Are Marketers Ruining Twitter?

June 26, 2009

There has absolutely been a rapid increase in spam on Twitter lately.

It was a problem beforehand. But, then some celebrities brought more attention to Twitter and, all of a sudden, the rest of the world is catching onto Twitter. And where the people are, marketers follow.

Is it a bad thing? What should be done about it?

Good Versus Bad Marketers

I know there are going to be people who have a knee-jerk reaction to this question by lumping all marketers together. But, that is a mistake.

The smart, savvy marketers realize that Twitter is a SOCIAL site and they use it accordingly. Savvy marketers realize that it is insanely STUPID to do nothing but product pitches on Twitter. It isn’t going to work.

The marketers who I follow understand this. The marketers I follow are NOT the kind of people putting out stuff like “Get 16,000 followers in 30 days”. Instead, they are simply being real people and making connections with their audience. They realize that business takes place OFF Twitter. Twitter is like a big party and you have to treat it as such.

Bad Marketers Make It Suck For Everybody

So, with that delineation established, let me clearly state the way I see it:

  1. There are a lot more lazy, BAD marketers online than there are good ones.
  2. The bad ones are making Twitter increasingly annoying for everybody.

Bad marketers look at Twitter like fishing. They want to build up a big following, then just keep throwing a bunch of hooks into the pool to see how many idiots they can get to bite. As a result, we get more blatant “make money online” pitches from lazy marketers. We get porn on Twitter. We get the lame auto-DMs with overt sales pitches.

What Can (Or Should) Be Done?

The way I see it, Twitter is going though the same evolution as email did – but on fast forward. Email started out small, then it grew. Then the marketers learned the power of it and it ballooned into a huge spam problem. Then an entire filtering industry sprung up to combat it. Then anti-virus and other protections became necessary.

Twitter is following the standard product development curve, but it is happening faster than we’ve ever seen it.

Like email, nobody is ever going to be able to stop spam on Twitter. It will be a constant fight between spammers, users, and Twitter itself. The one difference I see is that Twitter is a single, central company unlike email. This means that Twitter can employ protections at the core level to combat the problem. This is where we’ll see things like:

  1. System-level filtering.
  2. Policing of user accounts, with suspensions, bans, etc.

What Twitter has to be careful of is not to get so overly aggressive with this that they harm the platform. And therein lies the crux of the issue. After all, it is the community inviting the problem. People can choose to follow or unfollow anybody they want. It isn’t as if the user is powerless over the situation.

So, I put the question to you, my readers.

What do you think should be done about Twitter spam?

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

  1. Is Twitter Becoming An Echo Chamber of Marketers?
  2. Twitter Marketers and Gaming The System
  3. Top 10 Signs You ARE Worth Following On Twitter
  4. Twitter Limits to 2000 Follows. Could They Charge To Lift The Limit?
  5. Twitter Suspensions Show Need For Social Redundancy
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  • Dave,

    For the time being, until Twitter moves against the marketing goobers, it is left to the Twitter community at large to police this matter. I make liberal use of unfollow/block and encourage everyone who cares about this issue to do the same. A couple of tools were recently recommended (haven't tried either yet) for follower management: Nest Unclutter (http://nest.unclutterer.com/) and Tweetpular (http://www.tweepular.com/)

    I would prefer to see Twitter take a more aggressive stand on the matter but, until then, I will continue to shunt the spammers off to the side where they belong.
  • Spam on twitter is easy to avoid - you just stop following the spammers. I was looking for streams on which to advertise (using Magpie) and all I found was bots following other bots.
  • Justin
    When I first found out about Twitter I simply just created an account there and that was it for a couple months until I found a use for it. However, I've had 26 over the past 4 months or so follow me and I didn't do ANYTHING whatsoever. Of course, I could just ban them from my list and it wouldn't be a problem anymore.

