discovering twitter spam - I don’t want to make my account private, but I may have to if it gets worse.
- Twitter user @mariobourque (04/16/08)
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Look out for Track Spam
April 16, 2008 – 6:21 pm
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We’ve been covering mostly Follow Spam on this blog but there is another variety of spam on Twitter that is even worse because it shows up in your Twitter stream (versus your email inbox). It’s Track Spam. Chris Kelley does a great job of describing it…
I think the spammers may be one step ahead yet again. The emergence of features like track and various twitter search engines mean that twitter user can and do see tweets from people they don’t follow. If a spammer picks the right keywords to include in their update, they can spam all of the users following or searching for that term. And while most viewers of the spam will realize what it is and discount it, some won’t and will click through…which is exactly the same calculus the spammers rely on for email spam.
- Chris Kelley, Twitter Spam (04/16/08)
This is the technique that @mytweets was using last week. Notice the use of a hash tag on this tweet. Anybody who was tracking the #Edmonton hash tag got hit with that spam message, which included a useless link to a personal injury lawyer site that had absolutely nothing to do with #Edmonton. There were many, many complaints about @mytweets to the point where Twitter founder Ev Williams got involved. As of the writing of this blog post @mytweets has been quiet for 4 days. Will they strike again?
Twitter’s got a problem that it needs to fix quick
April 16, 2008 – 5:26 pm
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Twitter’s got a problem that it needs to fix quick. If the platform gets overtaken by errant direct marketers users will dump it overnight.
- Wadd’s Tech PR Blog (04/16/08)
Don’t let the follow-bots take over
April 16, 2008 – 5:21 pm
I’m going to pull a @gapingvoid
April 16, 2008 – 2:14 pm
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If this twitter friend spam thing doesn’t get under control soon…i’m going to pull a @gapingvoid and quit this…
- Twitter user @corbett3000 (04/16/08)
Blog Herald asks: Twitter Spam - Can You Handle It?
April 16, 2008 – 1:01 pm
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Although this may not happen to everyone, it looks as if a few accounts are getting “followership” requests from random companies, ranging from quick get rich schemes to wanna-be porn stars (at least on this authors account anyways)… The problem is getting so large that some are recommending CAPTCHA’s in order to curb the followership spam that seems to be increasing everyday on Twitter.
- Blog Herald, Twitter Spam (Can You Handle It?), 04/16/08
Message to Squidoo marketers: Don’t use Twitter
April 16, 2008 – 11:19 am
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I was happy to see this post on the Squidoo Web Companions blog.
Want to market your Squidoo lenses? Don’t use Twitter.
The very FIRST lesson in marketing of ANY TYPE, whether it is newspaper ads, television ads, flyers, articles or ANYTHING is to KNOW YOUR MARKET.
IMHO social ‘marketing’ is a misnomer. It hijacks the term that every business has issues with, ‘marketing’, and makes it sound as if all you need to do is plaster your stuff all over every web 2.0 site and you’ll make money.
NOT SO.
If you want to actually make money, you are going to have to get the distinction CLEAR.
Marketing is hard work developing your product, your approach, your content AND MEETING BUYERS where they are AT.
Twitter is populated with professionals and workers, experts in their fields. They are NOT interested in shopping your lenses.
They are EXPERTS at the internet and can smell spam a mile away. They are ruthless with it.
You CAN carefully add your squidoo pages, but you must understand that you are MARKETING TO NON-BUYERS. Just as Squidooers visit lots of Squidoo pages and don’t buy a thing from them.
- Squidoo Web Companions blog (04/16/08)
A shout-out from Mashable
April 16, 2008 – 10:18 am
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Mashable: Twitter Vigilantes Step Up to Solve Spam Problem
Thanks Mashable for the shout out!
Whack-a-Mole
April 16, 2008 – 9:44 am
Statistical Analysis of a Twitter Spammer
April 16, 2008 – 7:44 am
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Damon Cortesi (@dacort, creator of TweetStats) has a great post today about statistical analysis of a Twitter Spammer. This is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about the rise of spam on Twitter. We’ve been looking at a lot of spammer profiles over the past few weeks, and Mr. Cortesi is absolutely correct - these profiles often have a very similar statstical “signature” in terms of their Following:Follower ratio, whether or not their updates include links back to their profile URL, etc. And he’s even looking at the percentage of Followers who followed via an auto-follow, which is a subject that we just posted about.
Furnishing an easy means by which to report/block spam is also a necessary evil. Twitter has hummed along relatively under the spam radar until now, but it seems it has to accept that spammers will try to take advantage of its users. Giving users the power to identify and avoid spam through the use of statistics will hopefully make Twitter a fruitless source of successful spam.
- Damon Cortesi: Addressing Twitter Spam Through Statistical Analysis (04/16/08)
