The Twitter Spam Problem

Twitter has a spam problem on their hands and it’s not going away.  Spam which is generally a pretty clear cut subject especially when it comes to email spam, people spamming web forums, blog comment spam, etc. does not appear as clear cut when it comes to Twitter.  What gives?  Lately, the majority of my new followers I would classify as questionable “people” to follow back.  Typically, I follow everyone back as I noted in a previous blog post, but, you do have to draw the line somewhere – I’m not going to follow a spam account.

Here is the problem at hand.  People use Twitter to share information, links, tips, tricks, knowledge, special deals, and many other things.  So when someone signs up to Twitter to provide lets say, inkjet deals would that not be considered spam? What about the “tweet-and-run” approach such as here and here. It’s quite clear by the links on those pages they are spam, but those accounts have been open for about a week now.  If we were to get those messages via email I can gaurantee all of us would mark it as spam and delete the email.  This isn’t so with Twitter.  Why is this?

According to the Twitter Terms of Service (which is very brief and simple – go figure) there isn’t any mention about spam, however, it does note that Twitter can terminate any account they wish (which is pretty standard boiler plate stuff), but, the question is why aren’t they suspending or terminating these accounts?

What I really want to know is if there is actually a clear cut definition for what defines spam on Twitter.  To me, I think it should be defined as anything that would be marked as spam in my inbox and then deleted should be spam on Twitter.

I would really hate to see Twitter become spam-infested.  Something has to be done.