Wynken de Worde:
For months now I’ve been stewing about how much I hate @HistoryInPics and their ilk (@HistoryInPix, @HistoricalPics, @History_Pics, etc.) – twitter streams that do nothing more than post “old” pictures and little tidbits of captions for them. And when I say “nothing more” that’s precisely what I mean. What they don’t post includes attribution to the photographer or to the institution hosting the digital image. There’s no way to easily learn more about the image (you can, of course, do an image search through TinEye or Google Image Search and try to track it down that way).
Alexis Madrigal recently wrote a piece for The Atlantic revealing that @HistoryInPics is run by a couple of teenagers who are savvy at generating viral social media accounts to bring in money.
In the pas few months, dozens of these Twitter accounts have popped up, all RT’ing each other for money.
How do people make money off of Twitter? Does Twitter have a partner program (like Youtube)?
@historyinpics retweets some BS weightloss/fitness stuff once in a while. I assume they’re getting paid for those retweets. I admit I’m a sucker for some of these accounts: some of the pictures are a nice diversion in my twitter stream, like seeing an unexpected work of art in a building they cheer up the place. Of course it’d be nice to see it done well, with correct attribution, maybe a link to some more information.
I’ve wondered this too. I’m sure some of the accounts put stuff in their feeds, but if you hide RTs by them you never see it and I’ve never seen them post it directly in their main account. I just don’t see why there are such high valuations put on pure follower numbers. Unless you can be sure the followers will do something you say, it’s meaningless.