Twitter Spam: Myth Or Reality?

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.