Andrew Baron Selling Twitter Account, Database For Sale?

Written by

Christopher S Penn

Advertising, Marketing

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Andrew Baron Selling Twitter Account, Database For Sale?

Chris Brogan raised the question people should be asking about Andrew Baron’s eBay sale of his Twitter account.

What are you buying? What’s the value?

Laura Fitton said on Twitter: “you can’t sell relationships.” You can’t. But you sure as heck can sell data.

In the case of Twitter, you can’t export meaningful amounts of data from Twitter followers from Twitter directly.

If Baron put up his Facebook account, that’d be a different story, because I can extract real data from it – names, email addresses, other contact information. At that point, it’s a database, and we buy & sell databases all the time.

What would I pay for that? The going rate is about $1.50 per valid identity on the commercial markets - you can buy header files from credit bureaus with roughly the same data for about$ 1.50 a head if you’re buying in bulk. Experian, Transunion, Equifax – all of them are selling YOU already, at a cost far below what your personal worth is.

Companies are buying and selling your data all the time. I can’t give specifics, but of the companies I’ve worked for in the last decade, most of them bought customer lists at one point or another, and the sad reality is that your personal identity, information, and privacy are dirt cheap.

You are for sale.

A piece of Andrew Baron is for sale, as is his followers on Twitter.

He’s just being transparent about it.

Incidentally, if I were a current or future Rocketboom advertiser, I’d buy this account in a heartbeat and run some analytics on it. Who DMs or @s Andrew the most, about what topics, and are those people running media channels of their own that I should advertise on?

Also, you can’t export data from Twitter. But you can cross-reference data pools you already have with Twitter. A social graph of Twitter cross-referenced with your house list and other social networks will tell you quickly who participates in that account’s first level relationships. THAT has value to someone who wants to market to Andrew or his connections.

Name? Maybe.
Location? Fairly often.
Friend count? Definitely.
Follower count? Definitely.

Combine that with other data pools, and Twitter is giving me something truly usable, something that might be worth paying for.

With the right tools, if I started with a million address email list bought on the cheap from a broker, I could use social networks – especially high profile ones like Andrew’s – to cleanse my list and determine if the addresses were of value. Remember, you can’t pull any data from private or protected profiles publicly – but if you bought a high profile account, you’d gain access to those individuals who established relationships privately but are still hidden publicly. Value.

Oh yeah, and if you see a LinkedIn profile for sale, be afraid. There’s lots of usable data in there.

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Comments

20 responses to “Andrew Baron Selling Twitter Account, Database For Sale?”

April 13, 2008

Sara

Hi Christopher,

Excellent post, especially like that you have an inside perspective on the buying and selling of “people.”

First, you bring up an excellent point comparing the usefulness of Twitter information to a standard contact database. Right now the auction is at $255 which is already more than 10% of that$ 1.50-a-head number you mentioned. The auction is a 10-dayer so I imagine he’ll get much more than where it currently sits. The bidders really should take into account that the information they are getting is useful only in the Twitter environment.

Sure, Twitter is huge right now and it could end up being incredibly lucrative for the right buyer, but it sure is a lot more risky than finding someone in your niche who has a large email list and “renting” their list for an email or two. And that method generally brings much more targeted traffic to your site if you choose wisely.

Second, your concise writing was very effective. By the time I got to “You are for sale” I was seriously creeped out. Just the way you framed the article and your word choice really made it clear how often and easily our personal information is thrown about.

Thanks for a great read!

Sara

P.S. I follow you on Twitter, that’s how I found this post. I’m sarach

Reply
April 13, 2008

Sara

Hi Christopher,

Excellent post, especially like that you have an inside perspective on the buying and selling of “people.”

First, you bring up an excellent point comparing the usefulness of Twitter information to a standard contact database. Right now the auction is at $255 which is already more than 10% of that$ 1.50-a-head number you mentioned. The auction is a 10-dayer so I imagine he’ll get much more than where it currently sits. The bidders really should take into account that the information they are getting is useful only in the Twitter environment.

Sure, Twitter is huge right now and it could end up being incredibly lucrative for the right buyer, but it sure is a lot more risky than finding someone in your niche who has a large email list and “renting” their list for an email or two. And that method generally brings much more targeted traffic to your site if you choose wisely.

Second, your concise writing was very effective. By the time I got to “You are for sale” I was seriously creeped out. Just the way you framed the article and your word choice really made it clear how often and easily our personal information is thrown about.

