Wednesday, February 6, 2013

DesertCroneNM Pushes Back on UniteBlue


For those of you who follow me on twitter, you may have noticed I'm concerned about this onslaught of new followers I'm getting through something called Unite Blue. But I first  need to set the stage for this little drama.

When someone follows me, it's generally after we've chatted or one of us has RTed the other's tweet. Before Unite Blue I had about 1750 followers, but in about a week, that number has jumped to 1960 without my having interaction with the the new followers.  I can't keep up with them. When I get a new follow, I check her/his followers list to see if we have any common ones. Then I begin reading tweets. So this process takes some time, but if new followers pass my background check, I'll follow back.

I've just had a bad feeling about Unite Blue, which I've discussed with @jhw2212 (Jennifer on the this blog) during numerous phone calls. Today she called & told me to check if I was following Unite Blue. Well, I didn't need to check because I knew I wasn't. After much explanation, Jen finally convinced me that I was probably following Unite Blue and told me how to check. I'll be damned if I wasn't following Unite Blue.

I was completely astounded and began tweeting about my experience to warn others. I'm not casting aspersions  on UB.  Maybe it is what it claims to be. However, I like to choose who I follow, not have someone else choose for me.

Here's my theory. I think that somehow UB has taken over Connect the Left's twitter account, maybe by hacking into it or by some other less nefarious scheme. So when  the name on the Connect the Left account was changed  to Unite Blue, everyone following CTL became a follower of Unite Blue.

I don't like the way this was done. I think it was dishonest. And if this kind of deception becomes commonplace on Twitter, then I have no use for it.


2 comments:

Laura said...

Thanks for posting this. When some of the people I follow started getting into UniteBlue, I visited their site but it sounded a little bit too much like a "Get 1000 followers, free!" scam. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one that is wary of them.

Kmich718 said...

I've been watching the dialogue btw some of the players in this drama and glad I've waited to sign up with UB. I'll wait some more. Thanks for your post!

 
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