While you might be hard pressed to find anyone who enjoys spam, you may come across aggregated Teeters if you mention spam and Twitter in the same sentence. As recently as August of last year, the social media site was experiencing between and 8 and 11 percent of its posts falling into the “spammy tweets” category per day.
Now, according to a post in PC World and a blog statement, the company estimates the number of “spammy tweets” posted per day is now around 1 percent and falling, improving the overall Twitter experience.
“We're constantly battling against spam to improve the Twitter experience and we're happy to report that it's working,” says the company in the PC World piece. Twitter is now employing a special Trust and Safety team just to try and tackle and stay ahead of the problem.
Even as consumers throughout the world are familiar with spam on their e-mail accounts, spam on Twitter is a little more complex, making it more difficult to detect and prevent. One obvious process is the setting up of false accounts that then generate tweets or direct messages that then lead to malicious websites.
Other processes include the repeated following and “unfollowing” of users to attract attention and the site is certainly not immune to direct hacking.
While Twitter is devoting resources to this problem, the company will also benefit from the growing sophistication of its users, who are now more likely to spot spam, as well as more likely to report it.
The peak in spam hits for Twitter seemed to peak last August due to the appeal created when celebrities joined the ranks. Criminals were hoping to piggyback on the interest the public has in those individuals and used the service under false pretenses to push more links.
Even the president was a target as his Twitter account was hacked by a criminal who was later found and arrested, but not before he was able to secure Twitter’s administrator codes and create, modify or delete accounts at will, a source said, adding that the hacker set up a blog to share his discoveries.
According to Barracuda Networks (News - Alert), Twitter hasn’t enjoyed a spam rate as low as 1 percent since 2006. And, given the massive amount of volume the service supports, even this 1 percent is still a significant number of spam hits.
Whether or not spam is a big concern for Twitter users, the impact the site could have in other areas of an individual’s personal life is worthy of attention. A recent TMC (News - Alert) piece explored the potential of the site to hurt an individual’s credit.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Kelly McGuire