Twitter User Spamming Himself Crazy

A Twitter user who has effectively spammed himself senseless reaches out to us for help. And we’re going to oblige. The only trouble is, he’s making yet another error in judgment, because my guess is this is going to make things worse.

Ryan Barr started a petition on Twitter to ask AT&T to “offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices.” And even though it’s unlikely that AT&T cares even a little bit about this or any other petition, it’s getting some traction. Nearly 10,000 people have “signed” it.

The problem is that every time someone signs the petition it autotweets the message “Petition: AT&T to offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices http://twitition.com/f96aq @ryanbarr,” which sends a message back to Barr and absolutely pollutes the reply stream (the only really useful way to interact with Twitter).

Anyway, here’s Barr’s message. I just signed the petition myself and I’m guessing a lot of you will, too. But don’t worry Ryan. It’ll slow down eventually, probably.

Dear TechCrunch,

My name is Ryan Barr, known on Twitter as @ryanbarr . If you may have noticed, I started a petition (or twitition) found here: http://twitition.com/f96aq .

I want out.

When I first started the petition, it was due to a rant I was having about the price of the phone. It didn’t take long for me to truly not care about the prices as much as I had. And it didn’t take much longer for the petition I started to go out of control.

At the time of this e-mail the petition just passed 9200 signatures. For each signature, a message is tweeted as follows:

“Petition: AT&T to offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices http://twitition.com/f96aq @ryanbarr”

That’s right, 9200 @ryanbarr’s over the span of two (going on three) days. This does not include the unnecessary retweets people also make. I can no longer stand not being able to see real replies in my timeline. I have AT&T employees following me and saying stuff behind my back when I was just ranting on a site that seemed to have little activity.

I completely, COMPLETELY regret pressing the submit button. As the petition nears the 10000 mark I fear even more. As at that mark, TweetMeme will show me as a TM_10000 (@http://twitter.com/TM_10000) … the first, ever.

TechCrunch — you have the power to make businesses grow. You have the power to make or break the reputation of a new device. Please, help me find a way out of this petition. The attention I am receiving is unwanted — I just want to be able to come clear to all the signers and say, “I don’t want in this anymore. I didn’t mean for it to last this long.”

Thanks for anything and for the great reads over the longhaul.

Best Regards,
Ryan Barr