In a blog post dated March 23, 2010, Twitter commented on the “State of Twitter Spam.” Once a pressing issue for most Twitter members, spam has declined sharply over the eight month period beginning August 2009 through February 2010. According to Twitter, the current spam volume in February 2010 was down to about 1% of the total volume of tweets per day.
Some experts had estimated that Twitter spam comprised 90% of all email, so reducing that figure down to 1% is fairly impressive. The company doesn’t go into too much detail regarding its methods for actually battling spam, but does remind users that clicking the “report for spam” link on suspicious-looking profile pages is one way it can help improve the Twitter experience. Members can also send a tweet to @spam, and find out even more about spam reporting at Twitter’s help site.
Have you noticed a dropoff in spam in your usage of Twitter over the past few months?
COMMENTARY: Although Twitter presented a rosy picture (see above graph) back in February 2010, it is my opinion that Twitter spam has intensified due to automation. The mass adoption of automated Tweet apps or 'Tweet Bots' has greatly increased the volume of Twitter spam tweets. I cannot put an exact number or percentage since it has been a while since the last "State of Twitter Spam" report.
According to a recent study referred to by Mashable/Social Media in a blog post dated August 6, 2009, approximately 24% of Tweets are created by automated bots, not humans. according to a recent svery active Twitter members account for the majority of Twitter spam tweets, and the problem will only get worst as more Twitter members adopt Tweet Bots. Furthermore, it was found that 5% of Twitter accounts generate 75% of Tweets.
According to Sysmos' “Inside Twitter” study (see below), many researchers were surprised when they discovered that such a small number of accounts were generating so much of Twitter's content. Sysmos published in-depth data looking more closely at that highly-active 5% of the userbase.
Here's what Sysmos found:
"We found that 32% of all tweets made by the most active Twitter users were generated by machine bots that posted more than 150 tweets/day. The actual percentage of machine-generated tweets among the most active users is probably higher than 32% because there many bots that update less than 150 times/day".
Based on its previous “Inside Twitter” study and their most recent report of 2009, Sysomos concludes that in total, 24% of Tweets are created by bots.
However, that’s not to say that 24% of Tweets are spam; far from it.
Sysomos is quick to point out that many of these high volume, automated accounts provide useful data, like the top stories on social news site Digg, or the most recent popular bookmarks on Delicious. Accounts like @CombatSI, which provides realtime updates from the virtual world of Second Life, generate over 2,000 updates per day. Another highly active automated account, @dogbook, provides updates on what dogs are doing via the Dogbook Facebook app.
In other words: just because Tweeting isn’t solely a human pursuit, that doesn’t mean bots are all spammers.
While the data about bots and “Twitter addicts” is perhaps the most accessible, it’s well worth digging into the report to absorb some of its nuances. In the blog post about the findings, Sysomos quotes these key facts:
–Among the most active Twitter users with more than 50,000 followers, we find singer Tyrese (@tyrese4real), actress Alyssa Milano (@alyssa_milano), celebrity Tila Tequila (@officialtila), tv host Jonathan Ross (@wossy) and evangelist Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki).
–60.6% of the most active Twitter users live in the United States, while 6.9% are located in the U.K, 4.7% in Japan, and 4.3% in Canada.
–The split between genders among the most active Twitter users is fairly balanced with 54% male, 46% female.
–88% of the most active Twitter users have never missed a day without making at least one update, while another 2.1% have only been inactive for one day.
–48% have more than 100 followers, compared with 6.3% for overall Twitter users.
–33.7% of the most active Twitter users have joined Twitter this year, compared with 72.5% of overall Twitter users who have signed up this year
–The most popular keywords within bios of active users are Internet
marketing, music lover, Web designer, video games, and husband/father.
The full "Inside Twitter" is available in PDF format.
This is now the middle of October 2010, so thanks to Twitaholic, I had a look at the most popular Twitter members according to their number of followers (Click) and Twitter members with the highest number of tweets or updates (Click), and was absolutely astounded.
Look, I am not making any accusations about who is using tweet bots, but next time you receive a tweet it will say how long ago (time) it was sent and how (via) it was sent. If you do a little bit of backtracking and detective work, you will learn who the "via" is, and it is not too surprising that they are using tweet bots.
Tweet bot service providers automate the tweeting process for Twitter members, and their customers pay a monthly or annual fee to send out tweets all day long. Tweet bot service providers go under other names: blog management services, blogging management services, tweet management, social media management services, and so forth. They serve individuals and large corporations.
Personally, I have decided not to use tweet bots or block tweets, but grow organically. I have lost count, but I estimate that spammers wishing to follow me, are easily in the thousands. My followers truly value my tweets and my influence grade is in the high 90's. I have blocked many spam tweets, and several have been reported to Twitter. I highly recommend that you do the same.
I know that spam tweets are a big problem, but I believe that Twitter is soft peddling on the issue of spam tweets. If you have followed my blog posts (and related tweet), or done the research yourself, you will find that tweets have increased exponentially. It's in the billions per month, the stats look great on a graph, and it is good PR for Twitter. But, you have to wonder how many of those tweets are worthless "crap" (borrowed from Steve Jobs) or spam tweets.
If you have remained fairly active on Twitter, you may have already figured out some of the "tricks of the trade" used by Twitter spammers. In an article dated June 15, 2009, Mashable/Social Media (click) identified three categories of Twitter spammers: Twitomercials, Straight Cons and Clueless Cons. I hope this helps you weed them out.
In the above article, Mashable warned that the same cast of characters that have been active in regular spam emails (now representing about 80% of all regular emails), are now invading social networks like Facebook and Twitter (if you didn't know this already). I would also add, that these spammers are also invading blogs. Many of them posting a comment (often cute or complimentary) related to your blog post that sneaks in a link to a site selling the usual junk.
If someone can ever develop the "miracle" app to weed out all regular spam emails, Facebook emails and wall postings and Twitter spam tweets, they will be billionaires. There are certainly many firms on the anti-spam front lines, but the spammers are always one step ahead, constantly changing their tactics to get their spam into your inbox. Hopefully, one of these days the ultimate solution to spam, like a cure for cancer, will finally be found, and I can hardly wait.
According to an article dated March 23, 2010 appearing in Mashable/Social Media
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