Andrew Baron must be pretty hard up for money. He is selling his twitter account on eBay. It has 1400 followers.
How stupid is the person who buys this? What possible value could it have in owning another persons twitter other then spamming people until they leave… and there is only 1400 followers… I mean i have only been using it for a month and have more then that account.
Here is the auction
Love this quote from the auction
Finally, I’d just like to give props to all of you out there who are following me on Twitter. No offense what so ever – we can easily find each other again.
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Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2412 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 83 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m assuming the same dynamics which drives blog sales will drive Twitter sales. Although Twitter is way more personal and intimate, all lists have value. Monetize, monetize, monetize
Haha, who said stupid ideas can’t make money?
Lol, his highest bid is already at $500+! That’s a pretty good return for nothing and there’s no guarantee.
Current bid $510 with 26 total bids. I really hope that is a joke because a twitter follower is not worth more than $0.25 each in my opinion.
that quote is funny on a couple of different levels.
LOL – desperate times call for desperate moves!
I don’t know jack about twitter, but it seems to me this “list” for sale is not really a list if it is based on followers.
When someone follows you, you don’t have their email right? Nor do you have any control over them not following you any more.
To the current high bidder, if you are reading this… I have a great startup idea I need investment money for. It will revolutionize the Internet and make money from ads. It is a combination of Digg, Myspace, Twiiter and Web 4.0 technologies. Please “follow” me in twitter for more information.
People follow others on twitter for a reason. I don’t see the value in buying someone else’s account and monetizing their following.
I am more shocked by the price it currently shows.. Insane!
Hehe, funny way he have made such amount of followers. By following others himself. The account is not worth anyway near $500. Some place under $100 in my opinion.
Wow I can’t believe it’s going for $500+ . Lame. I can see where a Twitter account with a generic name might be worth something but not a personal account with a real name.
I am fairly sure that Andrew really isn’t selling the account. I think this move was more of a publicity stunt and a point maker. The correlation I see here is the idea that following his twitter feed is opt in, kinda of like subscribing to a blog’s RSS feed. He might be making the point of “If it is ok to sell a blog, why isn’t it ok to sell a twitter account?”
Just my 2 cents.
AJ Vaynerchuk
@ajvchuk on twitter
It looks like Rocketboom is going Boom in his face. How can you sell a community? Sure it can be used as a market list, but only for the community it was founded on. The second I’d get new tweets about something I didn’t sign on to get, I’d unfollow. Bad idea. Looks like he should have stayed teaching at MIT.
Man was there a need to sell your IM type account?
Andrew now gives many people an idea to make money in a new way!
Selling your twitter account would have been a nice link bait, wish I would have thought of it
This will be pretty interesting to follow. In the last week we’ve had prominent figures delete their twitter account all together and now someone has decided to put their account up for sale, what’s next?
If people are willing to buy it then maybe there would be a new market in twitter sales. Must be link bait or something similar
On the other hand, you got to hand it to him, he’s making money out of thin air, with no monetary investment.
A silly concept, yes. A good idea for fast cash? You bet. Wish it was me? Definitely.
*runs off to try to copy that loser…
Andrew is looking for the Buzz and it’s working: first title homepage of Techmeme
Agree it’s attention bait, when is the last time you heard anything about rocketboom since cogdon left?
The bid is up at $1000+ now! I don’t know which is more sad: selling the account or buying it for $1000+. For that amount you could easily build your own Twitter account with 1400 followers.
/Andreas
Also how silly is it to bid more than $US 1,000 on an item from an eBay seller with zero-zilch-zippo feedback?!
And, no offense shoe, but why did you not route the link to his listing through your AuctionAds / ShoppingAds account? Maybe the buyer of that twitter thang will earn you a bit of dosh in commission
WTF (cont’d) – the bloke is using Craig’s List to blag 2-day ‘guest slot’ on his twitter for US$ 150! See http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/com/640829551.html
Hopefully Jeremy won’t get any ideas and start billing folks for leaving comments on the shoemoney blog. Wot next?!
What we can do is BID VERY VERY HIGH and just end up cancelling the purchase after you win. I’ve seen this happening a lot when Wiis were REALLY in demand
The seller is going to end up paying huge fees
/unfortunately the seller can reclaim feeds if the buyer pulls out
doesn’t make sense to met at all, crazy thing is it’s worth over $1100 so far…his quote is classic!
If this becomes a widespread practice, it could be the end of Twitter as we know it.
By the way, if 1,397 followers are worth $1,125 (currently), is it safe to say Robert Scoble could sell his account (with 18,951 followers) for $15,261?
This is getting weird these days.Web 2.0 style.
Im gonna beat him by selling my yahoomail account
This is crazy, then maybe create one of those accounts a month and sell to make a tidy little income. Weird is the word.
I have one that has 330 followers, I hold out to get a few more coins
The auction has 34 bidders so far and is up to $1,125! Somebody must think it has value. That’s crazy…
It seems inconceivable that someone believes that this is worth nearly $1 per user (at the current bid).
I can think of a lot more profitable ways to invest $1000 than trying to monetize someone’s twitter followers.
just being the buyer gets the buyer some attention. similar to how that one casino kept buying all the odd ebay auctions.
being the first seems t obe the thing to do…
I was wondering who would make more money Shoe or Andrew… Why wouldn’t he put in the link, he would be crazy not to…
ive been trying to look for the real value of twitter until this crazy idea errupted! TWF!..
