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 ).
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I have already seen this sort of thing …and I don’t think I had been on twitter even three or four days. I blocked the culprit… which seems to be pretty effective –so far, that is.
Fortunately I have not yet experienced this kind of spam in my twitter account, but then I haven’t been using it much yet…probably having a hunch that I could waste a lot of time on it. I really like your analogy of Starbucks. Is permission marketing something like this: that guy who was interrupting the 2 with a keyword specific ad simply is now going to ask “can I have your permission to interrupt you for a second?” Getting that is almost the same to me. Whether I get interrupted with an ad or with a question, I still get interrupted. Can you explain how permission marketing would apply to Twitter?
I really don’t see the Starbucks analogy as fitting, it is apples and oranges. My reasoning on that is as follows: I actually had a similar experience recently. I was sitting in my breakroom at work and eating lunch while talking to a friend. Nearby was another lady who worked in a different department that I didn’t know well at all. I was griping at my friend that I had to stop after work and find a new pair of sandals for my son before an event because he lost a shoe, and I wasn’t happy about having to run the errand due to lack of time and notice. The lady at the next table piped up that a nearby reasonably priced shoe store was having a big 30% off sale on their sandals and gave me a coupon that she had that she didn’t need for an extra $5 off. Not only would I not call this “spamming” or rude, I very much appreciated it. It saved me a lot of time and money I did not have to waste on what I considered to be an irritating errand.
Granted, she didn’t keep interruting us, but then again neither do the people sending these messages. In your Starbucks analogy, this same person continues to interrupt you, which is probably not happening on this Twtter ordeal. I highly doubt that the spammers are stalking you personally to interject into every tweet you make. If they do spam you like this, they message you about the keywqord you triggered and then move on. Irritating yes, but not even remotely close to the Starbucks analogy.
In reality, if I were eating lunch and thousands of people cared enough to pipe in their two cents worth about me having to go buy sandals; I would think that they were weirdos who needed to get a more interesting life, and I would ignore them. This is the same way I handle Twitter spam, I block the user and go on to enjoy my day. Enough blocks and they are kicked out by Twitter, end of problem.
By allowing them to diminish your enjoyment of Twitter and running around yelling that the sky is falling due to spam; you are allowing them to control your actions and take up your time and attention. Maybe not in the way they were hoping, but they are still getting your focused attention. Is it really worth it? Do you think it is going to matter or make a difference?
Spam has not ended my email, direct marketing has not killed my mailbox, telemarkers have not wiped out my telephone, and all my tv stations still have commercials. None of these other people have my permission to market to me either, but that is the world we live in. Yelling about spam on Twitter makes as much sense to me as complaining that NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX are spamming me with tv commercials about feminine hygiene products and erectile dysfunction all the time. Advertising exists, and you can’t control the actions of everyone else. In the end, you will have to decide if Twitter, like TV, offers enough value to you to make the intermittant advertising worth the other content the medium provides.