Sick of writing your own crummy tweets for free, and wish someone else would pay you to post bad tweets? Wish no more!
TweetPeddler is a service designed to let advertisers pay to have their messages tweeted out by popular accounts. The kind of advertisers who typically use this service are of a particular spammy sort — diet pill sellers, strange video sites, etc. Similarly, the kind of Twitter accounts who participate are similarly low-quality: the kinds of accounts that do "relatable quotes" or fake celebrity accounts.
A typical "real" tweet from @GirlStruggles (~5 million followers):
apparently teenagers need 10 hours of sleep a night to function properly maybe thats why i suck at everything
Girl Problems
@GirIStruggles
apparently teenagers need 10 hours of sleep a night to function properly maybe thats why i suck at everything
A sponsored tweet through TweetPeddler (note the #ad hashtag at the end):
Custom 16"X20" Giclee Personalized Canvas Print on 1.5" Wood Gallery Bars http://t.co/odtSlt75mE #ad
Girl Problems
@GirIStruggles
Custom 16"X20" Giclee Personalized Canvas Print on 1.5" Wood Gallery Bars http://t.co/odtSlt75mE #ad
You can type in your own message or have that account retweet you:
Here's the thing: It's intended for advertisers, but isn't limited. Anyone with a PayPal account can buy a sponsored tweet. Likewise, virtually anyone can sign to sell their tweets.
Two years ago, a similar service called Pay4Tweet quickly devolved into an instrument of trolling. It changed its policies so that you could no longer auto-tweet — messages needed to be approved before they went up.
Just recently, TwitterPeddler started up again, using the old, unfiltered model. It wasn't long before we started seeing off-message things from a crummy aphorism account called "Things Guys Like."
Usually, this account tweets bro-ish aphorisms like:
Jager Bomb Shots
Things Guys Like
@Things4Guys
Jager Bomb Shots
But TweetPeddler let people make it auto-tweet things like:
Telling my bro that heaven is for real while I stroke his taint #ad
Things Guys Like
@Things4Guys
Telling my bro that heaven is for real while I stroke his taint #ad
God is real. #ad
Things Guys Like
@Things4Guys
God is real. #ad
Taking a hit of meth and plowing one of my bros bareback for hours on end without blowing my gravy #ad
Things Guys Like
@Things4Guys
Taking a hit of meth and plowing one of my bros bareback for hours on end without blowing my gravy #ad
Being Raised As A Shitty Misogynist By Shitty Misogynist Dads and In Turn Raising Shitty Misogynist Sons #ad
Things Guys Like
@Things4Guys
Being Raised As A Shitty Misogynist By Shitty Misogynist Dads and In Turn Raising Shitty Misogynist Sons #ad
I had to get in on this. You can set your own price, and choose if you want sponsored tweets to be automatically posted or if you want to review them.
I sent out the link to my TweetPeddler page and let people tweet whatever they wanted for the low, low price of $1 per tweet.
Been seeing a lot of bullshit #ads on my feed but I'll tell you what: I love to pee and I'm fully diaped. This is not an #ad
Katie Notopoulos
@katienotopoulos
Been seeing a lot of bullshit #ads on my feed but I'll tell you what: I love to pee and I'm fully diaped. This is not an #ad
Hmmm... Maybe this wasn't a good idea.
I love wearing jncos. Theyre not just a #f #ad
Katie Notopoulos
@katienotopoulos
I love wearing jncos. Theyre not just a #f #ad
I love to shit and crap. Its cool as hell to do that. I also like to smell my own poop and eat it. #ad
Katie Notopoulos
@katienotopoulos
I love to shit and crap. Its cool as hell to do that. I also like to smell my own poop and eat it. #ad
Buzzfeed is shit. I quit. I'm done with this garbage. the Koch Brothers can suck my ass. YES THIS IS MY OFFICIAL RESIGNATION #ad
Katie Notopoulos
@katienotopoulos
Buzzfeed is shit. I quit. I'm done with this garbage. the Koch Brothers can suck my ass. YES THIS IS MY OFFICIAL RESIGNATION #ad
At the end of the day, I made about $30, half of which came after I raised the price from $1 to $15. Not bad, except for the part where I nearly lost my job.
Basically, this is really dumb and no one should ever do it.
Update - Dec. 19, 3:40p.m. ET: Shortly after this post went up, TweetPeddler's site went down, apparently due to high traffic volume. Didn't you all see my warning that no one should ever do this?
Update - Dec. 20, 11:00a.m. ET A representative for TweetPeddler confirmed over email that it wasn't high traffic that caused it to shut down; Twitter shut it down due to terms of service violations. According to TweetPeddler, "we are completely overhauling the site to be more compliant with Twitter's Terms and Conditions. We will be back in about a month."
High volume of traffic has put a kink in our system. If you recently purchased a tweet that did not go through email our support team.
TweetPeddler
@Tweet_Peddler
High volume of traffic has put a kink in our system. If you recently purchased a tweet that did not go through email our support team.