Stop Twitter Spam

Until today, Twitter has been pretty low-key about their response to the problems with spam on Twitter. Sure, there has been plenty of participation from Twitter staff on the Get Satisfaction site and the occasional update from Biz or Ev on Twitter but I’ve always had the feeling that they were trying to down-play the problem. That changed today with this lengthy post on the Twitter blog by Biz Stone. This blog post signaled to me that Twitter is fully acknowledging the spam problem and is not afraid to discuss it out in the open.

Most of the post covers the new limits that are designed to discourage spammers. This is old news for anyone who has been reading this blog or following Twitter spam discussions on Get Satisfaction.

This statement towards the end of the blog post is very encouraging:

The Fight Continues

One thing’s for sure, spammers will keep trying to spam. Part of our work will be to keep iterating and evolving our approach to spam so we can provide a good experience on Twitter. Our team has recently expanded to include a Chief Scientist with a keen interest in this area. We just wanted to make sure everyone knows that maintaining a low spam ration is definitely part of overall service quality.

The new Chief Scientist that Biz is referring to is coming to Twitter as a result of the recent acquisition of Summize. When Twitter acquired Summize they didn’t just get an amazing search engine. They got a very talented group of engineers who have years and years of experience scaling large systems and dealing with spam (many members of the Summize team spent time at AOL). I am really looking forward to what the new guys from Summize can do to proactively identify spammers and root them out before they become a problem.