Twitter need to get their act togeher and realise that not everyone lives in north america. It would also help if they got some halfway decent spam filters in-place. My account has been blocked from being indexed even though I have over 800 followers and have never ever spammed anyone; meanwhile any number of spambots litter my follower list trying to push porn or some ponzi get rich quick scheme on me. Wake up twitter: stop allowing your service to become a cesspit of pyramid marketing schemes and sleazy porn - and get sone decent software that doesn't penalise real users who have been online on Twitter for over a year. Otherwise expect to lose traffic as Facebook wakes up to how to use the realtime stream.
Sally Church
· 5 months ago
There's no excuse for poorly researched journalism, especially as 'Are You Being Served' seems to run ad nauseum on American tv channels.
Reminds why I stopped reading Mashable a long time ago.
Paul
· 5 months ago
Do journalists not bother researching their stories anymore?
Thomas M
· 5 months ago
This isn't spam. As pointed out over at TechCrunch it's related to the death of Molly Sugden, the well-loved British comedy actress who died recently. She played a character by the name of Mrs Slocombe in the classic comedy Are You Being Served. One of the long-running jokes in the show were the frequent references to her ‘pussy’, meaning her cat.
Why are people saying that this is spam when the number 1 trending topic is in fact spam organised by a company over the giveaway of a laptop for promotional purposes. Pick on them instead!
Your Name*
· 5 months ago
If it's a trending topic that's because people are discussing it - twitter is entering dangerous territory filtering what may be discussed.
@wildelycreative
· 5 months ago
At least it's a quicker back peddle than a politicians. Research lesson learned I feel.
Thanks a lot for the comment, story updated. However, anyone not familiar with Molly Sugden or the UK comedy she was acting in would have had a hard time understanding this was not spam, due to the fact that clicking on the topic yields no results.
Barnaby Rudge
· 5 months ago
Oh, come off it. Ever heard of Google? Very, very poor excuse. Not to mention searching without the hash at the start as simple way to get around the problem.
Dom
· 5 months ago
You're kidding right? Because you didn't understand what it meant, you automatically copied false news from another site? On what level is that acceptable journalism?
Stan_Schroeder
· 5 months ago
Heh, first of all, I didn't copy it. I saw it in the trend topics and wrote the story. Secondly, in hindsight (especially if you're familiar with the actress or the series), it seems to have been easy to simply Google the term. And yes, this was definitely poor research. But it never occurred to me, even in the back of my mind, that this might be a legitimate term; that's what years of receiving spammy emails do to you.
kollektor
· 5 months ago
I don't know what the trending topic #moonfruit is, but a quick search outside the Twitterverse would tell me before I jump to the conclusion that it's spam. The fact that clicking on the topic yields no results is the real story here.
mark nagurski
· 5 months ago
OK, so it was a mistake and I can appreciate the updates in the body and headline - and even the scored through copy - but I don't think you should have changed the text:
"This time, an odd, vulgar hashtag has appeared in the trending topics"
to
"This time, an odd, hashtag has appeared in the trending topics"
The newly added closing paras are a good point but a mea culpa might be better.
mark nagurski
· 5 months ago
The original 'vulgar' now back with scored through text - better :)
I think it's important that the original text is left as is - even if updates are added or score thrus used.
Stan_Schroeder
· 5 months ago
Heh, quickly updating the text, screwed up the tags. Never removed that word, I just wanted to have it strikethrough.
There's an interesting story here, really, pity it'll get overshadowed by my mistake. Are certain (possibly) vulgar words allowed in Twitter trending topics? How should Twitter go about discerning whether something is spam or not? It's not an easy task, as you can see (;.
mark nagurski
· 5 months ago
No probs - all good now anyway.
I'm actually not that worried about Twitter spam filters - without any filter there would be the potential for p0rn spam to clog up the trending topics. Simple human oversight solves the problem - presuming they can o'ride the filters.
I think the story is more, what are the trending topics for and how should we react to people and esp. companies 'gaming them'? It's foreseeable that as more companies use twitter to promote comps etc... that almost the entire trending topics list could be brand terms.
At that point it's no longer useful - unless you want to enter loads of competitions.
Steve Berry
· 5 months ago
Anyone not familiar with the UK comedy Monty Python might have a hard time understanding your use of the word "spam" there... ;-)
Ron B
· 5 months ago
Well that is what happens when you copy + paste stories from other websites, you then have to copy+paste the retraction/updates as well.
wecandobiz
· 5 months ago
Poor excuse. Us international folk have to constantly read tweets about Shaq or whatever his name is, Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus and a whole heap of people who aren't known for anything outside the US. Do we think write it off as spam because we don't know anything about the topics being discussed?
