Twitter Spam

Spam comes in all shapes and sizes – and now it is hitting stride (or should I say critical mass?) on Twitter. We love Twitter! In fact, those who don’t love Twitter (and its amazing ability to get what you say in front of thousands (potentially millions) of people in 140 characters or less) fall into 2 categories:

1. “I don’t get it” or
2. “What’s Twitter?” (These folks are living in a cave or worse…)

Over the last several days, my Twitter follower count has been on a steady decline including one drop of nearly 200 overnight last Wednesday.

So, what does this all mean?

What it means is that Twitter is cleaning house. They are removing spam accounts in droves! Unfortunately some innocent folks are getting wiped out  as well… This from TechCrunch:

Spam accounts on Twitter are becoming a big problem, inflating follower counts and setting the stage for unwanted commercial come-ons and scams. (And you thought spam on Gmail was bad). As Twitter inches towards becoming a place to do business, it needs to sweep the spammers out of its system. Inevitably, some innocent bystanders will suffer collateral damage.

Collateral Damage… hmmm.

This whole Twitter Spam business led me to this conclusion: On some level – mass spamming must work or the spammers wouldn’t continue with it, right? I have to think so. So my question is: Who the hell clicks on these spam profiles and then actually follows the links?

My guess – the same people who follow the links in their spam email. The same people who were ready to pay (or did) for that bank transfer from a Prince in Nigeria… Get my drift. The spammers are getting pretty creative with their methods too. Here’s one I discovered this morning while searching for trending Twitter topics on Bing Tweets:

If you look at the above picture, the entire tweet from these “people” are the moments trending topics: Jay-Z, Follow Friday, Comic-Con, New Moon (the new Twilight movie) and USF Tampa. Clever for a spammer to find a way to show up in Twitter’s trending topics – But rather insidious too – here’s why:

USF Tampa was a trending topic because the campus had sent out an alert via Twitter that there was a gunman on campus and they issued the following warning:

Good Samaritans around the world using Twitter re-tweeted the warning and even praised Twitter’s ability to spread this kind of information.

Cool huh – unless you are a damn spammer muddying up the water when a real emergency is in progress.

Personally, I am happy that Twitter is cleaning house! I say clean it good.

Twitter is the most efficient way for me to stay in front of my current and potential future customers/clients. It is a great platform for the spread of information, for dialogue, interaction and quite cool for just learning new things… Let’s just say NO to the Twitter Spammers!

The trending topic that really inspired this post: Twitter Cracks Down.

What steps can Twitter take against these Twitter Spammers? Please add your comments below – Thanks!

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