now a problem.

Search already does the job and features-to-be

Typing in “near:location” ( for example, “near:Wexford”), into the Twitter search box returns the list of Twitter users that have entered Wexford as their default location in their Twitter profiles. While some may say that this is too difficult for users to manage, users seem fairly used to using Google to search every single day. Users are not ignorant.

Twitter is just a step away from making lists infinitely more usable by connecting search to list creation, maintenance and sharing. This will be definitely part of a corporate Twitter offering to organisations along with metrics and decentralised ad creation. Connecting search to lists would effectively kill the SimplyZesty effort. It’s the classic question that startups face – “is this a feature or something worthwhile – and how likely is a small effort on the part of an service provider/competitor is likely to kill on what I am working on?”

Creativity Hide-and-Seek?

Community isn’t about transparently using people online to benefit. Marketing and online PR people in Ireland are still not getting this. Requiring people to use hashtags as prerequisites  for anything, cheapens not only the user, but the service/event it is promoting. SimplyZesty and firms like them that sell Social Media expertise need to realise that and need to begin respecting their web users.

Where’s the bloody creativity? Is the mother-lode of online PR and social engagement hashtags on Twitter? Christ. We’re so far behind the UK scene, it’s scary. While they are Wright-Brothersing-it by focusing on ideas and mixed-media approaches to connecting with people on things they actually give a shit about, we’re still scratching in the dirt treating people as buzz meat and congratulating ourselves on hashtags.

We’ve been down this road again and again. Irish PR practitioners keep plugging away at the hashtags thinking it’s a saving metric for their clients. This does not work. Giving invites to Irish bloggers and Twitters to blog and tweet like zombies using hashtags does not work. In fact, the usual faces at the usual events organised by the usual people smells of shill and for sale. How many times must one say it?

Web users are partners. Online marketing and PR agencies need to work with ideas that infect us with wonder, fun, WTF .. etc. Enriching what people care about is something to focus on. The rest will follow.

When SimplyZesty came into the scene, they held so much promise.  An agency born out of the web and dedicated to the online. I really believed that they were going to make a difference. I guess I was wrong.

November 9th, 2009 at 1:40 pm • Filed in Brainstrobing, Geekery



Comments

10 Comments to “SimplyZesty lists spam the Twitter stream”

  1. Niall Harbison Says:
    November 9th, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    With regards to spamming people you speak about us sending out links in our own (yes our own personal accounts) accounts as being spam? After discussing that with you openly I started tagging my own links with [new on SZ blog] which was more than reasonable(changing the whole way I use twitter and all). As i stated at the time all somebody has to do is unfollow if they don’t want to see links, Twitter is a very democratic place like that.

    So what happens now? I write a story, Tweet it in the manner you have requested and it still gets 50 tweets like this http://www.simplyzesty.com/sz-news/traffic-techcrunch-send/
    Is this going to annoy you as well? Seriously just hit the unfollow button and don’t subscribe to our blog, life really is too short. Our content is not for everybody by any means and I certainly don’t think it is in anyway relevant to you as you are a veteran of the internet but we often get posts like this http://swearimnotpaul.blogspot.com/2009/11/blogs-what-i-like-simply-zesty.html which is why we write the blog. Not everybody has as much in depth knowledge about marketing and business in general as you Lexia and some people actually want to learn about Facebook pages an menial stuff like that, thats why we write the blog.

    The lists themselves were just a fun little project for the week. Nothing serious and a resource for people to use as they saw fit. You think they are spam, I think they were a little harmless fun…we are never going to agree on that.

    The email from iFoods was actually nearly 2 years ago at this stage and I admitted at the time that it was a mistake and I thought that after nearly 3 years of giving content away for free you might have let that one slip and give me the benefit of the doubt but obv not :( Shame really.

    I think Tommy hits the nail on the head here http://trusttommy.com/2009/10/22/the-irish-twitter-complex-2/

    I am more than happy to talk in person about this but have no interest in getting dragged in to the usual slagging match online as I don’t find it useful, our opinions are too far apart anyway and I just want to concentrate my time writing content for our readers who do enjoy it.

    N



  2. Kevin Says:
    November 9th, 2009 at 3:17 pm

    I never considered this as a way of marketing a PR company in a spammy manner. Looking at the tweets from the SZ crew, I thought they genuinely wanted to provide a good service for Irish twitter users.

    The plan involved creating lists by way of bundling people from a hashtag topic, which not only proves effective, but also uses twitter itself (rather then using a form or other form of media on their website, etc.).

