Twitter - Used well or abused well?

[maverb]

Hey everyone,

I am creating this post because I have noticed in the past 3 months people spamming the hell out of twitter. Twitter is an awesome tool to stay connected with people and to discuss the latest but, I keep noticing as time goes on more and more people and tweeting ridiculous amounts of spam.

I personally feel like twitter is begging to becoming very abused and spam filled. I do use it myself to promote a couple websites bit I do it with ethics in mind. Am I the only one noticing this or are a lot of other people seeing this happening as well?

[Mjoseph83]

I am also using Twitter and got numerous messages daily but most of them to be irrelevant or not useful for me. These day, it is using as the marketing tool to spread services information to more and more people. it is a good source of to be in contact with same business person or friends, relatives by giving daily update about your personal and professional life. But we should not use it for spamming.

[maverb]

That is true, it just seems like alot of people aren't using it they way it should be used. My opinion is yes, send tweets out about your business but limit yourself and treat it as if your were the one recieving the tweets. It seems like everything is switching to automation and no personal based tweets.

[ProdigalS]

just seems like alot of people aren't using it they way it should be used.

I agree with you!
with that being said, its not only true with twitter but also with other social networks such as Facebook,
but somehow FB is less spammed up when compared with twitter.

I was kinda fed up with those spammy tweets every other day & just quit twitter a few days back,
and i am not at all willing to go back unless they have a powerful spam prevention plan in place

[LeadBoltBrian]

It seems, the trick with Twitter is to cut through all the white noise of boring tweets. Most accounts with heavy followers are the ones who show some character and make their tweets entertaining - be it a business or a celebrity (one in the same).

Maybe a couple tweets a day. Make them count with substance!

[tms_seo]

yes this is very true. most people are using twitter in a very wrong way. i've seen a couple of people that are tweeting the same thing every minute.

[GreatExpectation]

Absolutely agree, for some time now there is evidence of an "overload" of meaningless, seemingly desperate, business "spam" tweeting.

I have had to unfollow several, for the simple reason, for example, the business rapidly automated 12 tweets in succession, within minutes.

[Ted S]

Twitter is no different than any other social service and can be used well, grow a brand and serve as a good image for the company, or misused and cause damage. Mis-use isn't just spamming... failing to reply to support inquiries is extremely harmful for social buzz. Even posting and engaging without a strategy or with a bad strategy can have negative consequences and will certainly not have positive ones.

Before you use a tool you need to understand the ecosystem, how to play in it and what metrics to attach to understand success.

[Colocated]

Other than spamming one more thing that I found ridiculous about Twitter is that you can find pornographic content very easily as compared to other famous social networking websites. Seems there are no filters in Twitter to for spamming and pornography.

[Stomme poes]

Psssssshh...
I like how the spam is so stupid it doesn't read the context.

I made a tweet about vim golf... you know, programming-golf, nothing to do with the game on the green where old men wearing ugly clothes hit little balls while people pay to applaud... just some vim golf.

Next thing I know GolfUSA and whatnot are following me and tweeting crap at me. I reported them all for spam. If someone gets enough spam reports, Twitter will remove the account.

[Shyflower]

I haven't used my Twitter account for ages. Mostly because not many people can say anything I want to know in 140 characters or less. I don't care if you're on your way to get your hair done or what you had for breakfast. That being said, I didn't know that anyone could Tweet "at" you unless you were following them. Guess it's time I checked in and took a look or checked out altogether!

[Stomme poes]

Now, even though someone else made my twitter account, I do end up using it... because web developers use it, and they tweet things like references to articles on development, accessibility, and new versions of software being released.

I follow Al-Jazeera News on Twitter because they tweet their headlines with always a link to the article, so I can keep up on the news either by reading the headlines or, if an article interests me, I can open the full article in a tab and read it later. Why Al-Jazeera? No celebrity BS or "overweight family lives off biscuits and cream!" Just news.

I follow Arriva.nl, which is the company running the local train run near me, and also the local busses. They tweet about problems, delays, and new times/schedules, which is great because I'm not a regular-enough rider to already know that stuff... so if a bus line I'm planning to take is down, I know it before I stand at the stop for an hour or two.

I follow people like Nicholas Zakas, PPK, Steve Faulkner and Bruce Lawson, because in between tweets about getting their hair done and breakfast, they tweet developments in Javascript, mobile device research, accessibility and HTML5, again often with links to articles and ideas.

My family is full of nerds so twitter is how they keep tabs on who's going where, in place of email. So it's useful there as well, for simple family news.

It is full of "this morning I ate and then I pooped", but it depends who you follow.
And people are pretty creative in being funny in 140 characters. Ethan Marcotte recently twotted (yeah I like the mangle the goofy-sounding word) this gem:

“Now be careful, they just came out of the oven—” “WOMAN THIS IS NO TIME FOR CAUTION FRESHLY BAKED COOKIES ARE AVAILABOH GOD MY MOUTH”

Yeah, it doesn't mean anything, but it's better than
"Dontcha just LOVE what Justin Beeber has done with his hair?? OMIGOD #beeber"

Though I guess those are unavoidable; people post both personal and professional tweets in the same account.

And I'm not saying I twit anything worthwhile, but it can be useful for just listening.

[Shyflower]

Good points all. I guess maybe I'll have to check "in" again. Thanks!

[kenwa87]

I have noticed the same thing. Twitter is over run with business and spam right now. It really kind of took the fun right out of it if you ask me. Not sure what Twitter can really do about it though.

[stickycarrots]

I've noticed a big decrease in spam since Twitter integrated the oAuth and requires it for their API now. Yes, there's still spam, but for the most part that will come with any popular social site. The important thing is to just follow people who you really care to hear from.

[wardcosbyson]

Psssssshh...
I like how the spam is so stupid it doesn't read the context.

I made a tweet about vim golf... you know, programming-golf, nothing to do with the game on the green where old men wearing ugly clothes hit little balls while people pay to applaud... just some vim golf.

Next thing I know GolfUSA and whatnot are following me and tweeting crap at me. I reported them all for spam. If someone gets enough spam reports, Twitter will remove the account.

At one point I changed my Twitter interest into "Traveling", a day or two after, I got a ton of followers from everything about traveling spamming me. The thing is, I didn't bother myself reporting any of those spams as it would take me forever. I supposed there are tens of thousands of users spamming twitter already that is just impossible to get rid of them.

[jefffread]

I wish I had time to keep current with Twitter but the junk that some people tweet (though I don't get much spam) makes it difficult to justify. Will it ever replace email?

JF

[LeadBoltBrian]

I wish I had time to keep current with Twitter but the junk that some people tweet (though I don't get much spam) makes it difficult to justify. Will it ever replace email?

JF

Funny to imagine email becoming the hand-written letter of present times - primitive and time-consuming. However, as merely a headline aggregator with minimal substance, I don't believe twitter will necessarily replace email unless you consider the PM option...but eventually all our "emails" will become public and less than 140 characters anyway so...

[almedajohnson]

Most of the people use twitter for business purpose and that's why tweets of them are spammy for irrelevant persons. But I have seen twitter is putting some restrictions now so you can expect the error free twitter.

[annabelle07]

I must admit that I've used twitter to promote my business from time to time. But I don't send out a million tweets at a time that make absolutely no sense. But there are people who do that and it's frustrating because all the good tweets out there get lost.

[johnsander]

Yes, everybody knows that there is spamming information but the best way to stay away from them just click on tweets that are relevant to your need or your niche. staying away from spammers like this would be hugely disappointed.

[PatriciaR]

In the right hands, Twitter can work wonders with connecting customers. In the wrong hands, it can be spamfest.