We bounced around on this for a long time with eggtweeter and came up with this compromise:
When a user creates an account (via Twitter), the KyMaLabs account is automatically followed. If they choose to unfollow after that, we have nothing to say about it. Other than that, we're not manipulating their follow lists in any particular way because we felt it would be either undesirable or slimy.
We decided to do an auto-follow for a few reasons:
a) It connects us with our userbase so if we Tweet information or updates, they'll see them.
b) It helps us quickly gauge new user signup at a glance. Sure we do this on the back-side with some reporting tools, but its nice for us to see our follow count go up as well.
c) We're providing a free and valuable service (while in openbeta) without ads or other junk, we think of this as the "cost" of the service.
d) We don't ask for unnecessary information from the user, we get their Twitter id and we ask them for an email address on signup and that's pretty much it. (Once we move to some paid services it'll have to change somewhat, but we chose to keep it simple during the beta period).
And that's it. So far most people don't unfollow (our metric for "didn't like it"), and the ones that do haven't complained directly yet (our metric for "hated it") so we think we've kept successfully on the side of the line of ethical use of an auto-follow.
Wait, when someone signs up, you silently have their Twitter account follow your Twitter account? That's pretty egregious in my book and would merit an instant account deletion.
By logging in with or connecting my Twitter account to any service, I want some of the value I've put into curating my Twitter account to carry over to my new account on your website/app/whatever (as Oink appears to be doing here).
I NEVER want you to go back and mess with my Twitter experience. It's a violation of the implied trust I'm giving you by creating an account in the first place.
What's wrong with giving people an option to follow you on Twitter? A simple checkbox when registering would suffice. Sure, your follower count won't be as big, but it's also the only ethical option of the two, in my book.
PS. I went to your website and clicked on "What is eggtweeter?" on the homepage. The resulting page left me utterly confused about what you do. It seems like a list of what the site can do, but not what it actually does. Then I went to your FAQ and the first question immediately and succinctly explained it. You should think about moving that description to the about page, or even better yet, the home page (right now, neither page has the words "scheduled tweets" anywhere).
When a user creates an account (via Twitter), the KyMaLabs account is automatically followed. If they choose to unfollow after that, we have nothing to say about it. Other than that, we're not manipulating their follow lists in any particular way because we felt it would be either undesirable or slimy.
We decided to do an auto-follow for a few reasons:
a) It connects us with our userbase so if we Tweet information or updates, they'll see them.
b) It helps us quickly gauge new user signup at a glance. Sure we do this on the back-side with some reporting tools, but its nice for us to see our follow count go up as well.
c) We're providing a free and valuable service (while in openbeta) without ads or other junk, we think of this as the "cost" of the service.
d) We don't ask for unnecessary information from the user, we get their Twitter id and we ask them for an email address on signup and that's pretty much it. (Once we move to some paid services it'll have to change somewhat, but we chose to keep it simple during the beta period).
And that's it. So far most people don't unfollow (our metric for "didn't like it"), and the ones that do haven't complained directly yet (our metric for "hated it") so we think we've kept successfully on the side of the line of ethical use of an auto-follow.