.. i might as well work on twitter lolz!
Aw, no fair… I was going to write on this tomorrow.
Yep, monetizing the poor followers is not at all good.
There is always a saying -
Do tomorrow’s work today, and today’s Now!
So Shoe did it lol
If he did it for the link bait that was a good idea. He’s all over techmeme which could be good for him but selling the account is a total joke.
I wonder if the bid got this high because someone from this blog is bidding on it. You may have unwittingly help him out Shoe. That’s very nice of you
I guess I’ve seen people spend their money on worse things.
~Terry
I know. In the auction he says he isn’t really using the account, but then he goes on to say he will start another account.
I’m wondering how many of the 1400 or so are going to sticck around when they find out they have been sold on ebay?
~Terry
I guess this is no different than buying a myspace account with lots of friends, and that seems like a booming business for some people. Maybe this is the next step in that enterprise.
Lame. You could easily get that many followers by actively engaging yourself on the social network and actually networking. Add people and they will follow. If you buy the account and spam it to death, don’t expect to have those followers last for very long.
That said, I can’t believe that the auction is at $1125. Someone is seriously desperate. I could have done social media consulting for Twitter for half that price and given a lot more value.
Hey shoemonwy
Think I\ve seen about 10 articles describing this “twitter-account-selling” auction.
The seller has been absolutely smart making the stupidest action a gold mine by using our blogs as promoters.
It reminds me – I’m selling my feedburner domains -I have kinda creative domain names.
Anyway – I bet some idiot will buy it.
The question is how long before shoemoey and John chow chow sales their account on ebay. This may be the new trend in the money making scheme of the internet gurus.
can u ba my bf
please
Might be some one who went there bid on it, but the sale really got viral.
Techcrunch also wrote about it… and many other blogs too!
Hope the buyer atleast understands what the value of that account would be, as most of the followers would be unhappy about the previous owner.
haha, if he can be able to sell it then he will have the last laugh!
1125 shows that each follower is valued at $1 lol!!!
Quite a cool link bait if you ask me. He will probably pull the auction before it ends.
I am looking at the price and that seems really stupid, $1,125, huh?
That had to be linked to a blog, to be called a pure link bait lol
Twitter account link baiting???
Hey link bait can easily be content medium portable. If it draws links to a piece of content or resource, it’s link bait as far as I am concerned and we all know I am an expert at these things
.
I could see value if the name being used was webmonkey or something generic, but unless your name is Andrew Barron, just doesn’t have the same value.
This was bound to happen. If people sell myspace and facebook accounts, they of course are going to sell Twitter accounts.
hahahahaha!
I knew it was coming for!
Anything going popular is for sale these days :p
Absolutely. People also sale Digital Point accounts. One of them had asked me if I wanted to buy. Why? It has good itaders lololololol
My expression was the same. 34…wtf!
And it is more than 1000$$… OMG. Make a twitter account, get some followers in a month and bam!
Sell it for more than 1000? wow!
and now we have another auction on eBay for An even COOLER Twitter Account and Followers for Sale – a WHOPPING 1,483 followers! only $0.01, bargain if you ask me lol
Twitter has no such rules but digitalpoint has lol..
WTF kidding people???
BBC would never sell their twitter account, seller’s a scammer for sure!
More to the point I think the value for the purchaser, like the seller, is in the publicity they will get for purchasing the Twitter account, regardless of what they do with it. The links and coverage alone will probably be worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Twitter is for twits anyways
Not if the “BUYER” screws him over
How much can I get for my account? I think I have 2 followers.
You’re only helping him by posting this
That’s funny. I just got my own Twitter account – I have one follower so far!
I actually saw someone on Craig’s List trying to buy a highly well-commented ebay account.
It’s the internet. There’s always someone out there trying to sell something – and probably someone willing to buy it.
Hey, if somebody is willing to pay, Why not!
Pretty insane on the Twitter account, it’s over $1,500 now on eBay and there’s been more than 13,000 pageview on the auction.
It’s slowly creeping up ($1550) as of this comment with 40 bids.
~Terry
This is a pretty decent example of linkbait imo. The success is entirely due to the novelty value of this experiment, dont expect to see it replicated…hahahah…13,000 odd pageviews ain’t bad
The most foolish one to be here is the buyer, what is he going to get for $1500 he is spending here?
Sheer Stupidity
I think there are some people on eBay who will buy anything…or they’re just desperate to “get rich quick.”
I can’t believe that as of now, there have been 40 bids on this auction, crazy!
This is hilarious, and it’s certainly a dumb move for anyone who buys it.
Considering ebay no longer accept auctions for “digital products” I wouldn’t be supprised if the auction is pulled.
Another way to get backlinks! That is really a cool idea..
Hey ! I’ll bid on anything. Would anybody like to buy my molar that I had extracted 20 years ago? Always wanted to do that – but thought my listing would get” pulled” by eBay !! HaHaHa.
There are suckers everyday that will buy anything, I’m pretty sure that is what this guy was counting on.
You can’t be serious! How is one person able to interact with so many? No wonder he’s selling, as he sure can’t be manageging!
lol its look so weird