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Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

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Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:21:47 -0000

"Figuring out the best possible way to deal with all the issues that Twitter is facing is going to be hard to solve algorithmically, and having editors constantly monitoring everything costs money and raises other issues, such as censorship."

I suspect solving this problem algorithmically is a lot easier than you think. Why? Well, in email spam filtering, the ugliest problem is false positives -- losing emails to a spam filter that are both real emails *and* important emails. Twitter search does not have that problem. There's really no such thing as a false positive in a Twitter search spam filter.

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Jay Bienvenu — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:53:16 -0000

This is how I think Trending Topics should really work. I don't care about most of the Trending Topics, but I would like to know what's trending in the people I follow. This would be especially useful for some accounts that I'm running that report on trending topics for certain interest groups (see http://www.twitter.com/Righ... for an example). [I made a comment about this yesterday, but it didn't post. Looks like the Facebook Connect login doesn't work.]

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Jay Bienvenu — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:48:37 -0000

The Trending Topics links simply do a search, which is visible in the search box. If you see that someone is spamming the search, you can add negative search terms ("-something") to filter them out. For example, the search you described could look something like "#unacceptable -download -twitter". You'll lose some legitimate posts, which is unfortunate but tolerable.

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Jack — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:28:00 -0000

Everyone! I make over $5,000 a Month with Twitter?! Wanna know how? http://bit.ly/Twittercash

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

MonsterBuzz — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:32:04 -0000

I love Twitter because I could find a lot of interesting topics over the Internet.
Now it becomes a favorite place for spammers. Gosh =(

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

blake — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:29:46 -0000

Digg seems to have the found the way to deal with the phony mess that is out there...I'm sure that Twitter will soon get it!

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

swag — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:58:43 -0000

One man's spam is another man's marketing. Deal with it.

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Sergio — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:13:20 -0000

There is one solution to that problem; use http://www.twitterlive.net
On that web site you can create twitter topics and live sessions that other people can easily find and follow.

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Larry M — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:50:04 -0000

I'm working on a site Tweetlnks.com that does "personal" trending on your twitter feed. It's in early beta, so it's open for suggestions. Crowd-sourced development is the model

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Melissa Fine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:46:57 -0000

I don't think the hype would die off. People have short attention spans & loads of choices. If that spam continues, the "good" Twitter fans WILL go elsewhere... and bad word of mouth will kill Twitter faster than anything. On the other hand, if Twitter takes a commanding lead AGAINST these relentless spammers, I think there would be a true swell of positive word of mouth from quality users, and the numbers would just go up!

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Melissa Fine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:43:50 -0000

I really like the idea of an automatic "report spam button" you can hit. While I felt strongly enough about it to go through the process of figuring out how to report (or comment on) those "g" girls, I'd love to be able to just hit a button. Or could their be some way to hit a button that would block reception of repeated spammers on any given topics? I guess that's more complicated, but if I could have just blocked the reception (and send them a notice that I did so) of all those g+number spams from the feed, I would have enjoyed the topic. Enough people do that & maybe so-called marketers would get the hint!

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Melissa Fine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:34:35 -0000

Could not agree with you more! Last night, there was a really fun topic/game: #unacceptable. It was COMPLETELY RUINED by these "g" bots/girls/whatever. They all have @g and some number as their accounts (i.e.: @g688600 @g688538 @g688988 @g688914). The entire topic was BLITZED with "Download your favorite shows and watch them on your computer!" & "I make $3,000 on Twitter a day!" This is the 2nd time I've given up on an otherwise fun Trending Topic because of them. I reported them last night... but not sure if that really works. Hope it changes. As usual, a few opportunistic rotten apples ruin the entire bunch!!! Thx for this post! Hope others RT it and loads of people use their voices, report them, and BOOT THE BOTS!

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Gary Arndt — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:17:42 -0000

Most of the hype is because of numbers. Ashton Kutcher wouldn't have had 1m followers if tons of zombie Twitter accounts hadn't added him from the suggested friends list.

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Ben Goulding — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:13:42 -0000

That's a good point Gary, but do you think the hype would really die off? I personally don't believe it would.

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Janine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:33:42 -0000

I HAVE AN IDEA! If it could be done, it would help everyone on a personalized basis without Twitter having to get into as much censorship (aside from Spam) ... Allow each person to be able to click "OFF" a certain Trending Topic, alllowing the next one to appear, essentially then looking at #11 or 12 etc. and disabling the effectiveness of the STUPID ONES in the top 10. Would that work???

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Janine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:22:13 -0000

I agree with you as it relates to Spammers and idiot abusers of actual Trending Topics. TTs can be so interesting and useful! Half the time I hear about up-to-the-minute news by reading it on Twitter before I hear it somewhere else! I've also learned about a lot of topics via TTs. I personally believe in allowing the natural trending topics like "Good Night" or "Happy Father's Day" ... it always reminds me of the humanity of everyone using Twitter, the natural cycle of real lives. I like those too! Just one person's opinion.

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

entwipreneur — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:09:52 -0000

Very true. Thanks for the post.

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

John — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:56:40 -0000

An answer to twitter spammers using trending topics: tidytweet.com @TidyTweet

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Ryan Freed — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:49:25 -0000

I have been noticing this trend since I started using twitter. I have been very cautious in using twitter as a marketing tool, even though it can be helpful if used correctly. There are also many problems with people following you just because they want a follow back, not because they are actually interested in the information you have to share or what you have to say.

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

lodank — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:06:32 -0000

I agree... I wrote an article on the same issue a while back. I noticed it when rick astley was trending...

Check it out..

http://budurl.com/zxzy

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Wicke — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:06:08 -0000

Twitter should create a tool that should have trending topics for different category like technology, news, business , spam etc. And this is the solution for this issue

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

seanmacdhai — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:03:09 -0000

nice article.. yes, this will ruin Twitter. What I don't understand is why the guys at Twitter simply do not limit the number of allowed tweets per hour, or per minute. Also, only allow so many follows per hour or per minute... Wouldn't that end spam instantly? And this would not affect the folks that actually *use* Twitter. I have actively used the site since day one, and I post 10-30 times per day, depending. A limit of, say 50, wouldn't affect me at all.

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

adamsonx — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:41:16 -0000

Twitter bans a couple of words. We already know they ban any word that deals with illegal contraband, and they ban the word 'douche' from being in the trending topics because of the #gokeyisadouche thing. I'm guessing that they ban all curse words or 'dirty words'.

Re: The Trouble With Twitter Trends

Jenna — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:23:23 -0000

I actually clicked on the Pirates trend yesterday thinking, "OH! Are the (Pittsburgh) Pirates DOING something?!" No. No they weren't.