Andrew Baron Backs Off From Twitter Pharming Stunt

I have been following Andrew Baron's Twitter auction stunt closely (see Can You Sell A Twitter Account?), partly because I know and sort of like Andrew, and partly because the selling of a Twitter account seems so bogus. At it's best, it's a stunt, and at it's worst its social pharming: where someone is being paid for accumulating contacts in Twitter, like points in World Of Warcraft.

Andrew has apparently been deterred in his efforts by eBay, or maybe just good advice:

[from Rocketboom creator pulls plug on auction of Twitter account | Geek Gestalt - A blog by Daniel Terdiman - CNET News.com]

[...] In a series of Twitter posts over the last couple days, Baron indicated that he had already been planning to delete the auction when eBay contacted him and told him he needed to move it to a different category than the one it had originally been posted under.

But rather than doing that, he Twittered, he removed the auction himself. He also said Craigslist maintains that his attempt to sell a guest-hosting spot on the Twitter account violated terms of service.

In an interview Thursday morning, Baron explained his rationale behind the decision to take down the auction.

Essentially, he said, a fellow Twitterer wrote him suggesting that the people who were bidding the eBay auction well into four figures were "all spam marketers, people who will do anything just to get their name out there, people who don't understand Web 2.0 and blogging."

"I already knew," Baron said, "there would be a great range of different types of (possible) outcomes. But I believed that I would be able to manage the outcome by trying to make a positive outcome for the buyer, for my friends and followers. Even if it wasn't a good fit, I (believed) I could work with them. But after I heard that they were all just spam marketers, that just kind of killed it for me and I didn't want to risk that."

Baron told me that he was concerned that many people who have been following the saga of his trying to sell his Twitter account on eBay would assume that, because there had been a fair amount of backlash against him for the planned sale, he was just trying to save face by pulling the plug on the auction.

Instead, he insisted to me, he just felt very uneasy about having the account--and his many followers--fall into the hands of people who didn't necessarily have any idea how to use the account in a way that benefits all concerned.

Some may say that even that rationale is just a way to try to save face, and it may well be. After all, we don't really know for a fact that the auction bidders were really spam marketers. And it's likely there's no way to ever know what is really going on in Baron's mind.

Regardless, Baron said that he had already been cooking up an entirely different plan for his Twitter account when eBay called him.

Unfortunately--for me, at least--he wouldn't say what this plan is.

Here's a trace of his twitter account, while all this was happening (earliest at the bottom).

Andrew Baron on eBay Auction of his Twitter Account Being Pulled, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

Daniel is right when he says there is no way to tell what was going on in Andrew's mind: he is amazingly unclear and discursive when talking about his motivations for this whole thing.

At any rate, it seems that he has some sort of plans for doing something interesting with his new-found fame in the Twittersphere instead of trying to pawn it.

[research help by AlbertMaruggi]