Hi all, I have been contemplating sending this email for a long time, and finally have decided to just do it, so here goes:
I understand that we are all trying to gain large user-bases for our twitter apps, and I know there are several tactics to go about doing it; but I am wondering what is everbody's opinion on the tactic I refer to as "twitter app user poaching" in which app devs tweet out to people right after a user mentions some other app in their tweets: "@somebody hey, if you like <insert competitor app here> you should try <my app>! http://link.to.my.app.com/ " Obviously people are monitoring their app's brand and their competitors' brand, which is obviously a savvy business strategy in general... but somehow to me, in the twitter ecosystem, this feels kinda sleazy. I have consciously tried to avoid doing this because a) the aforementioned sleaziness, and b) i don't think my followers would appreciate a stream of constant "hey check out my app" tweets. Maybe I am alone here, what does everyone else think? This would not be so bad if some of the apps that have started poaching mine were brand new and not very well known yet. But at least a couple have received a lot of coverage on the big social media blogs (mashable, techcrunch, etc...). None of my apps have had such coverage (and yes, I am willing to admit I am jealous of that fact, but it is what it is), and despite that, I have had a lot of fun growing my user-base organically through twitter itself and my users' word-of-mouth recommendations. I don't really appreciate others coming in and sniping my users away. So, maybe I'm just being weak and need to grow a pair and deal with it (by either a) sucking it up, or b) engaging in poaching myself, or c) both). Maybe all is fair in love and tweets... Would love to hear about others' experiences in this area. -Chad
