Recent Trending Topics Include #gorillapenis and #farts

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6 commentsMonday, July 6, 2009

Are Spammers Impeding Twitter Growth?

Recent Trending Topics Include #gorillapenis and #farts

6 Comments

By Hicham (WPN reader) - Wed, 07/08/2009 - 08:06

Abusing

I noticed this trend couple of months ago. it's very silly how you find your followeres increasing and when you check who follows you, you discover someone linking/talking about all that stupid stuff to find on twitter!

By PI Outsource (WPN reader) - Tue, 07/07/2009 - 03:26

I can relate!

I can relate to #gorillapenis and #farts. Why do you want to exclude me!

By seozero (WPN reader) - Tue, 07/07/2009 - 02:12

Open any 'star' account,

Open any 'star' account, John Chow for example. Go through his followers and try to count all accounts with a default and nude pic. Count also identical pics. Pay attention to spammy tweets, like 'how to increase a number of followers... bla bla bla'. Count these accounts too. Now you got fakes.

You may argue against accuracy of this method. But, take another 'star' account and do the same calculation. Apply any statistical method you want. Calculate mean, median, stdev, etc, etc. Challenging? Yes. Value? Miserable.

Twitter is very spam oriented service, that's the problem. In addition, API allows users to set up bots quickly. Why not to take an advantage of it?

By Guest (WPN reader) - Tue, 07/07/2009 - 01:34

Abusing Communication Media

A large number of the people abusing Twitter in this manner are more than likely looking for teh epic lulz, others are attempting to explore chinks in the armour.

There's software out there that, with a little tweaking, can easily be used to create thousands of Twitter accounts in the space of 24 hours.

Do it from a network that's known to have a large user base that's unlikely ot see itself banned for creating a volume of accounts in a short period of time, such as a college campus, and you've basically got a bot army that will happily post shit for you, independent of armies of trolls.

As it is, it's not hard to automate multiple accounts to cleverly post seemingly real content in an attempt to get people to follow through with online detail captures for marketing purposes.

By Gerlaine (WPN reader) - Mon, 07/06/2009 - 22:03

Oddballs!

There will always be spammers. Without spammers there would be no yang for the yin in twitter. How is there peace without war or chaos? Spammers don't really bother me. They just are Like mosquitoes on a hot humid summer night.

By Hicham (WPN reader) - Wed, 07/08/2009 - 08:07