I got into twitter in a big way last week. My account had been around for a long time, but I wasn't doing anything to promote it. Then I started using our Twitter Greasemonkey Script and started following 2,000 people that were interested in the same things I was. After a few days I removed everyone that wasn't mutual (down to about 500) and started adding more. I was looking to build a large community of people with similar interests.

I soon found out that Twitter had adjusted my "Follow Limit" to 1,000. I couldn't follow any more than that. So I added another 400 or so friends, and shortly was up to 650 followers. Not bad for less than a week's work.

I've also started to get "organic" followers. People are interested in what I have to say, so they've started following me. So I cut down my list to just mutual friends (people that I follow were also following me) and tried to add some more.

They Gave me the Mark of the Beast!

Today I found that I was unable to add any more people to follow. I'm permanently stuck at following 666 people. They've given me the mark of the devil!

I guess that's how Twitter wants to play. From their blog:

Follow spam is the act of following mass numbers of people, not because you're actually interested in their tweets, but simply to gain attention, get views of your profile (and possibly clicks on URLs therein), or (ideally) to get followed back.

I really disagree with the use of the word "spam" in this context. The key element to spam is that the communication is unsolicited. People constantly degrade this definition by referring to things such as "blog spam" and "bookmark spam". Sorry, those aren't examples of spam. If you visit a blog, you aren't viewing anything that you didn't solicit. If you ask people to submit bookmarks and they do so within the bounds of your terms of service, by definition it's not spam. And there can be absolutely nothing that could constitute "follow spam".

Social Networks are Like a Party

Twitter is a huge party. Everyone with access is invited. You're free to wander around the party and meet people. At a real party, you can wander around and listen in on conversations, and if you find something interesting you join in and add something. It's the same thing at Twitter -- you meet people by looking at their interests, and you join in by following them. If they don't want to talk, then just don't follow them back. They'll eventually go away, just like a real party. If people weren't interested in you, then they wouldn't be clicking on your profile and then to your web page. The fact that following lots of people will bring your site traffic and subscribers is proof that these attempts at communication are NOT spam -- the contact is obviously wanted if people follow it up with a visit to your web site.

Many people who are seeking to get attention in this way have even created programs to do the following on their behalf, which enable them to follow thousands of people at the blink of any eye.

Perhaps Twitter should re-read their TOS, because there's absolutely nothing in it that disallows the use of macros, scripts, bots, etc. In fact, they encourage this by publishing an API. A large factor in their widespread adoption has been the availability of third party tools. Because let's face it, the Twitter HTML interface is pretty clunky and badly needs 3rd party support.

Maybe there is a way to add "thousands of people at the blink of any eye", but the Greasemonkey Script that we provide actually adds friends more slowly than a human can do so by clicking the mouse. Our approach is easier on their architectural limis than their own interface. Either way, everyone is limited to their 100 API actions per hour limit, so what's their problem?

Will the Real Spammers Please Stand Up?

In less-extreme cases, they simply annoy thousands of legitimate users who get an email about this new follower only to find out their interest may not be entirely...sincere.

Uh, isn't it Twitter that's sending out those annoying emails? They're not unsolicited since every user can set their own preference to be notified by email. So what's the big deal? If you think a follower's interest is not "sincere" then just don't follow them back. The fact that so many people do follow you back when you follow them indicates that they're interested in the communication.

And for the people that are concerned about people following you that you aren't interested in, is this any worse than constant updates from some guy wondering whether he should have granola or wheat toast before going to the gym? Nothing says you have to go click on a new followers profile page and then on to their website. It's a lot easier to avoid.

Andy Beal just published this scenario about spamming on Twitter:

If spammer "Viagra4U" followed 10,000 other Twitter users, the chances are that most of those users would have their account set up to alert them of any new followers. Now, Viagra4U's profile includes a spam/trojan link, and his updates likewise do the same. If enough people clicked through to view just who "Viagra4U" was -- and why did he follow them -- some of them might just click on a link. You may be savvy enough to not fall for the above, but plenty of others don't share your mad Twitter skilz.

That approach wouldn't work for the spammer, unless enough people actually were interested enough in the ads to buy something. And if they were interested, then it's not really spam, is it? The twitter user actively went to that site and then make a purchase. More likely, the campaign would end because its not very effective to spend the time adding all those people if they're not going to be interested in what you have to offer.

Back to the Twitter blog:

We do our best by taking a multi-dimensional approach. We look at a number of factors -- including how many people are following you back -- before applying limits. We don't reveal exact limits, because it's somewhat complicated and, more importantly, if you were to tell spammers exactly what the filtering rules are on your email or, say, Google's PageRank, they'd just engineer their way around them much more easily.

Well guys, your approach is broken. Because I've got more followers than I'm allowed to follow. And I'm getting more followers all the time, so obviously there's some interest in what I have to say.

The bad news for some is that it's possible you'll run into a limit and get frustrated. If that happens, please let us know. We want to learn how people want to use Twitter. (Note: We intend to allow you to follow at least as many people as follow you, though there are cases where that might not yet be the case. We will fix that.)

I filled out a support ticket this morning. So far no answer. You'd think they could at least have an auto-responder say "We've received your ticket and are working on your problem." It seems to be a common theme with young, hip Web 2.0 companies that they are completely clueless about customer support. That's probably because since they aren't making any money from us they don't think of us as their customers. Much like TV networks think of viewers as something else than customers. I'd like to think they'll get to it, but there's a comment on their blog showing it's been a long time since they've answered someone else's problem report.

Either way, code that would allow the current situation must be pretty badly broken, which doesn't make me feel very good.

By the way, this is only a small part of our approach to spam in general. We'll be talking more soon about other measures we're taking. Thanks for hanging with us as we figure everything out.

It must be nice to have a big pile of VC cash to sit on while you're figuring things out. From someone that's been there, done that, let me give you this advice. Figure out how to start making money. The VC cash is going to run out, no matter how cool and hip you are. And you're going to find out that making money is a lot harder than getting the system up and running was.

I'll give the CEO of Twitter another hint: The people that you'll end up making money from are the business users. If you start charging for access, the users that want to post about their breakfast choices are going to go away really fast. They won't pay, they won't even put up with advertising. If you think your users are disturbed by a few extra follows, just wait until you start trying to monetize your site. The people that are using the service to further their business are the ones that will be able to make a financial justification to feed into your business model, whatever that ends up being.

One of the rules of being a VC funded entreprenuer is that you won't realize the value of these nuggets you get from people until several years later. Enjoy your ride.

The Good News

The good news in all of this is that I was able to use our Greasemonkey Twitter Script to reach a critical mass on Twitter. There are now enough people following me that I can actually have conversations that I'm interested in. And people continue to add me (I can tell, because I keep getting those annoying emails every 10 minutes). I'm hoping that Twitter can figure out that I'm not some evil spammer and just want to participate in a wider community and remove these silly limits.