Thanks for a great read!

Sara

P.S. I follow you on Twitter, that’s how I found this post. I’m sarach

Reply
April 13, 2008

Trip Around the Blogosphere – April 13, 2008 | Pajama Professional

[…] Christopher is a great writer and a very original thinker. Last night he wrote a post about Andrew Baron selling his Twitter account on eBay. It’s an excellent article discussing the selling of personal information, especially since […]

Reply
April 13, 2008

Is Your Account For Sale? Andrew Baron’s Twitter Account On eBay : Jennifer Navarrete

[…] like selling a car, a house or a business? Can it be a simple transaction for some cold hard cash? Christopher Penn has a post giving the example of credit bureaus selling a list of names in their database to lend […]

Reply
April 13, 2008

Whitney

I just look at it not only for what you can do with the data, but how people could damage Andrew’s brand if they were so inclined. Send messages that seriously annoy his audience, and people on twitter (messages go to friends and all followers and the public stream as well….)all start to develop a very different sense of what the man behind rocketboom might be like. And what if I work at a VC where Andrew is looking for money? That creates a very different perspective all together. And how long could this go on before “everyone” knew the twitter account wasn’t “really” Andrew himself? Would everyone remember that when reading the tweets? Would that really mitigate the damage to Andrew and his brand?

This is all about whether you can sell your reputation with others on the open market for a “profit”. But I think you’ll find that some things, like trust and reputation, can’t be measured well in currency (although it is measured in opportunities that come your way every day).

If someone has become so jaded as to assume trust and reputation can be commidified, perhaps social media is no longer a good place for them to be hanging out. And I don’t mean this in a snide way, but sincerely- if someone is only looking to collect and sell their social contacts to others, the value in those relationships- the strength of the chemical bonds, so to speak, must be pretty low. Or it will be, shortly, once the commodity relationships begin to fracture.

Reply
April 13, 2008

Whitney

I just look at it not only for what you can do with the data, but how people could damage Andrew’s brand if they were so inclined. Send messages that seriously annoy his audience, and people on twitter (messages go to friends and all followers and the public stream as well….)all start to develop a very different sense of what the man behind rocketboom might be like. And what if I work at a VC where Andrew is looking for money? That creates a very different perspective all together. And how long could this go on before “everyone” knew the twitter account wasn’t “really” Andrew himself? Would everyone remember that when reading the tweets? Would that really mitigate the damage to Andrew and his brand?

This is all about whether you can sell your reputation with others on the open market for a “profit”. But I think you’ll find that some things, like trust and reputation, can’t be measured well in currency (although it is measured in opportunities that come your way every day).

If someone has become so jaded as to assume trust and reputation can be commidified, perhaps social media is no longer a good place for them to be hanging out. And I don’t mean this in a snide way, but sincerely- if someone is only looking to collect and sell their social contacts to others, the value in those relationships- the strength of the chemical bonds, so to speak, must be pretty low. Or it will be, shortly, once the commodity relationships begin to fracture.

Reply
April 13, 2008

Andrew Baron stirs up a Twitter storm – mathewingram.com/work

[…] Experiment or not, some people seem outraged that Andrew would even think of such a thing — to sell a community. Others say it’s no different than a media property selling its readership to someone else. Is it just a publicity stunt? More importantly, will social-media marketing types come to certain conclusions about the value of community depending on what the sale price is? Stowe Boyd says they shouldn’t, and that a true community can’t be sold, but others say there could be some value in such a purchase. […]

Reply
April 13, 2008

Andrew Baron Selling His Twitter Acount on Ebay | by AJ Vaynerchuk

[…] who covered this story: Chris Brogan Christopher Penn Matthew Ingram Duncan […]

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April 13, 2008

Sarah Meyers

Hey Chris, love you post! I’m trying to find your email or phone number to contact you about your opinion for pop17 so when you get this comment please email me: [email protected]

Reply
April 13, 2008

Sarah Meyers

Hey Chris, love you post! I’m trying to find your email or phone number to contact you about your opinion for pop17 so when you get this comment please email me: [email protected]

Reply
April 14, 2008

Warren Whitlock

Of course there is nothing wrong with him selling what he has to anyone foolish enough to buy.

But they would be better off to pay him twice as much to build a network for them.. that disclosed who was who and what was what.

