Who is Tweatbot?

Found this bot all by itself in server logs.

[grandma genie]

Hi everyone,
Has anyone heard of this bot? Tweatbot. Found it in my server logs today. Here is the info from my logs with appropriate editing:

74.208.xx.xx - - [27/Aug/2010:11:38:20 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 30601 "-" "Tweatbot/1.0"

It was just the one hit. Any info on this one? I didn't find much doing a Google search.

Grandma_genie

[blend27]

Not sure what it is, but the IP belongs to 1&1 Internet Inc.(74.208.0.0/16). I've also seen it from SBC-Global range back in July this year.

[keyplyr]

It's one a of growing number of parasites that follow links posted at Twitter to your site. Most do not request robots.txt. Many reap havoc. I ban them all.

[grandma genie]

I blocked Tweatbot. You're right, keyplyr, my server logs are crammed full of bots. Most are legit, but every day there seems to be a new one. I know most of my visitors are coming in using Google images, or Yahoo images or just looking for images. The only thing I have found so far that stops it is putting my name on my images. Then no one wants them. I had tons of hits on a picture of a group of ferrets, but as soon as I put my name on the picture, they all stopped. I've also used htaccess to prevent hotlinking. But as the number of bots increases, the visits from real buyers decreases. Thanks for the info and advice.

[Pfui]

@genie: Visits from bots and visits from people are not inversely proportional. Bots don't typically prevent people from visiting you, neither do they interfere with people visiting you.

So if you're seeing more bots, it's because there are more bots out there that are either finding you specifically and/or simply running through IP addresses. Or you're simply spotting more of them -- like when you're thinking of buying a new car and you suddenly see that make/model more than ever before. When it comes to new bots, this decade-long bot-spotter sees maybe five every week, and that's just from looking at log snapshots. End-of-month stats tell me there's more than a score of new bots every single month.

And that's not even counting the nasty agents like Toata and ZmEu, and good ol' libwww-perl. (Click the search link:)

If you're seeing fewer 'real people in real time', then add quality content and promote your site/stuff. And make sure you haven't blocked 'em via .htaccess. Not that I've ever done that. Nope, huh-uh. Nosirreee...

[grandma genie]

Hi Pfui: I guess as the Internet matures and there are more geeks finding ways to use other people's stuff for their profit, we see more bots. I have blocked Toata, ZmEu and libwww-perl and some others. And I do worry that all my IP blocking might actually block myself. My ISP changes my IP all the time. But most of the blocked IPs are from countries like Russia, Romania, Korea, Iran, etc. Then there is Adsense and Amazonaws. I just hate the idea that there is some geek messing with my stuff in order to keep customers away. Can they do that?