Twitter has gone mainstream and become a worldwide phenomenon after Oprah started tweeting, followed by many celebrities. Many of the early adopters of Twitter are not very happy about the exponential increase in newly registered accounts.

Why are the early adopters, such as myself, get annoyed about increasing number of new users? The answer is simple; Twitter spam is increasing with a tremendous speed as well.

How many contacts (friends & biz contacts) do you follow in real life?

You can keep in touch with a limited number of people in real life. Depending on the person, it can be 10, 50, 100, maybe 500. It’s already a huge problem trying to follow the tweets of hundreds/thousands of people you follow on Twitter. But twitter spam I’m talking about is not the spam you receive from your followers, or from people you follow.

What is Twitter Spam and Why will it be the end of Twitter Phenomenon?

Here’s a great example of twitter spam. On April 12th, I have tweeted and said:

Lately, I was seeing so many spam looking ebook ads on twitter and I was simply complaining about it.

After my tweet, I have received 2 identical replies from 2 seperate twitter users (spammers) looked like this:

Above is an automated Twitter spam reply with an affiliate link inserted. This is big time annoying. Basically these spammers either use Twitter Search or use some paid twitter spammer tools and target specific keywords. Since my update had “affiliate marketing” keywords, they automatically reply me with their spam message and link.

This is called Twitter Spam, or Interruption Marketing.

But when I started doing little bit more research about the Keyword Based Twitter Reply Spam, I have found out that well known online marketer, best selling author, and a social media expert! Guy Kawasaki is one of the many Twitter Spammers who uses and endorses these spam tools.

In this video, famous online marketing guru Guy Kawasaki happily endorses and recommends a twitter spam tool called twitterhawk.

Way to go Mr. Kawasaki. You have a great reputation online and I know it will take quite some time to bash it, but you are on the right track.

If you would use a similar tool, it would be spam, but if the person who uses it is Guy Kawasaki, then people might call it “Keyword Based Direct Marketing on Twitter“. I love this made up term . Since it’s Guy Kawasaki spamming, many blog posts are already written to support him and similar twitter spam tools. Alltop is Guy Kawasaki’s twitter account mentioned in this post.

This tool recommended by Guy Kawasaki might be used with goodwill in rare situations, but it clearly shows that many online marketers including Guy Kawasaki are using this and similar tools only to spam twitter.

Guy Kawasaki is one of the smartest online marketers I’ve ever seen. I’m sure, sooner or later, he will accept what he is doing right now is spamming, but will it be too late?

Keyword Based Direct Marketing or Spam?

If you are not clear about the answer of this question, please read Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, then you will understand why this type of interruption marketing will bring the end to Twitter phenomenon.

Let’s put it in a simpler form. A friend of mine and I are having a coffee at a Starbucks. We are making a conversation, and a guy at the next table is interrupting us on every single sentence. When I say “Should I drive my car or rent a car this weekend for the ski trip”, he jumps in to the conversation and says “You should rent a car at blah blah company”. I ignore him. Then my friend says “She’s planning to buy a new pair of jeans after our meeting”, and the guy again interrupts and says “XYZ Jeans running a sale on women’s jeans”. Now think about tens, hundreds, even thousands of people interrupting our conversation and adding their sales pitches without our permission.

How many interruptions will it take for us to walk about and find another coffee shop? Is this going to be the future of Twitter?

On this post, I have only talked about Twitter Keyword Based Search Reply Spam issue, but if you like to read a more through post about the twitter spam topic, here’s a great post called Ten reasons why Twitter will eventually wither and die…. You should also check out Stop Twitter Spam Blog if you are interested in the topic.

What is Twitter Doing to Prevent Search & Reply Spammers?

On august 2008, they said they were making progress on spam, then couple of weeks later they have announced that they are turning up heat on spam.

This message is to Evan Williams. I love twitter, and I hope it will have a great future. But if you want Twitter to survive and be a part of our daily lives in the future, you definitely need to focus on monetizing Twitter and stopping the spammers on Twitter. Good luck with these and I hope you will succeed.

Follow me on Twitter and send me a reply @AhmetKirtok about your thoughts on Twitter Spam (Please no spamming via reply ).

Web 2.0 has been bringing new innovations to life every day. Twitter has become so popular, many people stopped blogging, and started tweeting.

The new hot Web 2.0 property is Friend Feed. You can also add your Twitter account to your FriendFeed as well as many other web 2.0 services. It’s like your centralized web 2.0 channel, and it’s IN nowadays.

Some Web 2.0 startups still don’t get the concept. You don’t need an extremely complicated service nor so much user interaction to be able to become successful and create some buzz in the industry.

There are many Web 2.0 startups that offer simple things that we (users) need. After Twitter became so successful, Twitterholic and similar services were launched. And they are getting their share of buzz in the blogosphere.

Ladies and gentlemen, and all the FriendFeed addicts who keep refreshing their FF pages every 30 seconds, I am introducing you the new, brilliant Web 2.0 site called FFholic.com.

FFholic.com is so simple that it makes you think “Why haven’t I thought about this?”. FFholic.com has lists of most liked, most commented, most popular entries, videos, and users.

Plain, simple, not complicated, and smart.

The team behind FFholic.com is led by Arda Kutsal, the editor of Webrazzi.com, also known as Turkish Techcrunch (Read the launch news at Webrazzi in Turkish or at Mashable in English.). It’s always great to see new Web 2.0 companies launched from outside the US.

If there’s an up trend, create unique, and simple solutions to serve the users of the trend, and you will be fine.

I’ll be anxious to wait and see if FFholic.com has a monetization plan and when it will be deployed.