Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Drewry — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:58:33 -0000

Dang..that's messed up about Twitter spam..LOL

http://www.ShawnDrewry.com

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Michael Tyler — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 02:51:09 -0000

Tonight I received an email with the standard twitter following notice, so I naturally clicked to look at the follower's account. It looked simple, honest enough, and with the thought of new friends, decided to accept. Immediately I saw new friends added and was surprised. Unsolicited sexual innuendo, and adults acting like Santa Clause aren't the friends I had in mind. After having second thoughts I went back to the original twitter invite to see that twitter didn't recommend my following or being followed by this member. Their posted request used the phrase "as seen on Mashable." What could I loose was my response. Oops. Now I am reading your take on this type of activity. Thanks for the heads up. Hope to resolve this and check with the source used to support first before acting out of a 6th grade, want to be my friend mode in the future. Thanks!

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Dianne — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:22:37 -0000

Excellent points in this great article-although "old" VERY relevant at present time!

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Twittery — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:16:41 -0000

There are lots of twitter friend adder bots, but how ethic is using them?
For example: tweet-adder.com
If well used they can be an useful tool, but in the wrong hands...

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

LJ Jones — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:57:44 -0000

Its a wonder that everything doesn't have a captcha these days. Spam dilutes the conversation.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

seancarmody — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:56:02 -0000

Nice post. I have also just blogged on the issue of spam on social networks.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Dan Perry — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:18:30 -0000

Good points, and like many, I've seen the same (new followers with thousands on one side and hundreds on the other). I think it's just growing pains.

My big fear is the same as yours; the added skepticism of new followers. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Michelle — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:34:04 -0000

I'll try to be as lady-like as possible... but that really sucks!

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Vitak — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:32:55 -0000

I'm glad you posted this because I had been wondering why someone like me (who uses Twitter rarely) was suddenly being followed by several new, random people. As you say though, the problem is not a significant one yet, since you do not need to reciprocate the following.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

tmarman — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:59:56 -0000

While I agree with your points on how silly it is, it is still ultimately opt-in. It may be(have been?) good etiquette to follow all your followers, but at some point the symmetry breaks down because different people use it differently.

I've met just as many interesting people by following whoever follows me (and has a close to even ratio). If I find someone generates a lot of noise and little signal, I can always just unfollow them. What I do is track my username, so I get any replies delivered to my phone etc. (Speaking of which, a very small group of close friends actually gets delivered to my phone).

On the other hand, remember that some of these may in fact be bots - and not spam bots, because they can't direct or broadcast message you unless you're following them. For example, I founded a company called Notches (http://notch.es) - we're building a platform for reviews and one of the tools we launched with was a Twitter interface. We're tracking certain keywords, but to pick up commands and direct messages from users, we have to be following them. We *didn't* blanket follow people, we're building over time based on those keywords, but the point remains that we may follow an order of magnitude more people than follow us over time.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

shane — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:52:00 -0000

Since when has it be 'the done thing' to automatically follow anyone who follows you? Why would I want to do that anyway? Sure, I'll check someone's history out and if it looks interesting, I'll follow them (for a while at least) but I don't do it automatically.

A disparity between friend and follower numbers is a sign that someone may be a spammer but it really takes about 30 secs of scanning past tweets to tell for sure. There are plenty of people who are just interested in the different conversations as well.

There seems to have been a rash of 'this is how you should use Twitter' posts all over the place lately. I find this almost primal need to craft order out of the chaos to be quite amusing. I'll use Twitter how I want to, thanks.

Actually, this reminds me. It's time for my weekly scan of new followers to see what's cooking...

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

anon — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:38:36 -0000

There are definitely Twitter "follow bots". I have about twenty people following me that I have never met or heard of.

Most of these people started to following me right after I made a post. Most follow over a thousand people, many over then thousand people.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Alexander Muse — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:34:43 -0000

Yep, they are spamming the heck out of me. Most of my new friend requests are spammers:

http://www.flickr.com/photo...

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Adam — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:03:17 -0000

When I started twitteradder.com last June twitter didnt have a very robust API setup. In fact it was quite easy to obtain 14K+ followers within a day or so.

Since then they have throttled various functions of the API which has helped but probably still need to do some more work on it.

