Twitter Spam (Can You Handle It?)
Twitter, a service created by Evan Williams (who founded Blogger.com and Odeo.com, both sold to Google and Sonic Mountain, respectively) has helped hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of users find out the “latest happenings” via micro updates that the service has become famous for.
While Twitter is a useful tool to help one get out of a dangerous situation (or two), a few less than honest companies/individuals may be trying to use the service to promote their product.
Although this may not happen to everyone, it looks as if a few accounts are getting “followership” requests from random companies, ranging from quick get rich schemes to wanna-be porn stars (at least on this authors account anyways).
The problem is getting so large that some are recommending CAPTCHA’s in order to curb the followership spam that seems to be increasing everyday on Twitter. In fact, there is even a blog dedicated towards Twitter spam, which may provide a clue on just how much spam occurs on Twitter.
Fortunately the Twitter team seems to be aware of the problem, and will hopefully begin finding ways at weeding out these people, lest twitter be added as another spam garden, turning a great service into an eternal infomercial.
