Twitter is Paradise for Spammers
There is no doubt that Twitter-mania is sweeping the world. You can’t turn on the television or radio without hearing about the latest in twittering tweets. Celebrities have caught the bug with talk show hostesses like Ellen DeGeneres making it the hot topic on one of her shows and stepping up to talk about it with others such as David Letterman and Oprah, who are both Tweeting now as well. Even the news media is not immune with news heavy hitter CNN facing off in a head to head battle with TV funnyman Ashton Kutcher in a battle to see who could attract a million followers first. The question is whether all this media attention is threatening to make Twitter a haven for spam.
Twitter has many excellent features that might appear to make it a spammers’ paradise. Firstly, there is the Twitter Search which allows users to search for tweets with a specific keyword much like a Google search. It is much easier to get to the top of these rankings than a search engine ranking; however, because all one must do is to have the latest tweet with that keyword to appear at the top. Does this make Twitter a spammers’ heaven? It might appear so, but it all depends on what Tweeters are using the Twitter Search for.
Chances are good that while spammers may be able to get to the top of the Twitter Search, it may not do them much good. One of the many benefits of Twitter is that each person has the right to choose whom they will follow, or receives Tweets from. How beneficial will it be for spammers to Tweet just for rankings when nobody clicks on their links? It would seem as though this medium would offer rather minimal benefits for the amount of work required because the spammer would have to keep re-tweeting his or her own message continually throughout the day and night to stay on top of a trending topic, the Twitter Search results, because it is loaded in real time and constantly changing.
Spammers may get some pleasure out of seeing their tweets rise to the top of the Twitter Search, but unlike Google where users are searching for web pages they would like to visit, Tweeters mainly use the Twitter Search to look for like-minded people they want to follow. It is also rumored that Twitter is taking precautions to stop spammers from ruining the landscape, so spammers beware.
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I think the new changes in Twitter search will get rid of these problems. They are planning to introduce a reputation based search functionality which is likely to get rid of most spammers