    But on with your question, I thing there should be some limits such as how many tweets per hour people can post and how many people you can follow per hour. Every time a Twitter user follows someone an email is automatically sent to that person's inbox. So if a person is a famous celebrity and they sign up for twitter they better create an email account JUST for twitter so that all those emails will be gathered in one place.

    There's also another problem that has sprung up this past month or so which would be hackers spreading viruses to users on twitter. Now that's kinda scary. Obviously the Twitter admins should be looking to fix this problem as well. That's all I have to say really.
  • I think that there should be a quick way to report spammy behavior. Like a "report" button or something. Then Twitter should employ some people to determine whether or not the activity is innapropriate.

    It really is a delicate situation though. When account bans start happening people start panicking, even if they are doing nothing wrong.
  • I just don't follow if there are too many marketing messages. Problem solved.
  • Self-Policing seems the best way to go and just don't follow spammers or people that tweet TOO MUCH. I agree with David that we have the tools we need to take care of this ourselves.
  • Spam on Twitter is only a problem if you let it be a problem. If you find yourself following a spammer, and continue to follow them - well you're opting in to be spammed. Remember that "unfollow" button? Use it if you are having issues, if not you get what you're asking for.

    Matt
  • If I log into my account and see that someone I am following has posted 20 times in one day and all they are doing is trying to sell something I just stop following them. Twitter was fun in the beginning, because spam is getting so bad I am thinking of closing my account.
  • There are a lot of spammers on Twitter. If you see someone that is spamming and you don't like it you can unfollow them. I wish everyone was good and we can follow everyone but that is not going to happen. Greg Ellison
  • Twitter is just starting to look into this -- so far I've seen the Twitter's spam watch account (http://twitter.com/spam ) as well as the coveted "Verified Account" seal on accounts on big-name people like @scobleizer who suffer from countless and frequent impostors.

    Yeah, I hate Twitter spam BS -- just sucks my time as I have to handpick the people I decide to follow back.
  • Maybe there's something I don't understand here... why should I care who follows me? I've seen people be concerned about this and think I must be missing something.

    So... if that's so, somebody please tell me!

    I do take the time to look at a person's profile before I follow them. If their subject matter doesn't interest me, if they're promoting porn, or if ALL they post is one ad after another, I just don't follow them. Then later, if I see that I made a mistake, I unfollow.

    I think a lot of people post that "Bajillion followers in 24 hours" thing by accident. I followed a link thinking I was going to learn something when I first started and ended up with a post like that. Was really embarrassed by it. So if I see it once, I disregard. If I see it repeated over and over, I unfollow.
  • I have certainly noticed the huge up-surge in spam marketers trying to get a piece of the Twitter pie. As the popularity of the platform increased at such a rate is was inevitable that spam would become a problem at some point. I agree that with people being able to choose who to follow it should not be a concern, but doesn't Twitter do something if the following / follower ratio is way out of balance? If so i guess spam 'followers' could cause come problems?
  • Social marketing done right is eloquent, empowering, engaging and educational. its fun.
    though I agree that spam on twitter is stupid and annoying I also think that many people cant help it
    like its not their fault that they have been conditioned bu how many hundreds of thousands of interruption based commercials in mainstream media
    can everyone in every market remember the SUNDAY!!! SUNDAY !!! SUNDAY!!! LIVE AT THE XXXXXMOTORSPEEDWAY!!!!! yada yada yada....?
    its not our fault we have grown up with that crap and still somewhere in our brain think that kind of annoying interruption look at me crap really IS marketing.
    It's just not "social marketing"
    It's ANTI-social marketing.
    and it doesent belong on twitter.
    block the spammers
    I'll start a hashtag lets see if we can get it off the ground
    I announce it here, even before I post on Twitter
    the hashtag is
    #BlockSpammers
    use it to complain about an account and advocate that others block the spammers from their accounts.
    thanks and take care
    Bryan
  • Bugs the crap out of me and makes me wish I hadn't released a Twitter course. Twitter Marketing has been given a bad name because of this and now that I've accepted that I'm heavily invested in this niche, I think it is time to work hard to knock them down a peg or two.

