Everyday, it seems, I see a few mentions of "Twitter Spam" in my Twitter timeline. Most times, I simply ignore them, but twice in the past two weeks I’ve gotten into protracted debates about what is and isn’t "Twitter Spam." I thought it time to to elaborate on my position on the matter: Twitter spam is impossible. It simply can’t exist. Why? Because Twitter is an entirely opt-in environment – you are in control of the messages you receive.
Most of the complaints about TwitterSpam seem to originate with an "illegitimate" Twitterer following thousands of people all at once. Keep in mind that following someone on Twitter is similar to subscribing to a blogger’s RSS feed – with a couple bonuses. First, you receive an email when someone subscribes to your Tweet – which I’m sure FeedBurner could do for your feeds if they thought it would be useful. Second, you can see who is following you. Cool.
I’ve gotten in the habit of challenging claims of Twitter spam, and response is becoming consistent. It begins with claims that the ‘notification email’ about a Twitter follow makes it TwitterSpam. When I counter with the fact that you can disable the notification email, there are usually claims of ‘illegitimate’ Twitterbots following thousands of people but not offering any value beyond pushing brands. The claim is usually stated as if a bot following you brings with it some obligation to follow back.
Following is not a social act
I get the Twitter follow notifications in my inbox – but I’m more than willing to turn them off if they become to frequent. Sometimes, I’ll recognize the name and make the effort to return the follow. Most times, though, I won’t do that until I have a social reason to – and that reason is conversation. Following is not a social act. Speaking to me through Twitter is. That means that 50,000 people could follow me, but I feel no obligation to return the favour until they’ve reached out to me via an @ reply.
My most recent spat erupted when Shannon Whitley (@swhitley) complained when the customer service Twitter account for Pandora (@pandora_radio) followed him. I countered that I appreciated @pandora_radio following me after I had Tweeted about the service because it meant I could DM them with questions, etc – which I have done.
Your Say
Shannon was joined by a few others who agreed with him, so I offered to include their thoughts here – my responses in bolded italics.
Joel Postman (@jpostman) offers these three points:
- Twitter spam exists because once you receive a follow, you may have to check the user’s profile to determine the nature of the follower. You have thus received an unwanted advertising/marketing message. Colin: Why do you need to check the nature of the follower? You wouldn’t/couldn’t do that for your RSS feed, would you? There is no expectation of privacy on Twitter. There is no reason beyond sheer curiosity or ego to check out folks who follow you.
- Spam is an old term applied to new media in Twitter’s situation.The role of email is minimal on Twitter, and email is where spam traditionally lives. Forced unwanted marketing messages are spam. (See above.) Colin: As I’ve already noted, nothing is forced on Twitter. Emails are optional.
- Unwanted follows are a violation of privacy. You wouldn’t send Target a copy of every SMS from your mobile. Why would you want online retailers and service providers collecting information on you, even if doing so does not violate Twitter’s Terms of Service? Colin:Following on Twitter is no more a breach of privacy than a Google search or a simple TweetScan or Summize query. Again, unless you lock your Tweets, there is no expectation of privacy on Twitter.
Shey Smith (@shey) comments on my assertion that followers are akin to RSS subscribers:
Can "twitter spammers" can be equated to RSS subscribers?
When a spammer posts a comment or trackback on my blog, I can remove it even before it gets to the discussion, and I can usually identify right away that it’s spam.
The problem with Twitter spammers is that you don’t know, yet. We’ve got legitimate people out there who follow 20,000 people and fraudulent ones who do the same — the time wasted weeding out who you want to follow back and who you don’t is becoming more and more lopsided and annoying. Colin: I’ll stick with my contention that the decision to follow someone should be determined by your social interactions (ie: @ replies) rather than something as anonymous as a follow.
My RSS subscribers are a MUCH less annoying and time-consuming than Twitter spammers (plus i’m willing to bet all, if not most, of them aren’t spammers). Colin: The folks you determine as spammers aren’t annoying or time-consuming for me at all because I don’t have any reason to DO anything with them.
Mike Driehorst (@mikedriehorst) mentions the SEO implications of so-called TwitterSpammers.
