Comments for The Dustpan

Comment on Is Twitter Winning the War on Spam? Our Stats Do Not Support this Assertion by Savannah

Savannah — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 02:31:41 +0000

I don’t know how much there is, but I know the spam there is disheartening. I use twitter for my non-profit work and when I recently ran a search on “adult literacy” the first 3 pictures to pop up were porn bots with severely inappropriate pictures. What’s a NFP professional to do?

Comment on Is Twitter Winning the War on Spam? Our Stats Do Not Support this Assertion by Doug Braun

Doug Braun — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:01:39 +0000

Agreed. Both are valid measures of spam “stuff” as a percentage of its respective total.

The 83,000 (and growing) spammy followers that TwitSweeper.com has found is 5% of the 1.7 million followers that TwitSweeper has checked thus far.

I guess you could ask yourself if (motivated/automated) spammers would tweet more frequently or less frequently than the average Twitter user, if you wanted to look at or convert the “percentage of followers” measure into a percentage of tweets.

Yes, two different ways of measuring spamminess as a percentage of a total. We just don’t think that spam on Twitter, in any measure, is yet under control nor that it is a low as 1%. The TwitSweeper numbers don’t seem to support such a conclusion.

Comment on Is Twitter Winning the War on Spam? Our Stats Do Not Support this Assertion by Dave

Dave — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:01:28 +0000

Two different stats: Twitter is counting messages as a percent of total, you’re counting users as a percent of your subset of total.

I’m not saying one is more accurate than the other, just that they’re different.

Comment on The Evils of Reciprocal Following on Twitter by Doug Braun

Doug Braun — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:40:15 +0000

Thanks to Bree Webster, Bear Files, Vanessa, Phil Simon, James Gowers, John, Chad and Tony Shimkin for your feedback and info about how each of you manually, selectively or otherwise do or don’t do follow backs. It is interesting to see how others are dealing with some of these issues.

I note that most of you commented above prevention of the “polution” of your timeline as the reason why you don’t want to follow uninteresting people (focusing on the more immediate and ongoing issue), as opposed to trying to avoid the risks that can come from DM’s when you are both following each other. Ok.

Thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts! (more ideas are still welcome)

Comment on The Evils of Reciprocal Following on Twitter by Tony shimkin

Tony shimkin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:44:04 +0000

I believe Genesis wrote a song about this. Following those that follow you is mostly a product of automated Twitter programs like tweetlater etc. Just because I like The Office and Mad Men doesn’t mean you do. Loyal followers are organic and not solicited. Follow those who provide content worthwhile to you. Unfollow those you thought you were interested in but realized you were not. Just because Ashton has 4 million followers is not a reason for me to follow him, I could care less where he’s eating dinner. Provide good content or commentary and I will follow. I just may follow all those that commented on this post. Follow me noblenyc and if you don’t like what I say 60% of the time unfollow! Life is too short to spend your time sifting through tweets to find a gem.

Comment on The Evils of Reciprocal Following on Twitter by Chad

Chad — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:01:24 +0000

Great article Doug,

Great discussion going on here as well, very valid points, there are good points on both sides of the spectrum, I personally don’t auto-follow. I like to keep my twitter feed nice and clean.

I allow the most value as possible on each tweet, and I think that’s the proper way of using twitter.

Comment on The Evils of Reciprocal Following on Twitter by John

John — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:15:04 +0000

I never automatically follow. I check the profile and if it looks interesting I’ll follow them, but usually I let it go. I’m getting picky as it’s hard to keep up with those I’m already following, so I’m careful about who else I add! Having said that, it’s time for a cleanup.

Comment on The Evils of Reciprocal Following on Twitter by James Gowers

James Gowers — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:56:15 +0000

I tend to follow people who follow me, but I use a tool to filter the tweets from people that I really trust and are interested in… It was interesting reading your article though, and in future i’ll think twice about following my followers.

As for phishing scams, surely by now we’ve all learned from the years of spam emails – don’t click on any links that you don’t trust and never give over any login information unless you are sure it’s a legitimate site – i’m surprised people still get caught out like this.

Comment on The Evils of Reciprocal Following on Twitter by Phil Simon

Phil Simon — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:21:09 +0000

I used to auto-follow people but, you’re right, it’s crazy. These are very good tips.

On another note, I am just not a fan of the spammy auto response.

Comment on The Evils of Reciprocal Following on Twitter by Vanessa

Vanessa — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:45:02 +0000

Long overdue. I closed an account begun in 2007, an account with over 2000 thousand follows, (manually acquired) because of DMs, too many reciprocal follows, porn, Follow Fridays…

New account slower, more focused. Time someone said it. Bravo!

Comment on The Evils of Reciprocal Following on Twitter by Bear Files

Bear Files — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:42:58 +0000

I agree that auto following all those who follow you is crazy. But I follow back manually approximately 2 out of 3 of the people who follow me at @evolutionfiles and although many are in fields that aren’t connected with mine, I do find their info interesting. They don’t just represent content streams to me. I respect that they chose to follow me. And I try to make connections with them as people. My criteria for following back is simple, they need to have a good quality website link, a custom avatar, some @ replies, and few salesy links.

Comment on The Evils of Reciprocal Following on Twitter by Bree Webster

Bree Webster — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:40:24 +0000

Oh so so true! I’m cleaning out a business account that originally started doing reciprocal following and while it was good at the start – it has now reached a point where now it’s being scaled back and each follower assessed before getting the reciprocal follow.

On top of that, a couple of mins are spent each day unfollowing those annoying tweeters.

Get a couple of folk who get angry about it but if it meant that much – change your content.

No one is interested in a thousand links to things or the awful quotes!

Comment on Should Confirmation Page be Paginated? (request for user feedback) by Doug Braun

Doug Braun — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:55:24 +0000

Thanks for the feedback in various forms.

We did go ahead and implement this suggested change. The confirmation page now shows up to 50 suspect followers at a time, for you to confirm (or retain).

Thanks.

Comment on Should Confirmation Page be Paginated? (request for user feedback) by S.

S. — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:40:51 +0000

Yes paginate. 50 is first choice, 100 is second choice.