Stop Twitter Spam

If I do it, it’s clever marketing. If it’s done to me, it’s spam

Guy Kawasaki talking about his Twitter tactics at the SES marketing conference (WSJ Digits: Guy Kawasaki Can Handle Being Called a Spammer)

Last week, Guy Kawasaki did a brief interview with Web Worker Daily where he said that his favorite web app is TwitterHawk, calling it “the ultimate marketing tool for Twitter”. TwitterHawk allows you to automatically send tweets to people based on key words. Guy gives an example of someone tweeting about “fashion week” and TwitterHawk sending that person a tweet directing them to the Fashion page on Alltop (a web site founded by Guy). Here’s the video interview with Web Worker Daily:

What’s Your Favorite App, Guy Kawasaki? from WebWorkerDaily on Vimeo.

And here’s a sampling of Alltop tweets generated by TwitterHawk.

As you might expect, there were a number of people questioning Guy’s marketing tactics.  In fact, Guy himself admits in the video that this might be interpreted as spam – “…this is a way that I can interject myself into the Twitterstream and depending on how you want to look at it – spam people – or do highly, highly targeted marketing.”

Would I appreciate this type of marketing on Twitter?  No.  But there are others who would.  Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) recently announced that he and his wife are expecting another baby later this year (congratulations Robert and Maryam!).  On his blog yesterday, Robert said that he was surprised that no companies approached him about products that might interest him…

Yes, we’re having another baby. But look at what did NOT happen on Twitter: not a single diaper company contacted us yet. Not a single maternity clothing company. Not a single car company (yes, we’re going to buy a new one soon). Not a single camera company (already bought a new one for this occassion). Not a single insurance company (I need more). Not a single bank (I need to start saving for another college student). Not a single stroller company (need a new one that can hold two). Not a single vitamin company (Maryam is going through her prenatal vitamins at a good clip). Not a single shoe company (Maryam needs new shoes for pregnancy, and Milan is growing fast too).

That will NOT last.

So what do you think?  Do you want companies to directly market to you on Twitter and other social networks?  Take the poll.

There’s been an awful lot of discussion lately about the suggested users list that Twitter now presents to new users signing up for the service.

• LA Times Blog – Twitter’s suggested users get mammoth boost from new feature
• Scripting.com (Dave Winer) – Why it’s time to break out of Twitter
• TechCrunch: How Much Is A Suggested Slot On Twitter Worth?  Jason Calacanis Offers $250K.
• FriendFeed discussion: this bullshit about buying a place in Twitter Suggested Followers is really pissing me off

From the TechCrunch piece:

It is not unusual for people on the suggested list to gain 10,000 new followers every day

10,000 new followers per day sounds like an astounding number but are all of these followers legitimate?  Earlier tonight on FriendFeed, Robert Scoble made this comment about TechCrunch’s (one of the suggested accounts on Twitter’s suggested users list) list of followers…

… Visit the follower list of anyone on this list. Here’s TechCrunch’s follower list: http://twitter.com/TechCrunch/… Now click on 100 followers. Do you notice anything weird? I sure do. These are NOT real people!

Sure enough, quite a few of the new followers look like this:

And here’s another one…

And there are a lot of other accounts that look like that.  No profile photo.  No tweets.  Following 20 people but 0 followers.  Most likely a bot.

I generally understand why Twitter has introduced the suggested users list.  Ev and Biz have talked openly about how the new user experience on Twitter is not very good and this was an attempt to provide some initial content to new users.  I don’t think they ever expected these suggested users to attract 10K new followers a day and quickly get to 200K-300K followers in just a few weeks.  This whole thing seems very blown out of proportion because there’s a very good chance that these numbers are meaningless.

Twitter has been doing a relatively good job of getting rid of spam accounts once they’ve been reported.  But they need to get more sophisticated and figure out ways to prevent spam accounts from getting created in the first place.  This means creating more sophisticated linits on the API’s and an Akismet-style technique for sending suspicous looking accounts to a suspected spam area *before* they become legitimate accounts.  And the current hand-picked list of suggested users should be replaced with a recommendation engine that looks more like Mr. Tweet.  Twitter is at a critical juncture – breaking out with the mainstream but, at the same time, alienating some of the early adopters who helped to build the business in the first couple of years.  I hope they’re listening.

You can have thousands of followers and be completely unable to drive the traffic or interest that someone with only a few thousand followers can.

So why bother getting a bunch followers that could care less about who you are or what you do? Followers who in fact are only following you so that you will follow them.

If your goal is to be truly influential, or to drive sales, interest and attention, then gaming is pointless. Having thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of followers will not ensure success on Twitter.

- Communication Overtones: How To: The Secrets for Gaming Twitter Are Free, and Why It Doesn’t Matter Anyway

There was an interesting discussion today on the Mediasphere show on BlogTalkRadio, hosted by Jim Turner. Jim recently experimented with gaming Twitter and shared the techniques that he used on this show.