    Over time, I think the easy money will leave Twitter and people will stop using expensive services and easy spamming methods. For the time being though, it is our job to unfollow those that use this methodology and let them know what we think.
  • In a tool where you *CHOOSE* whose tweets and DMs you receive, speaking about spam is kinda ridiculous..

    First solution: UNFOLLOW - the most unused feature in Twitter. Why are people so damn afraid to *unfollow*? just unfollow people whose tweets you don't want to receive!

    Second solution: BLOCK.

    Third solution: do NOT autofollow those who follow you, only follow those who you are truly interested in. because there are loads of people autofollowing everyone who follows them, there are people autofollowing everyone just to spam.
  • ZE,
    if you look a little deeper whats more irritating and insidious about twitter spammers are how much of the time they are taking advantage of weakness, insecurity or sense of being considerate.
    sometimes the twitter account has just some picture of some eye candy model type, sometimes its a decoy fraud profile faking to be someone famous.
    It exploits us to fake that someone 'special famous or sexy" is our new follower.
    How many of you have told someone outside of the twitter world, "hey Twitter is Cool! Britney Spears is Following me! (or insert Dalai Lama, Shak, Barack Obama etc etc)
    other times its just taking advantage of a persons sense of reciprocity.
    Sure it's an "opt in" system and we all choose who we follow, sometimes too indiscriminately,.. but no-one likes feeling lied to, taken advantage of or exploited just because we are polite, too busy to check, vain or insecure.
  • Spam and the internet, nothing can be done all you can do is make smart decisions. Kinda like you e-mail you don't really get spam until you start giving out you address. Lots of great comments above. Don't auto follow everyone and if someone is spamming you unfollow!
  • Twitter does have a ton of spammers, but all you can really do at this point is stop following them. If someone follows me, I generally follow them back, but only after I check out some of their tweets..a lot of the time, I choose to not follow them.
  • I'm not too worried about the spammers who post spam links to their timelines. What really gets me is how my direct message inbox is flooded with direct message spam. That drives me nuts since I can't weed through all the junk to find people who sent me a real DM.
  • I think the question in the headline is a little unfair. It's not marketers who are ruining Twitter, it's spammers. But then its a sad fact that whenever any medium becomes popular, it attracts spammers. At least on Twitter you can choose not to follow them.
  • You'd be shocked if you knew how many 'cam-girls' are following me on Twitter.
  • I think Twitter spam isn't THAT big of a problem. Bear with me. I realize there is a TON of spam, but who cares really? I don't have to follow anyone who spams. I click unfollow, and move on. That's the beauty. So the spammers will make no money, and that should kill off the strategy and the spammers, in time. If I'm wrong, I don't really care because I don't suffer from the spam (nor should you).
  • MLM Guy
    Even when I get past the SPAMMERs on twitter, the content I find is really not that compelling. I guess my friends are just lame or something ;)
  • Related to my recent comment on your Porn Stars Following me post I do believe that too many spammy marketers are currently ruining Twitter. Hopefully they will be able to combat it somehow.
  • I fear that the Spamming on Twitter will get a LOT worse before the Twitter guys are forced to do something about it. The problem is, is that it is too bloody easy. You don't realy have to learn anything, no coding, no domains to buy and set up, absolutely NO effort is involved. And so every, Tom, Dick and Harry feels that there is a fast buck to be made. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your stand-point) at the moment I think that there probably is easy money being made (Hmm, not by me though :-( ) which is encouraging others to climb right onboard the bandwaggon. The question is, will the Twitter guys act before their platform becomes unusable and is replaced by a lookey-likey Twitter2 (or whatever) with built in spam control.
  • I just avoid them. Why give a damn when I know that they're just spammers. ^_^
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