Spam is everywhere, it’s mass, it’s personal, it’s viral and now it’s on Twitter. Twam is really baffling me and consuming a fair amount of my strategic thought.
- nicharalambous.com: Twam - The new spam from Twitter (04/23/08)
Lately, I’ve received notifications that I’m being followed by those who’ve set up Twitter accounts strictly for marketing purposes. For example, I’ve tweeted that I was about to go on a diet. Within a day or two of mentioning that, I received notices that @flatbellydietin, @trxworkout and @weightlossdie were following me. … Are we facing a trend where marketers/advertisers will use apps like Tweet Scan to search for prospects (suspects)? I’m thinking so. And I’m concerned about the consequences.
- Paul Chaney (Conversational Marketing): Tweet Scan a tool for marketers to spam you? (04/22/08)
wondering if twitter has just become another spam delivery chute.
- Twitter user @chesspark (04/22/08)
The strength of Twitter is its “one to many” messaging ability, but from a marketing perspective the “many” have to want the message and even if you agree to follow (i.e receive messages from) a company, there is an implicit level of incoming traffic that you will not tolerate. The marketing danger here is that the combination of the ease of sending the short message form and the flow/stream aesthetic of Twitter will lead to abuse of that permission. Because of the limited size of the Twitter page, such behaviours will quickly become spam of the worst kind.
- John Dodds (Make Marketing History): Twitter Spam (04/22/08)
I am being followed by livercancer, toothacherelief, toshibaflat and freepspgamedownload welcome to spam-free Twitter
- Twitter user @jpostman (04/22/08)
This is so great. @veronica starts in ‘I’m Gonna Git You Spamma!”. Cameo appearances by @jasoncalacanis and @kevinrose. And is that Tay Zonday (Chocolate Rain) narrating?
Yesterday on Twitter I saw this tweet from @Carlo…
A couple of hours later he had the first version of the tool working. The tool is called Twitter Twerp Scanner and you can try it out here. Below is a screen-shot showing some of the output from the tool. It evaluates how many people your followers are following and their Followers:Following ratio to make a determination on whether or not you might want to block them. Right now the threshold for flagging someone is a little too “trigger happy” for my tastes (it flags someone if they’re following more than 1,000 and their F:F ratio is > 1) but Carlo has mentioned that he will soon be rolling out user defined thresholds. Also, there is currently a limitation on the number of followers that it will scan (100) but he is working on expanding that. All in all I think it’s a great tool and I’m looking forward to the enhancements.
Updates:
1) Carlo has mentioned that this is still a work in progress and the results might not be 100% correct. Still, I am impressed by what he has put together in such a short amount of time. (4/23/08)
2) The parameters (Following number and Following:Follower ratio) are now user defined and the tool will now scan all of your followers. Also, the URL has changed to http://www.twerpscan.com (4/24/08)
Horse, Pig Cow: Tweeting for Companies 101
Tara Hunt gives some great guidelines for companies who are getting started on Twitter.
