Does Twitter Have a New Spam Policy?

i am associated with firm that manages over 125k followers across 12 accounts, and some of them have 50k followers. our editor/author tweets purely for enjoyment and his little ol entertainment account ( ferret, running for Pres on a platform of naps and dancing ) get's over 600 mentions on a Friday, sometimes 800. on a slow week, it will get 400 mentions. now, to be polite, if he had to write each one an individual tweet, and respond one at a time, that alone would be a full time job. not to mention that he would be suspended for too many tweets. thus, the crux of this article, although i enjoyed it, seems to be written by and commented on by people who have much smaller accounts to manage than we do, or many of the people who are active on Twitter, and have thousands of interactions per week, and not just a cozy comfort zone within a small group.

dave malby, bill zucker, just to name a couple are also very large accounts, and famous ppl who are not stuck up, and like to mention volumes of people. it is impossible for a large account to adhere to or even contemplate this absurd notion that a multiple end user tweet is "spam".

by Twitter's own definition and usage agreement, spam is the repetitious use of the same tweet over and over again. and this doe not include mentioning multiple end users in a tweet.

if I tweet: my feet ache

and i get 5 people responding to that, then i may wish to respond to all of them @hey @this @is @my @First @amendment @right @to @include @who @i @want do your feet ache?

so it's easy for someone who micromanages their little twitter account to whine about multiple person or end user retweets, but remember, there are alot of people who use those exact same tweets for legitimate purposes and should not be lumped in with No Photo'd Avitar (egg head) spammers.

as far as "clog your streams" i don't even know what that means. the mathmatical, logical, probable, and common sense laws of the Universe dictate that the chances of you actually seeing a tweet live by any one sender are greater than being struck by lightning twice in the same spot twenty years apart. it's simply doesn't make any sense this notion that you can see all of your timeline's tweets EVER, unless you were awake 24/7 and never shut your computer off, and never blinked, and could be a speed reader... That is of course if your twitter account has more than ten people.. The odds are just not in favor of saying any tweet could supposedly "clog" a timeline.

some of the best connections and relationships that have developed that i have witnessed were me lumping a group of 4 or 5 bloggers together, and saying " do you know each other? well you do now" ... and seen them do tweetups, become friends, and do projects together.

to take that out of social media reduces twitter to a one way broadcast channel, which is nothing more than the radio or tv blasting one's own message over and over, and not making real connections with more than one end user at a time, might as well just get a phone and text them.

Lonny Dunn Editor/Author Tweets @ProNetworkBuild

While I am not for abolishing #FF all together, I am for doing away with doing a crappy job of it. If you or I want to recognize someone worth following, we should be able to do it. I like that we and so many use blog posts to better explain it. I like @John Falchetto idea of just doing it randomly any day of the week, with an explanation. I am getting to that point, I don't like/am embarrassed if I get caught up in one of those mass FF tweets.. am now reluctant to even thank the original tweeter.

IDK about Twitter's spam policy, what or how they can/should do, what sort of appeals process if they'd shut down a legit account doing FF that way. That said I have been invited to read a post w/ link in which mine was one of several names included. Will Twitter consider that spam? Something to watch out for I guess, FWIW.

Anything that looks robotic needs to burn in spam hell! Hahaha! If I wanted to talk to a robot, I'd hang out with a speak and spell.

I've found it's all important to do your best to trigger the "Give" (I'm showing up with something valuable to offer you) mechanism in people's minds with any of your communication, rather than the "Get" vibe (I'm trying to get something from you).

It's the thing we all do when we read a magazine; skip over anything that looks like an ad and dive into what's important to us.

Thanks Gini and like you I'm hoping Twitter get's a black belt in spam reduction to keep my feed inviting.

I would like to see #FF go the way of the dinasaur and by that I mean living on a remote island and eating Wayne Knight (aka Newman!). I am always of mixed feelings, when people tell other's to #FF me. It is nice, but it also makes me worried.

I am worried because I block 50% of the people who try to follow me. I look at everyone who follows me and analyze their page. Do they follow 700 people, but only have 200 following them back? #blockopotamus Is the ratio of 'listed' to Followers less than 1:20? Bad sign, people aren't listening and they aren't bothering to clean out their own followers. Is the person trying to give me a free ipad 2? Definitely sending the #blockopotamus to eat them. He hates spammers.

