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Tweet Tornado – DO NOT WANT

January 24th, 2009 | Posted By: Tim | Filed under: Site Info |

EDIT – I’ve been asked by the owner of TweetTornado.com to remove the images of their service from the blog, which I have done in compliance to their request.

Twitter is already a fragile community, several major world events have made Twitter grind to an halt on a few occasions, and with a supposed 600% growth in late 2008, Twitter has become a busy place.

Today I had an email from Twitter telling me that a new person wished to follow me, a one @ElissPuricelli, harmless enough I thought…

I thought wrong…

After opening the email, clicking on the twitter users profile link and checking out their new website I came across the atrocity that you can see above.

Tweet Tornado…

If you are a Twitter user then the image above should already give you chills, if you haven’t already worked out, Tweet Tornado is a marketing engine, its an automated script that purports that it can “Create Unlimited Twitter Accounts” and “Add unlimited Twitter Followers”, the site goes on to show a video that should make any Twitter shake with fear.

The video outlines how to use the software to create new accounts, the person speaking even states “If you are looking for a lot of followers, having a hot chick for your picture helps out a lot”.

It also allows for MASS spamming of all the generated accounts with the same Twitter update.

The person explaining the software in the video even shows a search method to target users via a search feature to scan Twitter and auto-follow any of the people matching those key search terms.

The website also states that it will only be allowing 50 people to purchase the software initially for $49.95 and will only be giving out a total of 500.

Can you imagine 500 users, being able to generate literally thousands or hundreds of thousands of accounts that do nothing but spew marketing crap into Twitter, moreover can you imagine the impact that those tweets will cause on the Twitter servers?

If this service is indeed real, if it does *exactly* what it touts that it can do, then a single owner of the Tweet Tornado software could potentially wipe out twitter with a single status update to thousands of accounts.

I implore the Twitter user base at large to contact Twitter, and its creators / maintainers and express your feelings about Tweet Tornado and how it could spell the end of Twitter as we know it.

Contact Twitter:

http://twitter.com/about#contact

Contact Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter)

http://twitter.com/biz or tweet to @biz

Contact Evan Williams  (CEO of Twitter)

http://twitter.com/ev or tweet to @ev

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15 Comments on “Tweet Tornado – DO NOT WANT”

  1. 1 Tweet Tornado said at 12:56 pm on January 25th, 2009:

    Hello, TweetTornado does not spell the end of twitter.. You are being rediculous. mY SOFTWARE IS NOT POWERFUL ENOUGH TO SPELL THE END OF TWITTER. That would be stupid and I couldnt sell my software anymore.
    I am a person with a family and kids to feed just like everyone else. I want to let you know that as this is a free country and you and say what you want about tweettornado.com without recourse.

    YOU CAN NOT, AND WILL NOT USE MY COPYRIGHTED HEADER, LOGO, AND OTHER IMAGES ON YOUR POORLY CRAFTED BLOG.

    REMOVE MY COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL FROM YOUR BLOG AT ONCE OR THE NEXT KNOCK ON YOUR DOOR WILL BE SOMEONE SERVING YOU PAPERS FROM MY LAWYERS DESK.

    I DON’T THINK YOU WANT THAT..

    YOU HAVE UNTIL MIDNIGHT PST 1-25-09 TO REMOVE MY COPYRIGHTED CONTENT
    OR I’LL SEE YOU IN COURT!

  2. 2 steve said at 3:26 pm on January 25th, 2009:

    Oh its real alright, related to SEO’s at marketingbomber DOT com. The Intenet Storm Centre is onto it http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=5746
    whois shows the site is registered through an anonymous domain service domainsbyproxy DOT com. Richard Stiennon has a good analysis at http://threatchaos.com/
    regards steve

  3. 3 Tim said at 5:48 pm on January 25th, 2009:

    @ Tweet Tornado – I have removed your copyrighted imagery from this site as requested.

    However I will not remove this post from this site at all.

    Also in a further note, placing slanderous comments on this supposed “poor quality” of this blog is uncalled for.

    I am a Twitter user, and I have friends that use Twitter as a single medium to communicate throughout the day, it is services such as your which will spell the end of Twitter.

    Oh and as a side note, Typing in caps in the effort to infer shouting, and especially “shouting” threats of legal action on a comment goes to show your level of professionalism.

    This post is completed at – 5:51pm PST

  4. 4 James Williams said at 12:02 pm on January 26th, 2009:

    Great post Tim. Posting at podcasters emporium this evening. The behaviour of this response from tweet tornado tells me he knows nothing about the space he is trying to enter. Good on you tim. Keep free speech alive.

  5. 5 Tom said at 4:36 pm on January 26th, 2009:

    Well, if this guy codes like he writes English I don’t think we have much to worry about. He’s not even original – the same comment is on the blog linked in the second comment!

    I’d have done the same as you and taken down the images to avoid hassle, but it would have been fun to wait for that “next knock on your door” and let the games begin. :D

    Surely it’ll be a quick fix for Twitter just to have some sort of email authentication process that will sniff out these automated things?

  6. 6 Brent/@Ragnarok1971 said at 7:56 pm on January 29th, 2009:

    Although I’m sure if the TwitterGods are aware of this application, they will find some way to cause it to fail (its in their own interests after all) I feel that it could/will have a VERY detrimental effect on us (the legitimate, not-wanting-to-make-a-buck-out-of-it) users.