If twitter is about to have a big spam problem then it will be down to them.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Connie Reece — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:55:14 -0000

I've been on Twitter since Jan. 2007 and have never added all followers back indiscriminately. In fact, I have frequently used the Block feature on Twitter when it comes to accounts like the above (who also followed me). If enough people block new Twitter accounts that suddenly show up with an obviously disproportionate number of followers/following, supposedly Twitter will flag the account and suspend it at least temporarily. Perhaps this would discourage the use of auto-add bots.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

csven — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:52:01 -0000

@DEckoff

1) The upper limit is different for each person since it depends not only on how much they engage with people, but on how chatty the people are with whom they chat. I honestly have a hard time imagining maintaining a "quality" conversation with more than a hundred well-engaged people.

2) If you want to know more about someone, ask them. I have. I do the same with LinkedIn, say when someone who worked at a former employee invites everyone to connect. I'll straight up ask: Who the hell are you? Should I know you?

If I should know them but forgot, I apologize. If I don't, I might make an effort to know them better depending on response or shared interests. Or I might politely refuse.

And if I do accept, it doesn't mean I won't severe ties with them later. Most of these connections are, by my definition, acquaintances. They're not "friends" in any sense that I understand the term. I'm not collecting "Followers". I have better things to do with my time.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Adam Ostrow — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:05:57 -0000

@Joost Schuur - Seems easy enough right now - but the long-term effects can really lower people's opinions of the service for some people (i.e. - MySpace)

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

blipfish — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:56:12 -0000

Tripix was the first, and currently only, person I've blocked from Twitter.

I think Twitter may develop some TOS to start dealing with this because I'm reasonably sure their vision didn't include p*ssing off thousands upon thousands of users with anything akin to spam.

I'll remain hopeful the Twitter folks will work toward this. So, here's to keeping fingers crossed.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Adam Ostrow — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:54:30 -0000

@Andrew Wright - It's easy enough to ignore the marketers, but yea, the concern is it cutting off new people from the conversation because Twitter "old timers" shutoff from new folks. Not a quantum leap imo.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Facey Spacey Development — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:39:42 -0000

I personally don't think spamming is immoral or unscrupulous. You do what you gotta do, and it definitely is not in the wrong box in terms of "right or wrong." However, I love twitter so I'm kinda torn. Sometimes you need Myspace to get Spammed to death so that we all start using Facebook (which is better) and so on. It's all just the checks and balances that are part of the grand scheme of things. Ya dig.

James (web 2.0 guru)
from
http://twitter.com/FaceySpa...

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

DEckoff — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:23:28 -0000

A couple of thoughts on Twitter:

1) What do you think is the upper limit of people a person can reasonably follow, before there are so many people that it becomes unmanageable?

2) What I really want with Twitter: when a person who I don't already know follows me, I'd like to know more than just their Twitter name and link, but CONTEXT: why did they decide they want to follow me? That would help me alot in assessing the quality of their interest and deciding whether I want to follow them back.

http://www.twitter.com/davi...

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

csven — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:55:27 -0000

"which will ultimately lead to a lower quality conversation"

Personally, I consider following too many people the primary cause of low-quality conversations, regardless of whether it's spam or not.

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

huxleyboyce — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:08:22 -0000

i don't know why people spam!

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

Patrick Curl — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:03:45 -0000

I for one have a differing view, perhaps because I see successful bloggers, like Robert Scoble or Problogger who have thousands of followers, but also follow thousands.

To duplicate their success it makes sense to build up your followers, from a marketing standpoint.

To go along with that though, being part of as many conversations as possible will also help to get your name / brand out there.

I myself have similar stats --
Following 1,694
Followers 241
Favorites 2
Direct Messages 12
Updates 240

I tend to click on blogger's followers links and follow the same people that follow bloggers in my niche, like problogger, doshdosh, etc...

I've actually found a lot of cool people using this method, and had some interesting conversations, after only a week or so of using this technique,

Re: Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?

geoff — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:43:00 -0000

Hell, i remember a day when Twitter had the option: "Follow all friends of" You would follow 150+ people in one click, and the server would strangle itself and time out trying to handle your request.

To all parties must a douche arrive. The question is, will you run to the next party, or stay and bar the door?

I, for one, have no gas left in my car.