Stop Twitter Spam - Latest Comments in The Story Of The Tit-for-Tat Spammer

Re: The Story Of The Tit-for-Tat Spammer

George_Gayl — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:43:17 -0000

Thanks for the hat props :)

Re: The Story Of The Tit-for-Tat Spammer

Stop Twitter Spam — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:41:46 -0000

I agree - DISQUS rocks.

Re: The Story Of The Tit-for-Tat Spammer

Stop Twitter Spam — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:40:46 -0000

Mike J - thanks for your comments. First off, I apologize for the slightly sensationalist headline. It's clear from how you have handled this situation that you are not a spammer. As I mentioned in the post, your experiment generated some very healthy discussion about this.

Re: The Story Of The Tit-for-Tat Spammer

TheBusyBrain — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:37:12 -0000

By the way,

DISQUS (which this blog is using) is the best commenting service for blogs! For Wordpress Bloggers I HIGHLY recommend that everyone use it for their comment threads in place of the standard protocol! I have no affiliation with them, I simply love it!

Re: The Story Of The Tit-for-Tat Spammer

TheBusyBrain — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:33:20 -0000

First of all, thank you for quoting things appropriately and expressing the situation as a whole instead of simply as "This guy is a Spammer... Hate him!"

The fact is, I am not a spammer. I despise spam with a passion, and practice many tactics which prevent spam from ever getting to my email inbox. That being said, the results of the "Tit-Tat-Tweet Experiment" may have had the unintended result of spam-like tweets by followers within the Twitter community.

Most of this so-called spam was simply Auto-Response Direct Messages from new followers thanking them for the follow, and to visit their site if interested. Trust me, I know! By the very nature of the design of this experiment I saw ALL the tweets except for other peoples Direct Messages. But I did get those same direct messages because they are automated when you follow them! Many people would consider these direct messages spam upon first glimpse... but to me, that is a great way to get to know your new followers... right? Isn't THAT what Twitter is for? Getting to know new people, network, and let them know what you are doing?

Currently I am following nearly 1500 people, and read a lot of the tweets by them. They aren't spammy! Only a couple people were overly heavy on self-promotion, but that was easily resolved by a 1-click "unfollow". Done! Never again will I have to deal with them!

Call it spam
Call it a way of cheating the system
Call it a false sense of caring followers
Call it whatever you want! I've probably gotten an email, blog comment, or tweet with your same thoughts already! The simple fact is I don't regret the result! I have met a great deal of interesting and positive contacts from this situation that I would have NEVER met had I never done it!

Mike J
TheBusyBrain
http://Blog.TheBusyBrain.com