Things About Twitter that will drive you Up the Wall

If you are on Twitter you can’t tell me you have not said to yourself at least once, “is being on Twitter worth it?”  Especially after spending a total of two hours of your day going through emails from people who report they are following you only to find their true intentions are to Spam you either with unwanted posts or DM’s.  Yes, the overbearing amount of people who join Twitter to Spam the universe is on the rise and if not controlled will kill Twitter.

Many people I talk to seem to don’t care too much about who is following them.  I am finding that attitude to be very dangerous and forces me to review if I want to follow them further since who they follow eventually will effect who I am following.

This people should be very concerned since more and more people are starting to look at who is following someone before they choose to follow them.  If they see a known Spammer or less desirable Tweet on their list of Followers they are gone and that person’s reputation as someone of value on Twitter just diminished.

Who is following someone is becoming a big deal which is a result of this issue of the volumes of Spammers entering the markets.

From all guest-a-mations if someone’s followers where not checked they can expect that over 65% of the number of people, places or things that follow them are of no value to them or the Twitter community.  That high volume of less desirables reflects badly on the person they are following.  Would you want to follow someone that has a pack of Spammers following them?

Many people don’t care since they are after the numbers and feel having tens of thousands of followers offers them the opportunity to expose what they are doing to more people.  I have had a few of the so called (or wannbe) ‘mainstreamers’ of the Social Media community tell me that spam is just a way of life online.  I will agree, but if it can be avoided then why deal with the time it wastes in business person’s day.  Oh, the naivety of some people’s thinking is just amazing to attempt to fathom.  Feeling that posting valuable content into a vacuum will produce anything is beyond any logical thinking.

However, even with all of this wasted time in ‘sorting through all the silt to find the gold nuggets’ I still see a little value left in being on Twitter.  I am also excited that developers are seeing the travesties Twitter is causing and are producing apps that make it easier to block out the noise spammers, scammers and those devotees to no good are causing.  This is why I am taking the time and effort to study these issues and place this information out for my fans to learn.

So how do these people, places and things who post dribble on Twitter find you?  Where do they come from and what are things to do to keep from exposing yourself to these tweeters.  Here are some of the sources I have found.

Follow Friday

Over the past two months I have been tracking the time of the day I receive emails telling me someone is following me.  I know it is more than coincidental all of the email notifications I receive from new followers come within ten minutes after someone I follow graciously recommends my Twitter Username to all who reside in Twitterville as someone to follow on Follow Friday..aka #ff, #followfriday .

Since finding this out a few months ago I refuse to put my Followers at peril by further exposing them to the world of deception by participating in Follow Friday.  Posting a handful of Usernames on a Twitter post would only exposure my followers I cherish and worked hard to befriend to those unruly tweeters sitting on the sidelines waiting to hit on as many people as they can with new fitness programs or ways to make $4k a minute.   Placing the #ff or #followfriday hash mark with the post just makes all the usernames on the tweet become a buffet for the spammers looking for live usernames to follow.

I understand whoever invented the idea of recommending Followers was doing so to get recognized as a caring member of the Twitter community.  Little did they probably know that their act of kindness also was placing more targets on the radar screen for the derelicts of society to use to attempt to expand their influence.  I am sure spammers everywhere are just living for Fridays when thousands usernames are dished up to them in their Hash Mark search to click on and follow.

Get 100 Followers Now

Here is another game created as something someone feels is of value but is not.  Programs designed to draw in Followers for someone is another way for another tsunami of spammer follower notifications to inundate your email server.  The many programs created to generate Followers draw in people who have some misguided understanding of how marketing on Twitter really works.  The strength of what someone offers and the quality of what they offer is no longer based on the number of followers they have on Twitter.  The Value is in WHO is following someone.  If these programs generated more quality followers then they would be of value, but they don’t so why bother.

Out of the half dozen of these ‘get followers’ programs I signed up for I would spend at least three days blocking over 99% of those 100 followers that came in from that program..what value was that for me?  None.

So, beware of the following programs..the old adage still is there..’if it seems to good to be true it probably is’.

Tried and True is the Only Way.

What is wrong with taking the time to reach out to someone who posted something of real interest on Twitter? I do this in hopes they respond so a relationship or dialogue can be developed that leads into someone who follows me.  Those who say they don’t have the time to deal with sorting through who follows them are the same ones who say they are getting too much spam and from that develop a negative attitude about the internet.

For those who say getting Spammed is a way of life online I can safely say that the tide is changing in that attitude.  What I see developing now are applications, websites and social networks created to be safe havens for people to spend their precious time.  So why bother with all the things that drive you up the wall with Twitter?  Because it still has good roots to meeting real people.  You just have to learn how to weed thru and stop getting the stuff you do not want.  Let me know how I can help/