Following a lot of people does help you get more involved with Twitter. That’s the point of Twitter. However, don’t do it all at one time. This is the worst advice to give a new Twitter user without any type of clarification on how to do it.
- SheGeeks: Twitter 101 (05/04/08)
…as of today there is no preventative measure that will avoid the initial spamming, which is one of the reasons marketers are engaging in the practice. It’s easy, it works and it’s free.
- Beyond JEMS: Twitter Scandal Rocks Web 2.0 (04/30/08)
Follow-spam: when someone follows you on a social network, without regard for the value of your content, in hopes that you will view their content (bringing them value), or in hopes that you follow back robotically, increasing their page rank and/or popularity.
- Aaron White: Follow Back y’all (04/29/08)
as spammers get more creative, and marketers seem to be willing to take up any way to get their message across, all web 2.0 social systems need to take precautions. This should be a standard part of the business model for anyone that is hoping to make money off of user contributed content. Spammers are good, quick to hop on any new technology, and if they are allowed free reign on a system, will quickly figure out ways to saturate said system until it is no longer usable by anyone.
- TechWag: Twitter is used for spam and no one is surprised (04/27/08)
When third parties start to clean up your spam/fraud problem you know you either have a nasty environment or a great ecosystem; in this case I think it just shows twitter has some killer developers following them.
- Angus Logan, Windows Live Platform, in reference to Twerp Scan (04/27/08)
I call out for a reasonable reputation system across our many services. Twitter is one such example, but there have been others in the past (yes, those other social networks) that have dealt with the same reputational issue, not to mention spam.
- Damon Cortesi: Twitter Reputation Statistics (04/27/08)
I will sometimes tweet something about my dog; if I know that in the next few days I’ll suddenly be followed by “people” who are actually companies selling dog products, I probably won’t do that; every time someone follows me it generates an email to notify me of that, and the number of spam follows is already getting annoying. (I just block those users.)
There’s really not much an individual who doesn’t want to be bothered by this can do about it. You can protect your tweets so that only your current followers can see them, but if people start doing that, Twitter becomes less useful for all. You can stop getting emails to tell you someone new is following you, but then you lose the opportunity to connect with interesting people you don’t know yet.
Thus far Twitter has been interesting (and compelling to users) because you can explore it, you can see what people are saying about all kinds of things, and discover new people who share your business or personal interests. Spam could kill that pretty quickly.
- The Opinionated Marketers: Will spam kill Twitter? (04/27/08)
spam follows could be the end of Twitter @joywang is already saying early adopter stage is long over, asking “what’s next”?”
- Twitter user @melmcbride (04/26/08)
On the web, automated software creates spam blogs, or “splogs,” that exist entirely to host advertising. On social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, spammers send phony “friend” requests simply so they can flood their new friends with spam messages.
The bad news is that no one thinks spam is going away anytime soon – and that new ways to communicate will always lead to new types of spam. The good news is that early predictions that spam would bring the internet grinding to a halt have not been borne out.
- NewScientistTech: Happy spamiversary! Spam reaches 30 (04/25/08)
