Twitter Premium Accounts! Hoax!

Twitter Premium accounts have been announced and the Twitterosphere is buzzing. But its a hoax that refuses to settle as Twitter users continue to share and retweet the tip, all excited about the new feature.

It all started when BBSpot announced that besides free Twitter accounts, new Twitter premium accounts would be made available to paying users in 4 categories

• Sparrow ($5/month) – Users get 145 character limit, 5 extra random followers.
• Dove ($15/month) – Users get 160 character limit, 25 extra random followers, 1 random celebrity follower, auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” T-shirt.
• Owl ($50/month) – Users get 250 character limit, 100 extra random followers, 2 random celebrity followers, 30 minutes on recommended list, auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” hoodie.
• Eagle ($250/month) – Users get 500 character limit, 1000 extra random followers, 3 celebrity followers of their choice, 5 hours on recommended list each month, Twitter Concierge for Tweeting while user is asleep or busy (and more), auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” tuxedo, custom “Fail Whale” page when service is down.

But actually BBspot is a tech humor site that creates “entertainment for the geekier side of the world” and is popular as it “produces a variety of features like fake news stories satirizing the tech and political worlds”.

It clearly show how easy it is to get  a rumor started and once the buzz is set, it simply goes viral all across Twitter and the blogosphere with thousands of blogs linking to the source and talking about a feature which was never officially announced nor existed. And April fools days in not here yet!

Of course people are willing to pay $250,000 to get on the Twitter Suggested users list which promises to increase thousands of Twitter followers per day, but the Eagle package with 500 character limit (which defeats the whole microblogging purpose of Twitter), and a dedicated Twitter concierge who tweets for me (while I sleep) is unbelievable.