    Why do so many people just want to make money out of things like twitter etc? Why can’t we have a facility like this and just use it for fun?!?

  7. 7 Tim said at 12:15 am on January 30th, 2009:

    @brent – the TwitterGods are quite aware of it!

    It’s pathetic when people only see dollar signs where others thrive on a free and fantastic service.

  8. 8 Tweet Tornado: The Path to 1 BILLION Tweet Spam | K's Weblog said at 7:15 pm on February 1st, 2009:

    [...] more information on the issue, see the post at regravity.com; let @ev and @biz know that software like this concerns you too! No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first [...]

  9. 9 Keith said at 7:19 pm on February 1st, 2009:

    I just put up a post on my blog which I see is in the postbacks (where’d that avatar come from?!)

    I did the math on a hypothetical and very plausible scenario which would result in 1 Billion received tweet-spam per day… it’s kinda frightening.

  10. 10 Tim said at 11:11 pm on February 1st, 2009:

    @Keith – Lol the avatar would be a gravatar!

    Thanks for the postback!

    Yeah I did a quick calculation based on individuals and the potential damage per day, I didn’t go into it as far as you have, but I can safely say that:

    1 Billion Spam Tweets per day = Death to Twitter

    well in Twitters current state of operation that is!

  11. 11 Tweet Tornado said at 6:22 am on February 6th, 2009:

    TweetTornado only adds followers, People have to click on the page and choose to follow someone so there is no spam involved, only optin marketing. The only people who receive anything are the people who follow and give permission. Everyone needs to realize this is not like a typical spam tool. This is permission based optin marketing! And if twitter would quit shutting the accounts down for no good reason then the software wouldn’t have to create unlimited accounts anymore. I don’t see how this software is bad for twitter, anyone can do the same thing without software the difference is this software saves you alot of time following people.

    So to all you people who think I am wrong, ask yourself this question…

    If a person must willingly choose to follow me and it is also their choice to click on my link to see whatever I am offering to “help” them, Then how could this be considered spam?

    P.S. thanks to the blog owner for advertising my service, I’m getting lots of new customers now.

  12. 12 Tim said at 1:17 pm on February 7th, 2009:

    @ Tweet Tornado – Your efforts to hold up some sort of credibility for your software is useless.

    As is your arguing across several blogs and forums.

    Just remember that arguing on the internet is like winning the special olympics, you may win, but your still retarded.

    Also, I was talking about the detrimental effect of your software against TWITTER AS A WHOLE.

    Not from the individuals perspective. Your software posts directly to Twitter, hundreds of posts coming all at once would start to de-stabilize the Twitter servers and cause issues for EVERYONE not just the individual.

    I don’t care that your software to adds followers to people, but it is shitty , spamming methods of adding followers that myself and THOUSANDS of others hate having to delete all the followers.

    So I still think you should re-think your whole marketing game plan, oh and by the way…

    Well done for ripping off a tutorial from VectorTuts.com for your logo, and yes I have made them aware of the situation.

    P.S. – Clearly your going to Internet Hell…

  13. 13 Herne said at 11:18 am on February 8th, 2009:

    It’s amusing how those trying to sell something call it “Marketing” while the end-user, the people who are actually getting buried under this crap call it “spam.”

    Your “Marketing” ends where it infringes on our usability. It’s just spam and nobody is interested in seeing it.

  14. 14 KerryJ said at 11:52 am on February 8th, 2009:

    @Tweet Tornado — “if twitter would quit shutting the accounts down for no good reason”???

    You are promoting the use of THOUSANDS of dummy/fake accounts. Fake accounts with no real person behind them violate Twitters TOS. Not to mention violating the trust of the people whom use the service to connect to other real people.

    And it is NOT just harmless opt-in marketing.

    Just as with web sites with no original content that clag up search results — these bogus Twitter accounts waste the time of people using the service for social networking who are conscientious about checking out their new followers. If I had to do that for thousands of new followers, I would no longer use the service. Thus YES, YOU ARE *SO* THREATENING TWITTER – BOTH FROM A TECH STANDPOINT AND A USER EXPERIENCE STANDPOINT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Why don’t you spend money to set up your own version of Twitter? Let the people who join understand that their followers and the accounts they may choose to follow are NOT real people but will give them updates on products and services of interest — THAT would be truly opt-in.

    Violating the TOS of a service of a FREE service to make a buck and wasting the time of people who aren’t violating the TOS is not good business practice.

  15. 15 Chris said at 3:23 pm on March 8th, 2009:

    What a complete and total Douche Nozzle (anonymous coward posting as “Tweet Tornado”)

    This is spam hands down. When I get a follower, I look at them and look at the type of content they are tweeting about, look to see if they are a real person. If they are trying to sell crap hey guess what. I send a direct message to @spam with their username. Nice try buddy. I encourage everyone to follow @spam and send them direct messages to @spam with the offenders @username. I have my Gmail forward to my phone so I can know the instant someone starts following me, If I deem them as spam they get reported to @spam Immediately. Often times these spam accounts get KILLED within 20 minutes.

    And don’t come at me with that “I am trying to feed my family” bullshit. Why not get a real job instead of scamming pther people into your stupid pyramid scheme bullshit.

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