Kimi K3.1 Pro Promotion Criticized for Poor KOL Selection and Platform Rule Violations
In the promotion of Kimi K3.1 Pro, the so-called "righteous exposé by an English-tweeting AI KOL" was called strange at every step: the chosen KOL's follower and following counts are nearly equal, and their past content doesn't hold up to scrutiny—if KOL operations really picked this person, "even an intern wouldn't do." The author also criticized many small domestic AI teams for gambling on X's "Paid Partnership" rules, saying that a company of Kimi's stature and with its promotional budget should not act this way; the best promotion for a model aimed at AI developers is to let people use it, and one could borrow OpenRouter's old approach—piling on with spammy talking points only turns into garbage.
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Body · AI translation
The so-called "righteous exposé by an English-tweeting AI KOL" in this Kimi K3.1 Pro marketing campaign—no matter how you look at it, it's weird; every single step is weird...
Step one: judging from that "KOL"'s follower-to-following ratio (roughly equal) and an analysis of their past posts, if Kimi's KOL operations team actually chose him, they could resign on the spot—even an intern wouldn't be this bad!
Next, after X launched the "Paid Partnership" feature, it was the KOLs who complied faster, because they know the platform rules better. Quite a few small AI teams in China still harbor wishful thinking and little schemes to skirt platform rules—really, not a small number. But for someone at Kimi's level, with its marketing budget, the vision shouldn't be this small. Every platform has its own rules; you need to follow them and learn to keep up. KOL operations teams really shouldn't take their own habits and pretend to be experts!
Finally, if the model is truly strong, the best marketing is to get people using it! Especially for models aimed at AI developers—everyone knows how good it is once they use it, and as long as people use it, good cases and shares will naturally emerge. The old approach that's been tried for so long on OpenRouter is worth borrowing. Don't mandate weird talking points; no matter what they are, once they pile up and flood the feed, they all turn into garbage!