With a slow launch back in December of 2009, Twiends started to see an explosive growth in both traffic and users in March of 2010. The explosion of traffic had people of all social networks flocking to join in order to expand their social reach, as well as their social networks.
Marketers and individuals alike could choose to offer credits in the form of seeds (I’m assuming one of the larger social sites took offence at the word credits) in exchange for other users to do any one of the following:
- Follow them on Twitter
- “Like” their fan page on Facebook
- Watch their video on YouTube
- Visit their website for a predetermined time
Users were able to build up their credits by also participating in the above activities or buy purchasing them directly from the website for upwards of $599.95 for 50,000 seeds. With 50,000 seeds you could reasonably expect to grow your twitter followers (or fans, hits, views) by about five to ten thousand.
- 50,000 seeds paying out 5 seeds and accounting for the 30% drop rate most users are experiencing would result in 7,000 followers on Twitter, “likes” on Facebook, hits on your site, or views on your video.
2011 wasn’t a great year for Twiends, it seems it signaled the beginning of the end, and while they are still struggling to find something for all those users to do, it simply doesn’t appear to be the reality.
2011 saw Google step in and shut them down as far as the website tab was concerned. Google penalized them for facilitating what in its eyes was nothing more than a service that could potentially get millions of AdSense accounts banned for using their traffic. (Goes against Google’s Terms of Service)
June 17th saw the removal of the Facebook features after Facebook banned them from continuing to use the API needed for them to continue. I think it was at this point that many users started to realize that the Twiends experience was coming to a close. There was a noticeable drop in traffic following this event.
Less than a month later, on July 11th users who logged in quickly noticed that there was another missing tab in the navigational panel. After 24 hours where users were unable to post in the support forum regarding the issue, Twiends issued this statement:
“Hi all, we unfortunately had to remove seeds from the YouTube feature. We’ll have an update on the issue next week. Thanks for your understanding. Dave”
While it’s unclear why they lost this latest tab and feature (Google does own YouTube) this will likely be the final straw for users, and unless they are able to quickly find another viral method for growing something that doesn’t include Facebook, YouTube, or Google they will most likely fizzle out into a shadow of their former selves.
Surprisingly Twitter who is always quick to ban developers from using their API in a way that they deem against the “user experience” has left Twiends alone to their own devices. I suppose now that they are the only feature left, Twitter may start to pay a little more attention to them, and if they take their cue from Google and Facebook, we could see the end of them all together!
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