Well, I posted 3 times on the subject and nothing came up. So you're not allowed to say the word 'pussy' anymore at any time? I guess I won't be about to talk about my feline's visit to Buckingham Palace then!
I agree with the others - this is lazy journalism.
Dom
· 5 months ago
MrsSlocombesPussy wasn't spam, it was a tribute to Molly Sugden!
mark nagurski
· 5 months ago
It's not spam.
British actress Mollie Sugden died yesterday. She played Mrs Slocombe in UK comedy Are You Being Served and 'Mrs Slocombe's Pussy' was a running joke. This is a tribute from fans.
#MrsSlocombesPussy is actually a joke from the BBC comedy series "Are You Being Served?" Mollie Sugden played Mrs. Betty Slocombe and was always the straight-man to John Inman who played Mr. Humphries.
TDL
· 5 months ago
Mrs Slocombe's Pussy isn't spam, it's in reference to the famous 'Are You Being Served' comedy character "Mrs Slocombe" played by actress Mollie Sugden who died yesterday. She was always talking about her cat, which she referred to as her pussy - hence Mrs Slocombe's Pussy.
thedrb
· 5 months ago
I think this relates to the death of Molly Sugden who stared in the wonderful 'Are You Being Served'. Her screen name was Mrs Slocombe. The show was renowned for it's innocent (?) use of the double entendre.
It has a valid place in the trending topics, many top celeb twits are encouraging the use of the hashtag as a memorial.
Sam Beckwith
· 5 months ago
I guess you've never seen Are You Being Served?
Dave Kinsella
· 5 months ago
I'm sure Molly will be happy that her pussy is getting so much attention since her passing.
Johan Lont
· 5 months ago
Guys, guys, please! Do your research.
The Mrs. Slocombe character from Are You Being Served always referred to her cat Tiddles as 'my pussy'. It was a running joke and the one most associated with Mollie Sugden, who died yesterday. Check it on http://whatthetrend.com.
Stan_Schroeder
· 5 months ago
Here's some more background on the research part. Yes, it was a mistake not to properly research this particular hashtag and the background behind it. But honestly, my brain never, even for a second, considered that something in the form of "womannamepussy" can be legitimate. I'm so used to deleting spam from my inbox, for so many years, that something like this triggers my spam defense mechanisms immediately.
If the topic in case was #CheapViagra I would have probably done the same mistake (:. Again, not making excuses, the mistake is mine, just picking my brain to see why I never thought of googling that term (:
Twitter trying to filter out searches of hash-tags with "naughty" words in, perhaps? But failing to do that for trending topics.
Liam
· 5 months ago
Which hashtag are you referring to?
#MrsSlocombesPussy refers to the actress Mollie Sugden, who died yesterday.
Alison
· 5 months ago
Yep, it's a reference to the British actress Mollie Sugden.
Daphne
· 5 months ago
Oh, for heaven's sake, do your research. It's reflecting the death yesterday of Mollie Sugden, who played a character called Mrs Slocombe in a 70s sitcom called Are You Being Served. It was full of double-entendre, much of it based around her pet cat, referred to as "my pussy". Google it. You can manage that, right?
Aden Davies
· 5 months ago
Echo chamber you are fantastic...dead celebs really do trend well don't they.
It's not spam!!!!!!!! A great comic actress died today called Mollie Sugden. She was 86 for goodness sake and in a quaint but fairly raunchy comedy for its time called Are You Being Served. The MrsSlocombesPussy line is from her character in that. But the IGNORANT AMERICAN TWITTER CENSORS think nothing exists outside their world. Perhaps they should do some research occasionally.. hey, even try the internet. I've heard Google is quite useful!!
Asdf
· 5 months ago
Research? Hell no!
hibbyz
· 5 months ago
I searched for part of the phrase and found a whole string of #MrsSlocombesPussy tweets. Is it just getting blocked? The phrase is well known in the UK and is associated with the death of Mollie Sugden, the actress who played Mrs Slocombe.
@wildelycreative
· 5 months ago
Oops and Doh! More research needed maybe.
Steve Berry
· 5 months ago
As noted on those threads linked to by kollektor, it's not an "odd, vulgar hashtag" at all. There was even a book about 1970s British television named after the phrase, which in the UK is considered only a mild double entendre: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Slocombes-Pussy-Stu...
