{"id":21,"date":"2012-08-30T18:13:57","date_gmt":"2012-08-30T18:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/?p=21"},"modified":"2012-08-30T18:13:57","modified_gmt":"2012-08-30T18:13:57","slug":"faux-realism-on-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/2012\/08\/30\/faux-realism-on-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Faux Realism on Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I use Hootsuite as my desktop (okay, laptop) Twitter client. The third column highlights whenever someone tweets out a link to an issue of Now I Know. A couple of days ago, this happened:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-22\" title=\"Picture 46\" src=\"http:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-46.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"560\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-46.png 510w, https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-46-273x300.png 273w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-23\" title=\"Picture 47\" src=\"http:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-47.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"547\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-47.png 510w, https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-47-279x300.png 279w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Wow. What happened there?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Look through the accounts and you&#8217;ll see that most of them are real estate agents. They&#8217;re using a service called New Panda which, according to the linked-to page, features &#8220;Auto-Pilot Social Posts&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We\u2019ll deliver a carefully planned, written set of content that will automatically post to one or more of your social networks. You decide which post types you like. You can always cancel or reschedule a post in advance. When you don\u2019t have time to actively manage your accounts, we\u2019ll keep you engaged with your audience and generate new comments, leads and referrals. Easy. Brilliant.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Does it work? I&#8217;m skeptical, but here&#8217;s the traffic graph for the page these somewhat-automated accounts linked to:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-24\" title=\"Picture 60\" src=\"http:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-60.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"931\" height=\"183\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-60.png 931w, https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-60-300x58.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 931px) 100vw, 931px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The bounce isn&#8217;t huge &#8212; only about 50 or 60 more than the average day. Most of them actually come from Facebook:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-26\" title=\"Picture 62\" src=\"http:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-62.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"238\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-62.png 620w, https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Picture-62-300x115.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I assume the 15 &#8220;direct&#8221; visits are from Twitter. It looks like these half-bot, half-human accounts are delivering some value to their followers. Paint me surprised.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I use Hootsuite as my desktop (okay, laptop) Twitter client. The third column highlights whenever someone tweets out a link to an issue of Now I Know. A couple of days ago, this happened: Wow. What happened there? Look through the accounts and you&#8217;ll see that most of them are real estate agents. They&#8217;re using [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28,"href":"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/28"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlewis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}