Sunday, January 17th, 2010
by Mark Carras
Twitter gives a hand to help the Spammers
Twitter Fails Again
So it seems that the Twitter gods do not even understand their own site. This shouldn’t shock me as these are the same people who had thought it was ok for a staff member to pick “happiness” as their password. These people obviously know jack squat about security and stopping spammers.
So what have they done now? It seems that they have asked SocialToo to discontinue their “auto-unfollow” feature. This lets a person automatically un-follow anyone that unfollows them. A great trick of spammers is to set a bot to follow several thousand accounts, wait for those people to follow them back, and then un-follow those people. This makes the spammer look like they have this massive following they don’t deserve. Then those parasites can trick people into all kinds of nefarious things. This can lead to hacked accounts, stolen identities, and any number of other things. All because the spammer was made to look more legit than they should. Setting an auto-unfollow through a great service like SocialToo helps keep that problem in check.
So if SocialToo is the one that will discontinue the service why not revolt against them? Well, SocialToo is pretty much held hostage by the fact that their entire service lives within the Twitter system. If Twitter does not approve them, they die. Although Jesse is too nice of a guy to come out and say it, Twitter is pretty much forcing him at gun point to kill this great service. It is not at all his fault, his choice, or his decision really. He provides a service to Twitter users, so Twitter has all the power.
So who will join me in trying to save Auto-unfollow? On Tuesday Jan 19th at 12:00 pacific can everyone send out a message that says “Tell Twitter to save auto-unfollow because it helps stop spam! #saveautounfollow” If we can make this a trending topic more people will know about this oversight and maybe Twitter will actually think about this stupid mistake.
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
by Mark Carras
So I think it is time to start calling out the Twitter spammers. Now some may think this is to embarrass them, but this is not the case. Not all Twitter users are tech savvy enough to know that what they are doing is wrong. Does the band The Destro know that this is a total douche thing to do? I would guess not. In fact, they may not even know that their account is sending out these obviously spammy messages. Their account may just be hacked. Also please keep in mind that most bands do not run their own social networking profiles. Normally it is run by someone in management, the label, or even a wife. So calling them out for being a dirty spammer might get them a response of “Holy crap, we had no idea! Thanks for letting us know this was being done.” Calling someone out for being a dirty spammer can help them if they come by the mistake honestly. So this is NOT a witch hunt!
However, if they are actually a dirty spammer this let’s everyone else know not to trust the account. Now there are several other things you can do to help stop spam on Twitter if the person gets out of control.
1. Forward the message to @spam on Twitter
2. Go to their profile and click the link on the right side of the screen that says “Block” or “report for spam”. This is in the “action” section of the side panel.
3. Send a public message to the person that this is being done. Why public? Because the person may not see it, but their friends might. Imagine one musician getting a text message from a friend letting them know their account is being used for sending out spam. Artist then calls person in charge of account and spew fire. You did them a favor. Also, if they are a true dirty spammer they need to be flogged publicly.
Now of course there will always be a debate on what is spam. I send messages promoting interviews, reviews, and photos I post online. Some follow me because of those messages and some think of it as spam.
A few of the messages in the screen shot above are from people playing Twitter games. This is a pet peeve of mine and I hate it. It gets in the way of why I sign up for Twitter. I only want conversation and have major issues with these games and what funds them. The entire funding structure that supports these types of games on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace is to trick people out of their money. That’s dirty. So to me it is spam, but people that enjoy them have no clue it is looked on by most as very slimy. There are options on most of these games to NOT send out messages to people you follow. If you play games like this please check these options or you risk really pissing people off.
The last type of spammer listed in the screenshot above is barely a spammer at all. It’s just annoying. This is the person who sends a DM to thank you for following them. Again, this floods the persons inbox with messages that get in the way of conversation. I understand that this is the most innocent of all the douchey things people do on Twitter. So this is more of a warning that it is NOT something you should do. Many find it annoying and it will get them to unfollow you or even report you as a spammer.
No hard feelings if you are on the screenshot above. Just a public request to stop doing it. I will soon be unfollowing these people and deleting their messages from my DM inbox so I can get back to just conversation. But hopefully I don’t have to do this. My hope is that they came by this with honest intentions and just stop doing this. Please re-tweet this if you hate Twitter spam like I do. Thanks.
UPDATE: This just in. Just seconds before this blog post was to go live, @radiochick1620 sent me a message letting me know she was hacked, her password has been changed, and I again recommend you follow her. Since this is the whole point of this post I claim victory! This is how it is done people. This is how you kill Twitter spam. Let people know!
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
by Mark Carras
One of the most important things to remember when using social marketing is target audience. In other words, why follow people that have nothing to do with music? There are tons of SEO, Internet marketers, and bloggers out there that are no better than the spammers that fill your email inbox with phishing scams trying to get your bank info. Not saying all of them are that way, but social networks seem to attract the worst of them like flies on crap.
The best way to find the music people you want is to first find just one legit music type. Then go through their friend list and grab the ones that look like they might be able to help get the word out on your band. As I have pointed out before, you want to follow back every legit person that follows you. It’s just good Internet etiquette. However, you should be careful about not following back the low life scum. These people will follow several thousand people in hopes they get followed back. They prey on your guilty conscience. You are better off without them in your circle because they are not your target audience. The band that has 100,000 followers on Twitter can get way less reaction than the band with 100 quality followers because if you have thousands of followers most of them really don’t care about your music. In fact it may be less than 1%. It’s like spending a few thousand dollars on a specific metal ad network like Fixion Media or spending thousands advertising on the Today show. Just as middle age housewives won’t care about your band, neither will SEO spammers. It’s all about target audience!
Now we’ve talked about reaching music industry people like the music specific bloggers, booking agents, record labels, and other music industry people your band should network with, but what about actual fans? Well you need to make sure and use the embeddable widgets on every website the band is part of. Both MySpace and Facebook have ways to do this. Put it on your main official website as well. Put it everywhere you can. This way your fans can follow you on all these social networks. Then they will bring in their friends and your fan base can grow. This is better because it gets you your target audience. Plus because of this you will end up with way more followers than people you are following. This makes you look more legit. Remember that a social networking profile that has way less followers than people they are following shouldn’t be trusted.
Of course a good start to finding that target audience is to follow me on both Twitter & Plurk. If always plug the music profiles I think deserve more followers.