I’m done with auto-follow on Twitter

Posted February 24, 2009 ·

About 2 months ago I was introduced to a site called SocialToo.com. I created an account and added my Twitter credentials. I turned on the feature that would automatically follow anybody on twitter who started following me.

Yesterday, I canceled my account with SocialToo.com.

One feature they offered that I never used was the automatic direct message for new followers. They gave you a form field where you could craft a message that would be sent via direct message to every new person who follows you on Twitter. At first glance this seems like a cool feature. Send everybody a quick thank you for following. However, as Twitter grows, so do the amount of people who start to abuse features like this. Here was one of the DM’s I got the other day.
Last DM
This was the final straw for me. It set off the following series of actions:

1. Canceled account at SocialToo.com
2. Used friendorfollow.com to find out who I’m following who’s not following me.
3. Removed over 200 people I follow who started following me to get a follow-back and then stopped following me.

Up until last week my daily Twitter routine was this:
- Auto follow everybody who follows me.
- Each evening check out the profile, latest tweets and website for each new follower.
- Block spam-only twitter accounts from following me (which also unfollows them).

No more! Instead I’ll skip step 1 and move right on to step 2. I’ll follow back anybody who doesn’t appear spammy, has tweets on topics I’m interested in, doesn’t send out self-promotional links on more than 10% of their tweets. I will, of course, still block all spammy twitter accounts.

After 2 days of turning of my auto-follow and cleaning up my twitter follow list, I can honestly say that it’s removed quite a bit of stress. For some reason the spammy automatic DMs were really pissing me off. I’ll be happy if I never see another one!

(quick note: This post is in no way meant to suggest that socialtoo.com has anything to do with the spammy auto-dms. They simply provide a service that other people choose to take advantage of.)

Filed Under: Social Media, Technology Tagged With: ,

Dealing with Twitter Spam

Posted October 16, 2008 ·

I’m not even close to being surprised, but the amount of Twitter Spam I’ve been getting lately is on the rise. Sure, it’s nice to have your follower count go up, but when the only messages coming from them are for you to come check out their poker site and receive $50 in bonus cash, the trade off is just not worth it. Besides, letting these spammers stick around only makes the place a little worse for everybody.

So how should you deal with spammers? Easy; block them.

Ya see, Twitter has a nice set of rules that is designed to keep the spammers out. Of course that’s just not going to happen entirely since any time you have access to a large number of people, the spammers want to come piss in that pool. But, by taking the 10 seconds to go an block the spammer on twitter, you are actively being part of the solution.

Twitter’s software is getting pretty good at catching the spammers. Twice this week I have received notices that I have a new follower. An hour later when I went to check out their account, they had already been blocked. I call that efficient!

I’m one of those guys who leaves the email notifications turned on so that every time I get a new follower, I receive an email. I do this because I usually will go and follow the people who follow me. I read the incoming email, click the link to go check out the person’s twitter profile and I decide if they are a spammer.

What is considered spam?
When I view the person’s twitter account, I look at the following:
1) How many followers do they have?
2) How many people are they following?
3) How many tweets do they send out?
4) How many tweets include a link or some sort of offer?

If they have 8 or 10 (or more) times less followers than they are following, this is a good indication that they are using external software to follow mass quantities of people hoping that they will reciprocate by following them. They are getting blocked.

If they are following more than 100 people and they have less than 10 tweets, I’ll check the content of their tweets to see if they look “spammy.” I usually just give it the sniff test. If something smells funny, for example, 5 tweets and 3 of them have a link back to the same site, I’ll block them.

If somebody has sent 5000 or more tweets, I won’t block these ones, but I’m less likely to follow them, too. Typically I find that these guys are responding to EVERY tweet they see come in. That’s totally fine. I have no problem with that. I’m just not going to follow them back as I don’t need to read all their response messages.

Twitter’s software looks for all of these things as well, so it won’t be too long before your spammy follwers end up getting the proverbial boot by Twitter. But, it’s such a nice feeling to think that you’ve helped get them kicked off the site. Well, I know it works for me.

Not sure how to block somebody on twitter? Check out this post here.

Filed Under: Ranting, Social Media, Technology Tagged With: ,