Biz Stone Loves Pownce, Uses Wordpress, Supports McCain, and Doesn’t Protect His Personal Brand
Introduction
A few days ago I wrote a post about protecting your personal brand on Twitter. A lot of people read the post and the conversation around the topic was great. This morning I decided to show you what can happen if you fail to protect your personal brand.
Biz
Biz, co-founder of Twitter, regularly tweets on the account Biz. Obviously, Biz is an active user of Twitter and has quite a large following (8,678 as of this post). He is a member of the blue team, happens to enjoy the show LOST, and is trying to make an effort to visit his family more often in Boston. Check out a quick little snap shot of his Twitter account:
Biz Stone
Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, just joined Twitter and currently tweets on the account Biz Stone. Biz Stone is also a member of the blue team, but unlike Biz, he is a HUGE fan of Pownce, Wordpress, John McCain, and AJ Vaynerchuk. Check out a little snap shot of Biz Stone’s Twitter account:
If I were a spammer
If I were a spammer I would immediately go out and start following thousands of Twitter users. The likelihood of these users following me back is pretty high - the users who truly know Twitter wouldn’t follow me, and the users who aren’t tech saavy wouldn’t follow me, but those in-betweeners would be a lock! Once I built a large following I would immediately start spamming out my spam links and probably hurt Biz’s brand. Even worse, after a few months I bet my Twitter account would rank real high in Google for the term “Biz Stone” and “Biz Stone Twitter,” something the real Biz would never want to see.
Obviously the real Biz Stone can delete this account
Obviously, in this situation, it isn’t a big deal for the real Biz Stone. He could simply delete my account and then freeze it. The point is not everyone has this kind of power, and not everyone would be able to realize the fraud until it was already a bit too late.
Disclaimer
I am not trying to do anything wrong by Biz or by Twitter. I am simply trying to drive home the point of protecting your personal brand. After a day or two I will delete all of the tweets and make a tweet directing users to Biz’s real account. I will never use the account to follow other users, or spam anyone. Thanks!
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April 20th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Good post man, I think that web 2.0 sites like this, and many others, should let you list all of the other sites your a part of, like on digg I have my stumbleupon, mixx, and twitter account listed, this really helps people know that its actually me. Of course its not fool proof, a spammer could always list these also, but for me it seems to help.
Nice little write up, making that account definitely proved your point
April 21st, 2008 at 10:22 pm
As someone who has 3 (or maybe 4) fake twitter accounts dedicated to him, plus at least two or three blogs trying to use my name to achieve rankings (or at least rankings on my name), I certainly understand the importance of protecting your personal brand. But, how does one protect everything? register a dozen usernames on every service? Reach out to each service and ask that the account be removed? (Which they may or may not do, depending).
Working on and protecting your personal brand becomes harder and harder over time, and like SEO was “back in my day, sonny,” the scammers and spammers always win.
Nice post, my friend.