Twitter Wins Spam Lawsuit against TweetAdder

TweetAdder was one of five companies Twitter (News - Alert) sued last year after the social networking site claimed the companies were providing tools that were designed to help spread spam. After almost a year of legal battles, Twitter has walked away the winner in the suit.

In a blog post last year, Twitter announced it would be going after TweetAttacks, TweetBuddy, James Lucero of justinlover.info, Garland Harris of troption.com, and TweetAdder to take a stand against aggressive tool providers and spammers.

“With this suit, we’re going straight to the source. By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal,” said Twitter. “Further, we hope the suit acts as a deterrent to other spammers, demonstrating the strength of our commitment to keep them off Twitter.”

Twitter had an issue with TweetAdder because of the user’s ability to manipulate the tweets and the followers. For example, if you signed up to use TweetAdder, you would be able to control multiple Twitter profiles on one screen, set your account up to automatically follow others and generate multiple unique tweets on the same topic. Basically, it was the service behind those tweets that all relatively say the same thing, but with slightly different wording.

According to the settlement document, TweetAdder must comply with Twitter’s guidelines – meaning no more spam:  “Defendants…are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly…creating, developing, manufacturing, adapting, modifying, making available, trafficking in, using, disclosing, selling, licensing, distributing (with or without monetary charge), updating, providing customer support for, or offering for use, sale, license, or distribution (with or without monetary charge), any software or technology designed for use in connection with Twitter’s service, the use of which would violate Twitter’s Terms of Service.”

TweetAdder has already taken its first steps to prove it is compliant. Its website now states that all users must adhere to Twitter’s terms of service and its homepage states that it complies with Twitter TOS, Uses Oauth and Twitter API.

No word yet on the other four companies Twitter has filed lawsuits against.