In late July, Tim Whitlock released a new application called “Twitblock“. Twitblock assigns twitter accounts a “spaminess” score based on a number of different factors. The service is still in alpha and Tim is still tweaking the weightings, but he has posted a block post explaining the twitblock spam ratings.
The service allows users to scan their followers for suspicious behavior (ignore factor, follow rate, identical profile pics, among others) and block them directly. While I was aware of the presence of spammers on twitter, I was surprised to learn that some avatars had been used on over 100 twitter accounts.
Naturally, there has already been some backlash that the service makes it too easy to block people, and identifies “frequent tweeters” as spammers. But the service simply offers information, and leaves it up to users to take action as they desire.
As always, I’m curious about the decision of people to block a follower versus simply not following back. I’ve never been particularly concerned about people following me, since everything I tweet is on the public timeline. The “about” page on Twitblock helped to clarify why the service was established:
TwitBlock aims to raise awareness, and hopefully educate Twitter users about how to avoid falling foul of cons and phishing traps. The data TwitBlock can gather while these junk accounts are active will be useful battling spam in future, wherever it shows up next. We hope to gain great insight into how spammers are using social networks, and rest assured that we will be sharing these insights.
Whereas I always only considered the low impact a spammy follower had on my own account, I now recognize that flagging suspicious behavior can help the overall community. The service may also help casual users learn what is considered spammy or at least nuisance behavior. The Wild Web has some rules of etiquette that not everyone is yet aware of, and Twitblock may raise awareness of such.
I love the fact that Twitblock exists, as it illustrates that people are not solely interested in increasing their follower numbers. While there is no personal cost to having unengaged followers, the numbers actually mean something if the spammy (or abandoned) accounts are trimmed away. At that point we can actually start to evaluate the engagement and reach of our tweets.
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Three excuses may be heard repeatedly: no time, no space, or the managers wouldn’t accept it.
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