I received a personally addressed DM (Direct Message) Tweet, saying, “Hey Kara, I just took “How old are you in your heart?” and got: 5-25 years old! Try it”
Just or fun, I thought I’d send it out to my 7,600+ followers…

The good news:

I received quite a range of responses, “This was fun”, from a social media buff; and “If I take the test, I’ll probably be 100″, from an ad agency owner in Florida.

The not so good news:

The majority of the responses I received were along the lines of a Baltimore law student’s,

“um… are you aware you DM’d me about taking an online quiz? If not, you should probably change your password.”

I also lost about 80 followers and received a call from an irry, and very odd fellow…

I responded to my dear followers who took the time to send me warnings, with this DM,
“4 levity I sent “How old r u” link out to followers- getting much mixed response – responding to tweets & writing article now – Thx!”

You’re reading the post now…

Also, I can’t resist adding my favorite post-post reply from a web-pioneer, tech lawyer,
“Hope you mention in your article that this made you seem like a pay-per-tweet shill. Of course, I know you are not Kara.”

My conclusion:

There are many applications like the “Take the How Old Are You In Your Heart Quiz”
that allow you to send personalized DMs to your followers.  While they appear as harmless fun, they can also look like spam to people who receive them.   My recommendations:

1. Caution — You probably do not want to send these messages out to people on your professional network, who are looking at your tweets as specialist advice.  So, unless you’re willing to sort through your followers, it’s probably not a good idea to use them.
2. Delete the DM’s — After spending more than 2-hours interspersing DM responses between actual work,, I found DCortesi.com, who’s application DM Whacker enabled me to delete the messages in bulk.  It’s taking quite a while to delete all of them, but it’s working.
3. Change your  Twitter Password – I changed my Twitter password.  The fun140.com application needs access to my Twitter account to work.  Since there is no contact information anywhere on their website, I’m heeding the warnings I received and removing their access.

Related articles:

Handling Negative Comments On Your Legal Marketing Blog

Tags: Kara Smith, Karasma Media, Legal Marketing Tools, Legal Marketing Trends