Not totally harmless as it has SEO juice/links to own site. Leads browsers astray. Also, for spammers, wastes time to check out Colin: Multiple accounts full a of garbage content with links back to products, etc. would certainly fall into the realm of search engine spam… but it doesn’t in the least affect my Twitter experience – so it’s an SEO problem not a Twitter problem.
Postscript
Interstingly, not long after the exchange about TwitterSpam, I got follow notifications from two Twitterers: @HillaryClinton5 and @ChrisDodd53. What did I do? Nothing. If either of them want to be part my my social media experience they’ll have to actually engage me. Until then, they have the privilege of seeing whatever spills out of my head and into my Twitter stream.
I also received a Twitter DM from Lucia, the human being behind @pandora_radio, thanking me for sticking up for her. See? Pandora is listening. We in social media encourage our clients to listen. We should be impressed when a brand ‘follows’ us – it means they’re listening.
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Tags: spam, Twitter, twitterspam
Bang-on Colin – twitter is not a private messaging utopia, it’s a web service that is free to everyone.
“Unwanted follows are a violation of privacy” – Sure, and unwanted visitors to your website are a violation of privacy as well. Give your head a shake.
If you don’t want people to listen-in on what you’re saying, go back to publishing status updates in Facebook every 15 minutes – I’m sure the ‘security’ you find there will outweigh the brutal user experience.
Colin,
Thanks for adding my $0.02 in the post.
Regarding what you say about Twitter following is similar to RSS subscribers: Twitter is a more immediate, more of a conversational medium than blogs. I only respond to those reading my blog when they comment. When people follow me, there is an expectation of some contact (follow back, viewing profile, etc.).
Also I’d say that following is a social act. (Though, in real life, it can also be called stalking. ;)) Social media is about interacting; not broadcasting; not one-way communicating. Yes, we’re not required to follow. But, because of the more immediate, conversational social nature of Twitter, we are more likely to at least check the followers.
-Mike
I would agree with Mike, following is a social act.
I’ll check someone out as soon as they follow me. If I’m interested, I’ll follow back to let them know and then send a welcome message or some other introduction. To me, that’s key to starting conversation.
If someone is sending @s at me that I’ve never been in contact with, that’s a little weird. I’m not saying it can’t be done that way, but its not a norm for how I and many others use Twitter. Will this change the way we use Twitter? Likely. But until then it’s still spammy IMO.
Mike & Shey:
Following as a conversation starter simply doesn’t scale. I generally engage in conversation when I see something that interests me, or when I have something valuable to add to the conversation. When I follow someone, it’s because they have interesting things to say that have value to me. That probably means that I will, in turn, have something of value to say to them – an @ here and there, and conversations ensue. If that other person deems my input valuable, they’re likely to follow me for the same reason I followed them to begin with.
As much as I hate to pontificate how tools like Twitter should be used, a key is “listen first – then participate”. Following accomplishes the first, an @ accomplishes the second.
[...] Colin Carmichael maintains there is no such thing as Twitter spam. Colin recently asked friends on Twitter to send him their thoughts on this. He has published some of the responses, including mine, on his blog. [...]
[...] claim is usually stated as if a bot following you brings with it some obligation to follow back. – Colin Carmichael: Twitter Spam Doesn’t Exist (04/15/08) This entry was written by admin and posted on April 15, 2008 at 11:16 am and filed [...]
Interesting post, Colin!
Lucia here, from Pandora.
I’d like to chime in, as I was mentioned in the post.
Pandora decided to join the conversation on Twitter because we saw a lot of people twittering questions and suggestions for Pandora. We thought it would be helpful to bring our customer service to listeners using Twitter, in case they hadn’t bothered to email us with those questions/suggestions. Also, any reports of Pandora bugs or strangeness twittered by listeners are reported immediately to our team.
I’ve found people really like getting their Pandora questions answered so quickly and easily, right in their twitterstream.
I answer all questions, either with a public tweet or a private message. I’ve also posted my personal email address in the stream, for any questions longer than 140 characters. Several followers have taken me up on that.
Our intention does occasionally get misunderstood on Twitter, and as there is no way to DM someone who isn’t following you, it can be tricky to address potential misunderstandings.
