Comments on: The Death of Twitter

By: The Daily Blonde

The Daily Blonde — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:45:26 +0000

Why on earth would anyone use a service to “get” followers…never mind pay them? I find that just beyond my comprehension. I don’t want to wake up and find 15,000 new followers I didn’t even have the chance to check out…even a quick check of their bio. I’d assume that most of the followers you get from a source like that would be spammers. No thanks! I’ll do my own cultivating, thankyouverymuch.

By: simonsalt

simonsalt — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:47:11 +0000

Len, thank you for the comment. I guess where I see the difference between the MLM crowd and the spammers is that the spammers don’t yet seem to be “gaming” the system in the same way, and they are easier to spot. A Twitter account with the name joe_bloggs_1234 is a bit of a giveaway, but the MLM accounts are run by real people. That is what is impacting the influence tools and by default what will have a negative impact on Twitter & other Social Media platforms. FB overcomes this by putting a 5k limit on “friends” perhaps Twitter will implement such limits?

By: Jack Leblond

Jack Leblond — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:43:55 +0000

I think you are right…and wrong.

Regardless of the technology or tools, the spammers & “marketers” will find a way to exploit the – I’ll call them ‘naive’. I’m sure the people that follow these new twitter accounts are the same people that believed the random IMs they used to get telling them how to make $10,000 a month, or wondered if a African millionaire might actually share money with them if they help them escape from some bad place or another. Unfortunately, there will always be people like this.

As with other technologies, as the popularity of Twitter continues to grow and become more mainstream I think the more informed among us will realize what these ‘people’ are doing and avoid, or report them.

My hope for these mass follower spammer accounts – as they start following the more and more accounts, they will also follow other spammers and thanks to “auto-follow” they will unknowingly follow them back and they will all end up in one big useless group of spammers.

I think Twitter will survive this threat. I am more concerned about the continued lack of a real business model and how whatever they eventually do to try and make money will effect those of use that have been using it for a while now.

By: Len Kendall

Len Kendall — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:17:09 +0000

I’ll respectively throw in my opposing point of view. Did spammers kill e-mail? Ebay? Etc?

It certainly makes Twitter more annoying as these bottom feeders roll in, but much like we did for other mediums, we’ll devise strategies for how to block them out of our live.

Great Post though as usual.

Len