Rooting Out Fake, Spammy Twitterers
April 4th, 2008
I use Twitter regularly but have recently received a large influx of followers to where it’s getting a bit out of control. Before, I would automatically follow anybody who followed me, since the number was manageable, but that’s quickly not becoming the case. I am currently following 130 folks and 150 are following me. That may not sound like much to the Robert Scobles of the world, but it’s too many for me.
Anyhow, I can’t afford to blindly follow everyone back anymore. I have to instate a bit of following criteria. Here’s how it goes:
Step 1: I look at your avatar and get a gut reaction. It can’t be the generic Twitter one. I’m more partial to harmless headshots, ideally taken in a casual setting with a webcam or cellphone. Also, tastefully abstract stuff is great. Your blog’s logo is fine.
Any cat or cute animal is a big plus (in that sense, I’m easy).
Note: I despise “hot” avatars. If you have an avatar of a ridiculously hot woman with damp clothes falling off, obviously ripped off from a magazine or something, odds are it’s not really you and you’re trying too hard. I don’t appreciate blatant, obvious ploys to get followers based on looks (well, unless you’re a cat).
Step 2: If you passed step 1, I then check out your handle. Any handle that has an association with sex or spam I am more likely to ignore. “usedcarseller” is a big no.
Step 3: If you passed step 1 and 2, I will then drill down to your profile and see what sort of Twitterer you are. It will help immensely if your website is a blog that I’d like to read on a regular basis. If your twitters are all merely links back to your website and not sharing fun links or anything I’m interested in, you’re out.
A Fake, Spammy Twitterer
Here’s an example of what I consider a “spammy” twitter, that breaks all the rules, and certainly does not receive a reciprocal follow:
FAIL: Generic Twitter avatar. Handle contains “deliveri,” signifying business spam. All twitters this handle sends out are links back to a flower selling website.
This crap is getting more common on Twitter and if it gets out of hand, will destroy the service. So I hope to do my part and not follow clowns like this.
So if I haven’t followed you back on Twitter, no hard feelings, you probably failed one of my gut instinct Twitter follower tests. It’s what I must do to keep Twitter useful.
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That guy in the first icon you used is shockingly handsome.
They're choking that cat with a scarf!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
I have a program that automatically friends all who follow me, and then I manually unsubscribe from them if they're spammers. It's pretty effective.
[...] Webomatica – Rooting Out Fake Spammy Twitterers Webomatica has a great post today about how to root out Twitter Spammers. Everyone take 10 minutes today, go through your list of Followers, and root out the spam! This entry was written by admin and posted on April 4, 2008 at 11:03 am and filed under URL. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « The Twitter Spam Problem [...]
Yeah, our cats thought so, too.
Aw, I think stuff on a cat is cute.
That's fair. Another rule I tend to follow is that I don't follow someone that I wouldn't be able to read daily.
People who post every single blog article link to Twitter bother me immensely – that's why we've got RSS feeds, c'mon. If I wanted your articles, I'd visit your blog and subscribe there.
Heh, whoops…re-reading more carefully, it seems you might do the same.
Yep – I totally don't mind if a blogger shares a link every once in a while sprinkled with other stuff, but yeah – it's a personal pet peeve of mine when each twitter is just a link to their blog and nothing else.
I agree and applaud your criteria for weeding out low quality twitters. I over-did following at first, now I'm cutting down using criteria similar to yours. My main blog is my Flickr stream and I use Dave Winer's auto tweet from Flickr. I tweet this way once, sometimes twice a day. I worry if this is too much, but I also tweet links to stories I like and tweet personal comments and @ responses to other's interesting tweets. I try to keep the mix interesting, not tweeting more than once per hour, usually only three or four times per day. And always attempt I enjoy reading a lot of tweets from those I follow and appreciate their links.