Twitter admins appear to have reacted as you did, Stan, and have blocked the search results, despite the fact that it's a legitimate trending topic. An interesting lesson in parochial US standards, maybe? In the words of Morrissey, "America is not the world".
martin
· 5 months ago
Actually that hashtag is 'a tribute' to British actress Mollie Sugden who played Mrs Slocombe in 1970s TV series "Are you being served?" A standing joke on the programme was where Mrs Slocombe(an elderly lady) would innocently use "the P word" to refer to her CAT. In 70s Britain the word then only had a slight sexual undertone. Mollie Sugden died 2 July: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/812961...
What a lazy and ridiculous piece - this was a warm tribute to a well-loved veteran comedy actress. Shame on you. In the imagined words of Old Mr Grace - you really haven't done very well.
martin
· 5 months ago
Actually that hashtag is 'a tribute' to British actress Mollie Sugden who played Mrs Slocombe in 1970s TV series "Are you being served?" A standing joke on the programme was where Mrs Slocombe(an elderly lady) would innocently use "the P word" to refer to her CAT. In 70s Britain the word then only had a slight sexual undertone. Mollie Sugden died 2 July: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/812961...
Actually that hashtag is 'a tribute' to British actress Mollie Sugden who played Mrs Slocombe in 1970s TV series "Are you being served?" A standing joke on the programme was where Mrs Slocombe(an elderly lady) would innocently use "the P word" to refer to her CAT. In 70s Britain the word then only had a slight sexual undertone. Mollie Sugden died 2 July: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/812961...
There was nothing innocent about the use of the word Pussy, it was a deliberately crude innuendo just as the character's name Mrs Slocombe is. Fortunately Twitter's imagination isn't good enough to recognise the latter!
Justin Parks
· 5 months ago
First of, fair play on the edit to the article, no one can ask for any more. Its clear that without specific local or regional knowledge that trending topic would look very dubious indeed but does go to show that we cant take everything at face value.
Lets not loose the point here though, for me its the spam on twitter and the amount that its infringing on the whole system. Its beginning to get totally out of control. I wrote a post just last night suggesting a way we could combat it but not in the trends, that seems to be a separate issue altogether and the worry is that it will make the trends obsolete.
You were very quick to tweet this poorly researched article, but you don’t seem to be as quick to tweet a correction. Given the amount that the original post was retweeted don’t you think it warrants one?
Zack Kitzmiller
· 5 months ago
Man. You guys are horrible. This is why I don't read mashable.
What happened to real journalism, ya know, when you vetted things, or maybe researched a LITTLE?
Jenny Fletcher
· 5 months ago
Very obviously Twitter has blocked some sincere tributes to dear Molly Sugden who gave us so many harmless giggles in Are You Being Served Hopefully they will take another look at how their filters work in cases like this, so what seems to be rather vulgar but isn't can actually be legitimately tweeted.
Something else to remember is that in other cases, is what one person considers to be spam is someone else's perfectly honest and decent advertising message. It's sad that some people will use links to be malicious, but there are other people - including myself - for whom Twitter is a legitimate and useful way to get our business message out. The network marketing gurus are telling everyone that Twitter SHOULD be used in this way. So who can blame us for taking notice and doing it.
Mark Bockenstedt
· 5 months ago
Hashtags longer than 15 characters typically don't work with the # at the front. I see this all the time on wthashtag.com where longer hashtags don't return results. Simply dropping the tag will yield results, however. It's something Twitter needs to fix. No spam, no hacks, just a bug.
Jack Yan
· 5 months ago
The interesting thing is that one can still search for #pussy as a hashtag, just not Mrs Slocombe’s. What a shame for her worldwide fans.
Joh
· 5 months ago
This is why blogs aren't taken seriously. They constantly forgo research to be breaking.
Digital Jedi
· 5 months ago
Yes, but what a great legacy. The double entendre caused one more misread after her death. I think she would have been amused.
I am beginning to get the sexually explicit "follows" that I experienced on both skype and MySpace. They ultimatley led to me using other tools. Hope Twitter does not run this course.
You were quick to condem #MrsSlocombesPussy yesterday In the mean time #moonfruit number 1 in trends, yesterday and today, is a spammy attempt to give away a free laptop. Explain how come you are not on top of this?
anarchyintheuk
· 5 months ago
An interesting article I came across rearding Mashable and this story. Any lessons to be learned here?
Google General Public Newsgroup has been nothing but spam for many years and no one seems interested in removing it. I think their philosophy is if they don't remove it they don't have to do their job by answering anyone's questions.
All Comments
Reminds why I stopped reading Mashable a long time ago.
Why are people saying that this is spam when the number 1 trending topic is in fact spam organised by a company over the giveaway of a laptop for promotional purposes. Pick on them instead!
