Spam vs Twitter
Last Saturday, @HeARTwork (an artist whom I follow on twitter) posted, “My wish for today for twitter? STOP selling your stuff for the moment and just enjoy your relationships with peeps eh? ” She is not the only one who wants spammers to stop corrupting Twitter.
What’s up on Twitter?
The Twitterati is sick of people following them for all sorts of reasons other than being social. More companies have tracked us on twitter than our friends have. Marketers check out tweets to know the psyche of their respective markets. From paint shops to pharmaceutical companies, businesses are doing this. There are several other programs, such as Tweefind, that businesses use to run through Twitter to find references to products or services they are promoting.
Disrupting casual communication among friends is degrading the real value of social media. Marketers who tweet to establish their accessibility play fair. This is because tweets of users are anyway available for all. They do not push their products and the decision stays with the consumer.
Some approaches are not intrusive, such as:
- Answering questions raised by customers
- Encouraging employees to tweet
- Tracking activity on Twitter
However, many companies are using the network to spread unwanted marketing messages and we are bombarded with spam. Some services, such as AdCause, are paying tweeps for posting ads. These updates have the same format as regular tweets.
Twitter’s Business Model
While people use Twitter to make money, it is important to know how the site itself is going about it:
- Twitter is currently offering its services to consumers and businesses for free. It has just started generating revenue. The San Francisco-based company has raised over $50 million from investors including Institutional Venture Partners and Amazon.com’s founder Jeff Bezos.
- Twitter also receives some revenue from Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft sponsors a website which carries updates tweeted by executives.
The rapidly-growing social networking site has not revealed its plans much, but indicated that businesses may be charged for having access to the users of its services.
Jam the Spam on Twitter
The aim of the site is that no experience on Twitter is bitter. That is why it is trying to clear up the mess by taking measures to delete spam:
- The site has a spam team that is continuously working on developing ways to detect and remove spam.
- In June, Twitter disabled a feature that allowed users to automatically “follow” people who were following them. This was one weapon spammers used extensively to build their networks.
Power to Tweeple
It is the followers who have made twitter a leader. As is the case with every democratic territory, people enjoy a significant amount of power on social media networks like Twitter. They always have the power of choice. Here, it is their choice to follow or block anyone they like. It would be great if Twitter could help us know more about strangers who start following us. If we get a clue about why he or she (or it) decided to follow us, we’ll have a better idea of what they are interested in and can make a more informed decision about following them back.
However, the need for filters is much more. With already so many instructions on the net about how one should use Twitter, I don’t think I should add to it. All I’ll say is stay informed and optimize what Twitter is offering you.
The author, Ankit Chadha, is a member of content writing team with Veda Informatics.
July 6th, 2009 at 7:03 am
Yes, I agree! There have been so much of spam on twitter, & it has increased exponentially recently. But I believe, with an amazing platform like twitter you always have the opportunity to avoid spam into your timeline atleast, “If You Don’t Want, You Won’t Get It” !
Everyone have got the options to unfollow a tweep if they think, is spamming, or they can even block him/her if they don’t want them to even follow you!
Yeah, certainly the spammers have been utilizing the #hashtags in a wrong manner & that really is a matter of concern for this “Real Time Search Engine”. This is spoiling the Real Time Citizen Journalism platform (as named while the Mumbai Terror Attacks).
July 10th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
It is true .
People only get registered there to get good traffic .
And most of them try to spam .
Twitter is good for marketing
February 16th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Brilliant. We wrote a similar post on the topic from a perspective on how small biz owners could use Twitter more effectively: http://www.small-business-how-to.com/public/152.cfm. Our clients are still befuddled about the best ways to use Twitter and your post helps alot!