The point is, it is nice that people think I should be followed, but I worry that some are taking their suggestion and then getting summarily blocked. I want to build relationships with funny, sarcastic, mockers, with a love of reading and a deep interest in bacon. It is called Social Media, not 'Game the System' media.

So my vote is put an end to #FF.

Twitter regularly enhances their spam detection...sometimes they even announce it: http://bit.ly/ewSWo4

Thanks for this post Gini. I'm just catching on to #FF and hope I haven't irritated folks (unintentionally for sure) with my #FF gratitude. I like the #FF sentiment -- especially if it means promoting and rewarding people for a high level of interaction. You've posted some good ideas how to do it in a more friendly and useful way. It's all a learning process.

I haven't seen any change in spam on Twitter - some patterns get shut down rapidly and some patterns, for example, "Justin Bieber Smoking Pot", persist. I'm guessing they have a priority scheme in place. They shut down malware / phishing as fast as they can, pr0n next, then plain old annoying last.

They are seeing about 500,000 new accounts created every day. Given that account creation is gated by a CAPTCHA and does not have an API call, this means spammers must be paying "crowdsourcing" working sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk to create the accounts.

Hey Gini,

Here I was prepping my posts coz I am taking tomorrow off and Kaboom you are posting on a Sunday morning.

Yes making long lists of names behind the #FF is a sure way to get me to un-follow you. I have seen people put all their followers in an FF and it takes up to 20 tweets. Its a useless and clogs up people's feed.

I love the way you do it on Friday. I keep my Friday post for an expat entrepreneur who is doing something helpful or unique. That's my way of doing #FF. I think the concept is good but the delivery often sucks.

I also sometimes write a tweet saying I follow @HowieG because he gets Twitter and actually connects with others, doesn't spend his time shouting about himself. Check his orange shoe laces. I don't even wait for Friday to do this, I do it randomly when someone impresses me.

Now where is that link where I can make U$1,000?

I've never really found #FollowFriday useful. If people want me to consider following someone else then they should RT their stuff, and it'll end up in my stream. Just my 2 cents.

I stopped doing #FF because I could easily spam you with 200 accounts every Friday. I think new users like it and as we get further along, more connections we get jaded then anti the #FF.

As for the Spam Policy they will find away around it. I get many bots just tweeting to me based on key words. If it is automated using key words then they will just reach fewer people per tweet but let that baby run 24/7.

BTW rumor has it that Mark Zuckerberg stays up late at night creating thousands of SpamBots at night because he is like that. 8)

The idea of a Twitter spam policy seams like a great idea. It follows suit with popular media that users want to use media without all the annoying hoopla. Just like the "do not call list" or spam control in e-mail people want to use Twitter without the extra information they never asked to for. I don't know how well enforcing this Twitter spam law will work, but I think the effort will be appreciated. We'll have to wait and see how this all pans out.

At first glance I was jumping up and down in joy. Yes the spammers as you outlined at first are always reported by me as just that. But I would love to see the mass #FF tweets go away too. Then I read Tony's comment and freaked! At the end of Friday, I usually take the time to thank everyone that mentioned me. Most of the time this ends up as a long list of names without much other than a "Thank You"

I'd be very interested to see how Twitter will define what the new spam will be. How many other names could you include in a tweet before it became spam. One thing's for sure...I know you'll tell us as soon as the official word comes out.

Hi Gini,

I couldn’t agree with you more regarding the follow Friday Tweets I personally consider it to be very poor business practice. So much so I have also put together blogs and a YouTube video. I will be happy to see the back of them. Why wait until Friday that’s what I say.

Wendy

Thanks for the kind mention Gini. I too had read about the possibility of being blocked on Twitter due to tweeting multiple mentions and it does cause some concern.

I started my Top Twitter lists nearly year ago and have found it a really fun and satisfying way to recommend folk but I still like to use the #FF from time to time, particularly to thank people who have taken the trouble to recommend me. I have been in the habit of sending out a Tweet with the link to my weekly post and a group of mentions for the people on the list but I am now wondering if that could be caught in the spam war.

I do welcome the fact that an attempt may be being made to cut down on the spammy tweets which can usually be spotted a mile off and which irritate all genuine users of Twitter but I do hope that we will not end up with a 'sledehammer to crack a nut' scenario. I think some clarification would be welcome so that we know the rules we are operating under.

Thanks as ever for a thoughtful post Gini.