Secondly, in hindsight (especially if you're familiar with the actress or the series), it seems to have been easy to simply Google the term. And yes, this was definitely poor research. But it never occurred to me, even in the back of my mind, that this might be a legitimate term; that's what years of receiving spammy emails do to you.
outside the Twitterverse would tell me before I jump to the conclusion
that it's spam. The fact that clicking on the topic yields no results
is the real story here.
"This time, an odd, vulgar hashtag has appeared in the trending topics"
to
"This time, an odd, hashtag has appeared in the trending topics"
The newly added closing paras are a good point but a mea culpa might be better.
I think it's important that the original text is left as is - even if updates are added or score thrus used.
There's an interesting story here, really, pity it'll get overshadowed by my mistake. Are certain (possibly) vulgar words allowed in Twitter trending topics? How should Twitter go about discerning whether something is spam or not? It's not an easy task, as you can see (;.
I'm actually not that worried about Twitter spam filters - without any filter there would be the potential for p0rn spam to clog up the trending topics. Simple human oversight solves the problem - presuming they can o'ride the filters.
I think the story is more, what are the trending topics for and how should we react to people and esp. companies 'gaming them'? It's foreseeable that as more companies use twitter to promote comps etc... that almost the entire trending topics list could be brand terms.
At that point it's no longer useful - unless you want to enter loads of competitions.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
I agree with the others - this is lazy journalism.
British actress Mollie Sugden died yesterday. She played Mrs Slocombe in UK comedy Are You Being Served and 'Mrs Slocombe's Pussy' was a running joke. This is a tribute from fans.
TechCrunch just ran with the same, story: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/02/once-again... and got quite a backlash.
It has a valid place in the trending topics, many top celeb twits are encouraging the use of the hashtag as a memorial.
The Mrs. Slocombe character from Are You Being Served always referred to her cat Tiddles as 'my pussy'. It was a running joke and the one most associated with Mollie Sugden, who died yesterday. Check it on http://whatthetrend.com.
If the topic in case was #CheapViagra I would have probably done the same mistake (:. Again, not making excuses, the mistake is mine, just picking my brain to see why I never thought of googling that term (:
Twitter trying to filter out searches of hash-tags with "naughty" words in, perhaps? But failing to do that for trending topics.
#MrsSlocombesPussy refers to the actress Mollie Sugden, who died yesterday.
Twitter admins appear to have reacted as you did, Stan, and have blocked the search results, despite the fact that it's a legitimate trending topic. An interesting lesson in parochial US standards, maybe? In the words of Morrissey, "America is not the world".
A standing joke on the programme was where Mrs Slocombe(an elderly lady) would innocently use "the P word" to refer to her CAT. In 70s Britain the word then only had a slight sexual undertone.
Mollie Sugden died 2 July: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/812961...
REF for Are You Being Served? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_You_Being_Served
A standing joke on the programme was where Mrs Slocombe(an elderly lady) would innocently use "the P word" to refer to her CAT. In 70s Britain the word then only had a slight sexual undertone.
Mollie Sugden died 2 July: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/812961...
REF for Are You Being Served? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_You_Being_Served
A standing joke on the programme was where Mrs Slocombe(an elderly lady) would innocently use "the P word" to refer to her CAT. In 70s Britain the word then only had a slight sexual undertone.
Mollie Sugden died 2 July: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/812961...
REF for Are You Being Served? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_You_Being_Served
Lets not loose the point here though, for me its the spam on twitter and the amount that its infringing on the whole system. Its beginning to get totally out of control. I wrote a post just last night suggesting a way we could combat it but not in the trends, that seems to be a separate issue altogether and the worry is that it will make the trends obsolete.
Have a read of this and see what you think, maybe I'm mental but it sounds like a feasible idea to me. http://www.justinparks.com/eat-spam-twitter-bot/
What happened to real journalism, ya know, when you vetted things, or maybe researched a LITTLE?
Something else to remember is that in other cases, is what one person considers to be spam is someone else's perfectly honest and decent advertising message. It's sad that some people will use links to be malicious, but there are other people - including myself - for whom Twitter is a legitimate and useful way to get our business message out. The network marketing gurus are telling everyone that Twitter SHOULD be used in this way. So who can blame us for taking notice and doing it.
http://www.dmr-bs750.org.uk
Social Steve
www.socialsteve.wordpress.com
http://www.gospelrhys.co.uk/2009/07/hate-to-say...
http://www.gospelrhys.co.uk/2009/07/hate-to-say...