Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Stop Twitter spam
Check out these fools: Braun Shavers, Invisus Direct and Wordframe. And my personal favourite Premature Ejaculation.
They never seem to follow for more than 48 hours presumably relying on the vanity of a user to check out their profile page as soon as they receive a follower notification email.
Check out these fools: Braun Shavers, Invisus Direct and Wordframe. And my personal favourite Premature Ejaculation
Labels: social media
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Comments:
Hello Stephen,
I started following you with our WordFrame twitter account. We follow people that have interesting thoughts and ideas in general, comments and posts about social media and social networking in general. If you want I can stop following you if you think that our intentions were nothing more than spam... Whatever our intentions are, how can they be spam when you have chosen not to follow us? Your account is open for following, so we can follow you. You can restrict your followers - Twitter has tools for this.
Post a comment here in this article so we know whether to remove you from the people we are following or not. We are not spamming anybody.
I started following you with our WordFrame twitter account. We follow people that have interesting thoughts and ideas in general, comments and posts about social media and social networking in general. If you want I can stop following you if you think that our intentions were nothing more than spam... Whatever our intentions are, how can they be spam when you have chosen not to follow us? Your account is open for following, so we can follow you. You can restrict your followers - Twitter has tools for this.
Post a comment here in this article so we know whether to remove you from the people we are following or not. We are not spamming anybody.
Fair play for responding, and thanks.
Twitter is a person-to-person communication platform. I don't think (maybe I am wrong) that it is appropriate for organisations to use it in such a blatant way as a marketing tool.
Why don't you use it on a personal basis, and engage directly with the individuals that you are trying to reach?
I note that there is the ability to restrict followers. This is probably the solution, but applying restrictions to an accout contradicts the spirit of social media.
I disagree with your claim that this isn't spam. I receive an unsolicited email notification when an organisation subscribes as a follower to my Tweeter feed, and then I receive unwanted messages if I then follower that organisation.
Twitter is a person-to-person communication platform. I don't think (maybe I am wrong) that it is appropriate for organisations to use it in such a blatant way as a marketing tool.
Why don't you use it on a personal basis, and engage directly with the individuals that you are trying to reach?
I note that there is the ability to restrict followers. This is probably the solution, but applying restrictions to an accout contradicts the spirit of social media.
I disagree with your claim that this isn't spam. I receive an unsolicited email notification when an organisation subscribes as a follower to my Tweeter feed, and then I receive unwanted messages if I then follower that organisation.
I think there are two slightly different lines of though going on here. I agree totally about the emerging problem of Twitter spam and can't comment on most of your examples, but I don't think that Wordframe is spam.
Wordframe is run by some pretty savvy people, including David Terrar of the Enterprise Irregulars. The content on it is interesting. And George has made a good move by commenting.
Twitter doesn't have to be person-to-person communication platform. That's just one of its uses, the best thing about it is that it has so many other uses. And the best bit is that people muse choose to follow, so therefore it can never be spam as you're in control.
My complaint is with those who Tweet too much. There are some I would like to follow, but can't because there frequency clutters my feed and means I miss things from people who do it less frequently.
With Twitter it is definitely a case of less is more.
Wordframe is run by some pretty savvy people, including David Terrar of the Enterprise Irregulars. The content on it is interesting. And George has made a good move by commenting.
Twitter doesn't have to be person-to-person communication platform. That's just one of its uses, the best thing about it is that it has so many other uses. And the best bit is that people muse choose to follow, so therefore it can never be spam as you're in control.
My complaint is with those who Tweet too much. There are some I would like to follow, but can't because there frequency clutters my feed and means I miss things from people who do it less frequently.
With Twitter it is definitely a case of less is more.
I too have been getting a couple of random followers - some of them quite obviously glamour models who have no interest in an short arse, albeit handsome, PR consultant. But i just don't bother following them.
@stuartbrucepr - Hi Stuart, Wordframe granted is legit although I still don't think there's a place for corporate accounts on Twitter. I look forward to hearing from Premature Ejaculation.
Frequency of postings is more tricky: who's to say what's right or wrong? Deleting a person who is too noisy is the only answers I guess, as we saw with A listers, but one of the great applications of Twitter that I've discovered is as a back channel during TV shows such as the Apprentice, or a footie match, in which case live discussion adds an entertaining dimension. Bring on IPTV eh?
Frequency of postings is more tricky: who's to say what's right or wrong? Deleting a person who is too noisy is the only answers I guess, as we saw with A listers, but one of the great applications of Twitter that I've discovered is as a back channel during TV shows such as the Apprentice, or a footie match, in which case live discussion adds an entertaining dimension. Bring on IPTV eh?
I agree, spam must be stopped. Personally I feel that this should be an initiative from Twitter itself. One way they could do this is to allow you to group the people you follow into different groups, much like Facebook has recently done. That way you can filter out all the people you care about from the spam. Job done.
have nothing to add to the debate, but was a great premature ejaculation jokes Wadds :)
# posted by 
: 8:15 AM
: 8:15 AM
If there is a media channel available people will market/spam on it. This kind of discussion is similar to discussions that have gone on since the early 1990s from news group participation onwards.
There is only one way of stopping it, providing a suitably hostile community reaction to it so that the marketer realises that it doesn't and won't work.
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There is only one way of stopping it, providing a suitably hostile community reaction to it so that the marketer realises that it doesn't and won't work.
