Hijacking the #ISCW13 Hashtag

Published Apr 13, 2013 00:00 AM
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This year's ISC West witnessed a dramatic increase in tweeting about the show, though overwhelmingly from manufacturers and PR people. To track tweets, one can search Twitter for tweets with the hashtag for the show (#ISCW13). Unfortunately, one crappy 'manufacturer' ran a contest that hijacked this hashtag so when you search for tweets you have to wade through dozens of garbage promotional ones.

Here's 'tobeapea' who bills himself as a 'A dad wo loves to enter contests [sic]':

Why does the 'same' tweet appear over and over again. Well, he's slightly changing spacing or punctuations to trick Twitter into thinking that the repeat tweets are somehow 'unique'.

He's joined by 'GoudaCheese007', with the same tactic:

Not to be left out, 'SweepsCat713' joins in: 

And 'mom4evereandever': 

There were quite a number of other instances that repeated this practice over and over again.

Who is XTSCorp?

They claim to "be widely recognized as the most innovative and respected world leader in the design, development and manufacturing of video security systems ideal for any industry or application." Of course, that is nonsense, unless they mean 'people' like 'GoudaCheese007', ''mom4evereandever'' and "SweepsCat713." We have never heard anyone speak highly of XTSCorp and, moreover, they are rarely mentioned at all.

Looking at their website, it's fairly obvious they are another low end pseudo manufacturer, who tries to trick unsuspecting users with their spam tactics. A few years ago, one of their prospects asked us for feedback on them and we said they look like just another Chinese OEM. XTSCorp's President was none to pleased but admitted in a follow up that, "XTS is and ODM Manufacturer with a very solid partnership in Asia we do some OEM on products that we do not develop ourselves."

It looks like little has changed on their 'manufacturing' approach. Unfortunately, on the marketing side, they have stepped up spamming the industry and making it hard for legitimate users to find show news on social media.