

Show HN: Perks - Twitter on Autopilot - wyattferguson
http://perksapp.com/

======
avalaunch
This sounds really spammy. Automatically generating tweets? Ugh. Who would
want to read those tweets? And automatically unfollowing people that don't
follow back is a clear violation of twitter's TOS.

[https://support.twitter.com/entries/76915-automation-
rules-a...](https://support.twitter.com/entries/76915-automation-rules-and-
best-practices)

------
marknutter
Wow, this takes me back a few years when I was heavy into Twitter API apps
development. Websites like the OP's that automated Twitter activity were
pretty numerous and this one is run-of-the-mill from what I can tell. It's
unique in that I didn't think anybody was actually still seriously developing
Twitter apps these days after they harshed on the dev community so badly in
recent years. It certainly made me move on.

That said, I echo some of the concerns mentioned in other comments on this
thread. A lot of the features _are_ really spammy, and I've always personally
taken issue with the practice of auto-following people back. It destroys the
very nature of Twitter which is to follow people you're _actually_ interested
in, not simply to reciprocate the social connection. Auto-following will
destroy your Twitter newsfeed by filling it with garbage from random people's
content (provided you haven't already let your following count get out of
hand).

My prediction is due to the fact that some of the features in this app violate
Twitter's ever tightening TOS this app will not stick around in its current
form long enough to justify the purchase of one month of service, let alone an
entire year.

In the end, there's simply no substitute for, y'know, actually being
interesting.

------
wyattferguson
Hi All, Im the dev behind the site and I thought I would clear up a couple of
common questions/misconceptions about Perks.

1.When dont bulk follow and unfollow, we try to pick out users who are related
to you and have a high likely hood of following back.

2.I can assure you we dont just have an army of bots just following each
other, in a giant follow train / ponzi follower scheme.

3.When were generating tweets for users, its based around the users interests
and (hopefully) recent relevant news on that topic.

4.We've had alot of people mention not liking to enter a CC for the trail, and
were looking into changing that in the near future.

If anyone is curious why we made Perks, it was because we hated all those 'GET
FOLLOWERS FAST', or 'THOUSANDS OF NEW FOLLOWERS A DAY' services, they're
sleazy and amazingly spammy, and bad for the entire Twitter community. So were
trying to create a tool that automates alot of the tasks that a small business
would common have to spend alot of time on, and try to provide real growth and
interaction for those businesses, and not sketchy follow trains.

~~~
zizee
I'm curious to know why you decided now was the time to launch a new twitter
app? Twitter has been putting the thumbscrews on app developers for quite a
few months now. I thought the changes twitter has made to their TOS meant that
creating a twitter app now has a ceiling on it's potential upside.

------
brass9
Wants credit card info for _free_ trial? Instant browser shutdown.

~~~
Argorak
AFAIK, customers that don't want to give their CC info on the trial signup are
very likely not to give it to you later on.

This seems to be a concsious decision.

------
imwhimsical
My synopsis on this:

\+ Even if it generates tweets on the basis of somebody's interests, and does
so in an intelligent manner, doesn't that kill the purpose of twitter? I, for
one, don't want to read computer generated tweets even if they talk about
something I like. I want to read opinions of people I follow, they're
experiences, and what they like/dislike — not a random fact generated by a
bot.

\+ It violates Twitter's ToS. That itself makes it a short-lived venture. I
mean no discouragement to the dev team, but I always emphasize on conducting
thorough research before embarking on such ventures which are somewhere in the
shady areas of policies and rules. Especially when your product is build
__over an existing product __, in this case, twitter. And if twitter decides
to get a mood swing, and this product is denied access to their API, I don't
want to be left with 500 new followers in my list, while being followed only
by my mom.

\+ It makes good, and goes on to a becoming a successful product, I think —
and again, going back to my first point — it reciprocates being interesting
with just getting followers. It makes socialization a formality with the end-
goal being to have a greater number of followers than anyone else. That is
more harmful to the twitter community than those sleazy services ("GET
THOUSAND FOLLOWERS REAL QUICK!!")

\+ Needing a credit card for the free trial? Ain't nobody got time for that.
Plus those "sleazy" services are free, while this one charges $7/month (A
little too much, because this is just a gamble. You have no assurance that you
__will __get a significant number of followers in a given time.)

\+ How long before they make revenue out of tweeting ads and sponsored tweets
from your account?

------
porter
This is a great idea, but does it violate Twitter's ToS? How is this different
than tweetadder?

------
sgpl
I didn't sign up, because it wouldn't let me w/o a creditcard on file. I guess
this probably converts more than emailing someone a reminder to signup towards
the end of the trial period.

The product seems interesting though. It essentially eliminates the need to
use twitter, while making you a appear as a regular twitter user. Hence the
automation I guess. How exactly are you generating tweets for the user? Are
you sourcing content from a pre-populated list of interesting blogs/media
sites? Good Luck.

------
5vforest
Signed up, looked to me like it's a Ponzi scheme. I automatically follow some
Perks users, they automatically follow me, we all win, somehow?

------
CharlesW
I tried this. Overnight my feed became unrecognizable — full of posts by bots
and (subjectively, of course) awful people. There was no detectable rhyme or
reason to the user selection, and the service doesn't appear to employ even
basic heuristics to weed out obvious spam. On the bright side, I was able to
report more abusive Twitter accounts than I normally do in a month.

------
ryanSrich
I foresee you guys having a real hard time reaching critical mass with
requiring users to sign up with a credit card.

Why not just shut off the account after the 14 day trial instead of forcing me
to go through more work to sign up?

------
HelloWorldClub
Just to let you know, there's a typo under the "Tweet Generation" category.
Should be too not "to". Good luck and thanks for sharing!

------
zalew
how does it compare to <https://plugg.io/>?

~~~
zizee
It sounds exactly like Pluggio. The author of this app should go and listen to
the last 200 episodes of the TechZing podcast and hear the creator talk in
detail about Pluggio's journey 4 year journey to get to a respectable (but no
enough to live on) ~50k revenue.

------
justhw
How do you make sure it's not just bot accounts interacting with other bots?

