Twitter: one of the most explosively growing social media applications on the world wide web. The website, which allows people to create an account and post 'microblogs' containing up to 140 characters, reportedly had over 100 million users earlier this year. The people behind Twitter, while previously naming the improvement of the user experience their main goal, are now suggesting the primary goal should be to figure out ways to make money with the microblogging service.
This of course begs the question if the amount of money to be made through Twitter, by Twitter, is directly proportional to the amount of annoyance the website's users will experience. Already companies are trying to advertise themselves on Twitter, searching 'tweets' either manually or with computer software, for certain keywords. Once these keywords are found any user unfortunate enough to have unwittingly used them, gets added by the company's/website's/attention seeker's account and/or gets tweeted information on products or services they never asked for. Often both.
More often than not, these search-and-add techniques are done by computer software, resulting in people getting spammed with messages full of products and services only marginally related to their own interests or conversations. A conversation with a friend as skinny as I am, about the fact American clothing sizes are bigger than most European ones, by default, and us wanting some smaller sizes from certain sellers, resulted in both of us getting added and spammed by a twitter account set up for a clothing store dealing in big sizes only. A tweet about a tattoo got me added by the account of a tattoo parlor situated in Florida, while my Twitter profile clearly lists my location as being the Netherlands.
Imagine Twitter taking it upon themselves to spam you with their money schemes. They could allow companies to buy in any amount of commercialized tweets. Maybe they could show up on people's tweet feeds in funky colors like purple with yellow text or something else headache inducing. If the company pays premium, tweets will show up on protected accounts' feeds too, because Twitter can search all tweets for keywords, even protected ones.
No one will be safe. The only way left to combat the unwanted tweet spam is by coding your messages in such a way that even your closest friends will need a special decoder ring to decipher what you are trying to say. "TBAFATW" will stand for 'the birds are flying against the wind' which will be code for dinner plans being ruined by unexpected overtime at work. Twitter users already fluent in 'chat-andtext-speak' where whole sentences are abbreviated into incomprehensible gibberish, will find the switch quite easy, while everyone else will struggle worse than their grandmother figuring out e-mail.
The worst thing about Twitter advertisements is that there is no real way to block them. One has to manually go over the list of followers and block and/or report them for spam, and even then, the promoter's goal has already been reached. You have already seen their product, the link to their website, their tweet, their profile, their brand, or anything else they might have thrown at you in a tweet or even just their suggestive account name. Users can lock down their account so that their tweets are shared only with those they allow to see them, which effectively stops most software from searching your tweets for keywords. Of course, someone retweeting your tweets, or even just responding to you in an unlocked reply, can cause sneakier programs to pick up on you after all. Basically, just locking your own tweets is not enough, you'll have to get all your friends and other followers to do the same.
For a communication service based on sharing with the world, it sure is sad to see the only way to combat unwanted commercialized spam is to stop sharing so freely. I'd like some numbers on how much profit random companies make by spamming their products and services on Twitter, to people who never asked for their information. It would be good to know if annoying people in this way actually pays off for them or not.
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