I was intrigued to read on TechCrunch that Twitter has started blacklisting spammers. Really, Twitter spam? I mean, how do you get spammed by people you voluntarily choose to follow. It's like bitching that your Facebook "friends" are spamming you. Why did you make them friends, then.

OK, there are people who will try to market themselves on Twitter, just as there are people who will try to do that on any broadcast-style medium. In fact, we praise many people who market themselves -- pointing at those who have built up a large Twitter following (see Tracking Your Twitter Growth With Twitterholic, TwitDir, Tweeterboard & Others) or a company that uses it as a communication channel.

Marketing is not spam. For me, spam is unwanted marketing -- marketing that comes into your life almost against your will and adds no value to it. In the real world, it's like junk mail or telemarketer calls. On the web, it's email from people who got your address somehow, a search listing that's been shoved in front of you but has no real relevance or other crud that people are so familiar with.

So Twitter spam? How is an unwanted message getting in front of you on Twitter, to the degree we have this new Twitter Blacklist. By the way, these are not "known" spammers on Twitter as defined by Twitter itself. They are people who, as far as I can tell, the Twitter Blacklist has decided are spammers (in particular, this post leads to this discussion where Twitter says it has no public blacklist but does suspend accounts it feels are abusive or violating its terms).

Let me say I have no beef with those behind the blacklist. I'm sure they mean well, and the list will no doubt help educate some Twitter users about how they can open themselves up to unwanted messages. But in short order, you can take apart some of the assumptions.

The key thing the list looks for are those who follow a lot of people. Now this is a primary Twitter marketing tactic. If someone starts to follow you, there's almost a reciprocal follow guilt reflex -- lots of people will follow them back. Create an autobot (of the non-Transformer kind) to start clicking around, and you can get followers that way. Hit enough people, and you might pick up enough to turn your Twitter account into a marketing vehicle.

The only problem with this is that if you're noisy, off-topic, boring or a pain in any way, the people are going to drop you. In addition, since they chose to follow that account voluntarily, as I started out, how can you say they were spammed? They entered into a relationship with the person they chose to follow.

Here's a thought. Rather than needed a blacklist to help me identify "obnoxious" people and be wary of them, how about I be a grown-up? Someone wants to follow me, well, I'm a big boy. I'll look at their profile, the types of things they Twitter about and make my own decision sans Following-to-Follower ratio about whether they are trying to "spam" me or abuse Twitter or whatever. And I'd recommend others do the same.

There are things to know about, of course, ways that Twitter can used to annoy people who haven't entered into a relationship.

• @replies. By default, you will only see messages from people who call you out using your name (like @dannysullivan) if you are following them. This means you're initially safe from unwanted messages -- no one you don't know can show up in your Twitter stream. But some change the default to see @replies from anyone. I do -- and it's a great way to meet new people you aren't following. If they say something interesting, catch my attention somehow -- I'm like great! A new person to follow. But it also means potentially, people you don't know can get into your Twitter replies tab or if you use a tool like Twhirl (love it, recommend it!), then they're potentially even more in your face. Yeah, there's a "spam" potential there, and hopefully it won't grow. If someone is abusive, you can block them individually. See this on Twitter for more about @replies.
   
• Annoying notifications. By default, anyone who follows you will cause you to get an email notification. So if hundreds of people start following people each day just to try and build up "fake" accounts, then you could get swamped emailwise. Again, that's an abuse concern. In the short term, go to Settings, then under the Notices tab, untick the "Email me when someone starts following me" box.

Those are the two top things that come to mind. Looking at the number of people someone is following compared to followers is not a way to tell if either of the abuses above are happening. Frankly, if someone enjoys following hundreds of people and doesn't have many followers back (because perhaps they have little to say), that's their business.

I'll close with this. Right now according to Twitterholic, Barack Obama is the second most followed person. He follows slightly more people than follow him, so he's got a "nice" ratio that wouldn't make him seem a "spammer."

Now here's the deal. Need to gain a follower? Follow Barack. He'll instantly follow you back, thanks to an autobot. Now I like Obama. I'm planning to vote for him. But frankly, I'd rather he wasn't following all these people that he's not listening to and doesn't know. I never see him actually conversing with anyone on that account. So why's he doing all the friending back? Well, it's a nice marketing move, of course.

For more, see some related discussion on Techmeme.

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