twitter fail blog

There’s a right way, and a wrong way to spam twitter. No, erase that. There are bad, and worse ways to spam. There’s no good way to send spam.

Spam on twitter is pretty easy to detect. It’s often sent by someone with a really cute, fun, or sexy avatar, and is in response to something you’ve posted. It’s usually not an actual reply to your tweet, but a comment that is supposed to make you think it is.

In order for spam to work, it needs to be somewhat believable. The target needs to believe that one or more of these things is possible:

1. You’re a real person
2. You have something good to offer
3. They can trust you
4. The link in your message leads to something they want

Evidently, @Ted1qc4t didn’t read “Twitter Spam for Dummies*, or he wouldn’t have posted this nonsense:

Okay, @Ted1qc4t isn’t a real person, it’s a bot (duh) programmed by a stupid person, that kept posting garbage, with reference to @CaresGeorge, because evidently @CaresGeorge couldn’t keep up with all the spam on their own.

Since @CaresGeorge was suspended, @Ted1qc4t will continue to flood twitter with completely irrelevant garbage until that account is suspended as well.

We hate it when people clutter up our playground, but clicking “Report @Ted1qc4t for spam” isn’t nearly as satisfying as it used to be. It used to give us a little sense of power every time we blocked a spammer, because we thought it made a difference. It really doesn’t. Spam is a huge problem on twitter, and there don’t appear to be any tools in place to stop it.

Why do we hate spam on twitter? Because it wastes twitter resources, pushing them faster towards monetization. This means Promoted Tweets, and whatever else they come up with to take our focus away from the pure interaction-in-an-instant theater of the timeline. But mostly, because when we get notice someone has mentioned us, we think we might have a new friend. And when we go to read it, we find it’s just another jerk, wasting our time.

*Yes, there is a “Twitter Spam for Dummies”, but it’s not just one book. It’s a bunch of books, and crap apps and programs like RevTwt, SponsoredTweets, twittad, Ad.ly and others. What most of the people who use these things don’t understand: We’re on twitter to interact with our friends, not to be your target audience.