I hand pick who @pandora_radio follows.
We usually only follow twitterers who post positively about Pandora, and those who have more than 50 or 75 followers/followees. Those users seem to be using Twitter as a public communication venue, and it’s often a safe assumption that they don’t mind one more follower. And in most cases, they’re pleased with such an easy way to get in touch with a company they’re interested in engaging with, and they follow us back. (You’ll notice that @pandora_radio has almost a 1 to 1 follower relationship.)
There are small and large businesses on Twitter benefiting users; I have seen many positive and impressive customer service uses of Twitter. There are potentially nefarious and annoying uses of Twitter, yes. And I understand concerns for privacy, absolutely.
Whether Twitter Spam exists: it’s an important dialog.
Thanks for reading, and for the ongoing conversation!
- Lucia, from Pandora
[Lucia at pandora dot com]
[...] a comment that Lucia from Pandora left on Colin Carmichael’s blog. Pandora decided to join the [...]
First of all, this is an excellent post. I enjoyed reading the post and subsequent comments. I don’t think we’re going to agree on this one, and that’s okay with me.
I don’t like it when brands follow me. Too often they just want me to look at their new product or service. When someone follows me, I like to look at their profile and see what they’re about. It’s not an ego thing, I am genuinely interested to see if I can learn anything new by looking at a person’s profile. With a brand, I don’t want to waste time looking at their profile. If I’m interested in their product or service, I’ll find them.
It is important for companies to engage in social media. I am one of those people who recommend that they become involved, however, I would not recommend that a company follow someone on Twitter under their company name. If Lucia had come onboard as a person, @lucia, or even @lucia_from_pandora, I probably wouldn’t have an issue. As a person, I would expect her to share more than just the latest company news. If a company is just using this as a way to monitor conversations, then they don’t need to follow at all. Just read the public timeline and use the search engines. You cannot have a conversation with me if your identity is “Company X.” I want to talk to people, not companies. If you’re using Twitter for customer service, just post the link to your feedback page on your profile.
It sounds like Pandora has its head in the right place, and I do like their service. I’m sorry if Lucia is being penalized because there are so many companies who are doing the wrong thing, but my advice would be to get the word out there about @pandora_radio without using the Follow feature.
twitter spam exists ;-)
There is another area where twitters that are primarily commercial advertisements (links to products, services, etc) affects one of the major benefits of twitter. Using some clients you can track keywords. I do this for both my day job and some personal keywords I’m interested in. When a user is just posted links to their products or similar spam using those keywords it shows up in my twitterstream. To me that is spam. Can I ignore it, sure. But do cleverly constructed ads for Disney porn add to the twitter conversation? No. I shouldn’t have to filter my twitterstream to bypass them either.
[...] easily ignore them. Block them. Don’t follow them back. Just like my friend Carmi states in his post on the subject, “The folks you determine as spammers aren’t annoying or time-consuming… because [...]
I think there is obvious twitter spam – in that by broadcasting constant messages, the public timeline is being spammed. But as the public timeline isn’t really usable anyway, I don’t think that really matters.
However, I think you have to take current usage into account. I could make a case that people who add everyone who add them are being spammed. The point of the “follow everyone” crowd is to get those people to add back, not because the advertisers are reading all those streams. So from the advertisers point of view, they are trying to spam. What you are offering is explanation as to how to use twitter so that it is ineffective – thus no longer spam. By that logic, however, it used to be…
:)
@akasylvia
There is a certain type of person who likes to make friends and be popular. And there are a apparently a LOT of these type of people around. They are likely the targets of Twitter spam.
But I agree that it cannot be spam if the person being spammed signed up for it. The definition of spam definitely includes an unsolicited factor, and if you hit the follow button on somebody then you solicited whatever they want to send you.
On the other hand Follow notifications from obvious brands is blatant spam. I can’t help but wonder how effective that is. Of course once the spammer has a bot it doesn’t cost them anything so they may as well blast away 24/7.
[...] here and on Twitter back in April about the spam situation on Twitter, including some spirited assertions from some quarters that it was not possible for Twitter. The arguments for this point of view, [...]