    The only argument I can see for this being spam is by including a link to the site – but the link merely served as a way to explain what’s going on to people who might not know otherwise.

    I wouldn’t equate this with the moonfruit idea of spam. Moonfruit was a bit of fun, and worked really well for them at the time (didn’t it go from 1 Macbook Pro to 1 per day or something?).

    We’ve all seen awful online PR campaigns, and some god awful PR people mis-using social media in general. But I do feel SZ have done good here to be honest, by using the medium they’re trying to promote in the first place.



  3. dh Says:
    November 9th, 2009 at 6:17 pm

    In all fairness, I’m at a loss to understand why so much time and words are being wasted on a chef who sets himself up as a social media professional.

    Let’s call a spade a spade here.

    As someone familiar with the work of SZ, Ruby Card anyone, its fairly obvious they’re hacks jumping on the social media bandwagon.

    I watch their antics and laugh, and move on. This kind of coverage (even negative) is chapter 2 in their “social media for dummies) play book. They’re already done with chapter 1 “write top ten lists for more traffic”.

    Giving them this kind of coverage will unfortunately actually give them credibility and traction before their clients get s chance to really find them out.



  4. Damien Mulley Says:
    November 9th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    Interesting that when you complained on Twitter some spineless cunt creates an attack account. Course this has happened more than once. Funny that.



  5. John Lavery Says:
    November 9th, 2009 at 8:38 pm

    MIAOU! What a shit storn you have unleashed!



  6. Charles Says:
    November 10th, 2009 at 1:05 am

    Niall,

    I don’t think you’re quite grasping the concept, I could be entirely wrong and I’m quite happy to be corrected but shouldn’t one of the main points of PR be to engage people rather than have them unfollow you, tailoring the way you do things to get the best result possible through feedback? Alexia is simply stating an opinion and rather than being courteous and reasonable, you merely restate your position ad nauseum and seem content to make yourself out to be the victim of a self-appointed elite merely because their view doesn’t agree with yours.
    Yes these hashtags may annoy some and you can never keep everyone happy but by trying to do this with every market when there are other viable alternatives rather than upsetting people, are you not just allowing situations like this to arise when previous similar behaviour on the part of marketing and PR firms has caused irritation? And even if it wasn’t foreseeable, then it should be reasonable that there should be some amount of poise shown in how the end result is handled, something I haven’t seen.

    I might be crazy, but this isn’t very good from a business perspective when you can’t engage with and make those who don’t share your worldview feel like there is some validity to their argument. People will always comment on what they find effective and likewise, the exact opposite so by deciding to involve yourself in the industry, you’ll have to learn to deal with criticism and be gracious about it



  7. Darragh Says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 5:32 pm

    Community isn’t about transparently using people online to benefit. Marketing and online PR people in Ireland are still not getting this…

    Giving invites to Irish bloggers and Twitters to blog and tweet like zombies using hashtags does not work.

    In fact, the usual faces at the usual events organised by the usual people smells of shill and for sale.

    Thank you for putting this into words. It badly needed to be said, and I agree with it 100%. Nice one, Alexia. I think there’ll be a big landing in the near future as more people become clued into what companies are charging for when they really, ethically, shouldn’t, and how cheaply some people sell themselves.



  8. Bernie Goldbach Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 2:05 am

    Lots of best practise cross-talk mentioned above, with some gate-keeping rhetoric added for an extra zesty touch.

    I really enjoy diversity on the internet and how different people can express themselves in distinct ways. And I really like how Twitter noise and clever phishing is nudging people back to writing essays online.

    I know that some companies and pundits like to communicate with facts displayed as lists. It’s a natural evolution from FAQs and blogrolls to lists. Others might not like lists but that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful.

    I think it’s over-reaching the expertise of some mid-level employees to expect them to stoke a community when they haven’t been empowered to speak for their company.

    It’s up to prospective clients to make their own value-for-money determinations. That’s why it’s good to compare client references when exploring communications professionals who purport to expand your reach. It’s relatively easy to find communications and PR consultants at nearly every price point in today’s competitive market.

    I’m off to make my Christmas list now. I think I’ll do it on Twitter and tag the folks on this comment stream as a start. Thanks for contributing your thoughts.



  9. Charles Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 2:57 am

    Mmm… Buzz words



  10. Alexia Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 7:35 am

    @Bernie

    “I think it’s over-reaching the expertise of some mid-level employees to expect them to stoke a community when they haven’t been empowered to speak for their company.”

    Sorry, what?



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