The #followfriday Twitter scam

In the race to drum up a following on Twitter, people are using all kinds of silly tactics. The latest one I’m seeing is the fake #followfriday thank you tweets.

Basically you send an @reply to a bunch of people (that probably don’t even follow you) thanking them for recommending you as part of the #followfriday meme. But the thing is they don’t have a clue who you are, and they certainly didn’t recommend you. Perhaps they don’t even do the whole #followfriday thing.

I’m trying to work out what benefit people are getting from using this method – about the only thing I can think of is that by @replying to people with a thank you, the people being thanked might get engaged into some kind of conversation. Perhaps they’ll even follow in order to see what the scammer is talking about.

So, if I were to employ this silly technique I might tweet something like this:

Thanks for the #followfriday love @oprah @aplusk @barackobama @mrskutcher @britneyspears – much appreciated. You guys rock!

Actually, I probably wouldn’t use people this popular – everyone would know it wasn’t real. Instead I’d choose slightly less popular people, perhaps @guykawasaki or @stephenfry. My best case scenario would be if they responded (perhaps reprimanding me for mis-representing them). All the people following them might come and take a look at me and see what the fuss is about.

And the added bonus: any people who were already following me would see this fake thank you, and possibly re-tweet it to their steam.

When will all this silliness end?