I think it will go over about as well as selling your job. When we get a tweet from a different person than we expect, we’ll just unfollow (fire) them and be done with it.

Reply
April 14, 2008

Warren Whitlock

Of course there is nothing wrong with him selling what he has to anyone foolish enough to buy.

But they would be better off to pay him twice as much to build a network for them.. that disclosed who was who and what was what.

I think it will go over about as well as selling your job. When we get a tweet from a different person than we expect, we’ll just unfollow (fire) them and be done with it.

Reply
April 14, 2008

Taco John » Blog Archive » Professional Tweeters coming up?

[…] of commentary on Andrew Baron, founder of Rocketboom deciding to sell his Twitter account on eBay. Basically, […]

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April 14, 2008

Dr. Wright

I think more sales are coming and there will be a market place where you can buy and sell your social networks

Reply
April 14, 2008

Dr. Wright

I think more sales are coming and there will be a market place where you can buy and sell your social networks

Reply
April 15, 2008

John Johansen

Chris, you bring up an excellent reminder that privacy isn’t really private anymore.

I agree that someone buying the Twitter account could get value from it by analyzing the conversations that have happened, the @s and the DMs. There is definitely information that would be useful to an advertiser.

To me, that feels like it would be a breach of the social contract. There are only 2 things that Twitter doesn’t make publicly available, your DMs and your Followers. (With the obvious exception of protecting your account.) You can data-mine the tweets, searching for keywords and @s to specific people. There’s a rich source of information that can already be gleaned from Twitter.

Chris Brogan (besides starting this interesting debate) wrote his eBook on the Trust Economy. If selling any kind of social networking account becomes a trend, I think we are going to see the currency of trust rise in value. Right now it’s easy for people to make connections, often with people they don’t know. This can be a good source of discovery for people looking to network. But, if the default assumption becomes that people are looking to build large networks so they can ‘monetize’ them by selling the account, then making connections with people is going to diminish.

This may be a symptom of the walled-garden networks that exist today and will disappear if social networking becomes like air.
Or it may have the effect of killing off conversational spaces like Twitter. That would be very disappointing.

Reply
April 15, 2008

John Johansen

Chris, you bring up an excellent reminder that privacy isn’t really private anymore.

I agree that someone buying the Twitter account could get value from it by analyzing the conversations that have happened, the @s and the DMs. There is definitely information that would be useful to an advertiser.

To me, that feels like it would be a breach of the social contract. There are only 2 things that Twitter doesn’t make publicly available, your DMs and your Followers. (With the obvious exception of protecting your account.) You can data-mine the tweets, searching for keywords and @s to specific people. There’s a rich source of information that can already be gleaned from Twitter.

Chris Brogan (besides starting this interesting debate) wrote his eBook on the Trust Economy. If selling any kind of social networking account becomes a trend, I think we are going to see the currency of trust rise in value. Right now it’s easy for people to make connections, often with people they don’t know. This can be a good source of discovery for people looking to network. But, if the default assumption becomes that people are looking to build large networks so they can ‘monetize’ them by selling the account, then making connections with people is going to diminish.

This may be a symptom of the walled-garden networks that exist today and will disappear if social networking becomes like air.
Or it may have the effect of killing off conversational spaces like Twitter. That would be very disappointing.

Reply
April 15, 2008

Rick Wolff

When I’m asked for my zip code at a retail checkout counter, I quote my rate, which is a meager 2% discount from my purchase. I’m never taken up on it. I know the retailer gets much more value from it than that.
Chris, if you get value from my following you on Twitter, and you’re keen on what’s happening with this auction, I must ask you what you’re willing to pay to keep me from disconnecting you.
There’s your Trust Economy.

Reply
April 15, 2008

Rick Wolff

When I’m asked for my zip code at a retail checkout counter, I quote my rate, which is a meager 2% discount from my purchase. I’m never taken up on it. I know the retailer gets much more value from it than that.
Chris, if you get value from my following you on Twitter, and you’re keen on what’s happening with this auction, I must ask you what you’re willing to pay to keep me from disconnecting you.
There’s your Trust Economy.

Reply
September 28, 2008

Therapy New York

I didn’t know that you can sell your Twitter account. What was the outcome of Andrew Baron auction? I realize how easy a person information is sold. I have signed up at a lot of websites and I’m sure my information has been sold a few times. I receive a lot of mail in my email but I get a lot of junk mail in my regular mailbox.

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