Twitter real-time BI

on
Something which a lot of you people already knew, but which I just discovered, is that my (and your) Tweets are being watched. Not in 'big brother is watching you', but rather as 'big marketeer is studying you'.

What happened:

This week I made a quick twitter reply to the following post of @magicaltrout in which he was complaining his employer didn't pay him (yet).
I made a quick reply to this that went as follows:
Next thing that happened - within minutes - I had a new follower on Twitter. Check this.
Clearly some companies scan twitter to figure out whether you are a potential customer, then add you to their followers list, probably with the idea of following up even closer, or to start spamming you.

When I looked into the Twitter account, it actually belonged to a Fastmkn.com, a company that actually sets up this kind of services for their customers. Their website was clear about their services:

So, when you tweet, know your tweets are being 'mined', watch out what your write, and make sure you have your hand on the anti-spam button.