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It Says A Lot About Twitter…

Dec 7, 2009
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That the email letting me know that [someone on the Popehat blogroll] is following our Twitter account has this as its third sentence:

If you believe [someone on the Popehat blogroll] is engaging in abusive behavior on Twitter, you may report [someone on the Popehat blogroll] for spam.

I enjoy using Twitter, and someday, perhaps as a Friday timewaster, I'll post a big list of links to everyone we follow on the service.  They'll give readers an instant reading list of interesting things to read, in 140 characters or less.

But I'd guess that over 90% of the accounts that have followed our own were spammers.  In other words, it's about as useful as Usenet.  Twitter would be well served by some stringent bot protection, but that would run counter to its "Billions and billions served" claims.

At least with McDonalds. shareholders can determine exactly how many hamburgers are served, and can be assured that real humans are paying for them*, if not eating them.

*My dogs get Chicken McNuggets on the drive home from visits to the veterinarian.

Last 5 posts by Patrick Non-White

4 Comments
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4 Comments

  1. ccluskin  •  Dec 7, 2009 @9:09 am

    For what it's worth, they are cognizant of the problem and made some attempt to address it back in July of this year. A lot of people were quite hurt when their follower count dropped precipitously. It was big internet news for a couple days.

    Here's some more information on it if you're interested, along with links both to official Twitter press releases and angry blog responses: http://asemerson.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/twitter-update-removes-spam-users/

  2. PatrickKelley  •  Dec 7, 2009 @9:19 am

    That's why I frankly don't mess with them anymore. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, all of them are just vanity sites where the more users they rack up the more ad space they sell. Unless you're already well known, big waste of time, unless you really think Paris Hilton is reading your comments to her MySpace page. If anybody does think that, I really feel sorry for them. I'd almost be willing to bet that any time Ashton Kircher responds to somebody's Tweets it's not really him, it's a staffer.

  3. Patrick  •  Dec 7, 2009 @9:25 am

    There's the problem with Twitter ccluskin: It seems many of the users are actually happy and proud to count robots and spammers among their followers. It seems every third account that follows ours is a self-proclaimed expert on social media, and that's after controlling for spammers and pornbots.

    While we typically block the social media experts, the idea that hundreds or thousands of people are trying to sell Twitter as a means of making money lends the whole affair a Dutch tulip odor.

  4. Mike  •  Dec 7, 2009 @11:59 pm

    I block at least 10 spam followers each week. Don't know how many weeks I've been on Twitter, but I'd have many more fake-followers. I even block "real" people who are just collectors or are hoping for a follow-back. E.g., Brian Cuban, who follows 25,000+ people.