What is Twitter Spam?

TechCrunch, of which I am a faithful reader, posted an article today entitled “Here Comes Twitter Spam And How To Fight It”.  The article refers to Twitter’s growth and how spammers are senting messages with@(insert username here).  Therefore the messages show up in the users timeline.  The post then says “There isn’t really a way to filter Twitter spam directly from a Twitter client. But there may be soon.”  But this isn’t entirely accurate.  But more on that in a moment.

Next we come to Loic Le Meur who has proposed to add a “report as spam” button to 3rd party Twitter clients such as his own Twirl and Seesmic applications.  He is also calling on other clients such as Tweetie and TweetDeck to do the same.  The problem is this.  What exactly is Twitter Spam?

If this actually moves forward, then it is going to be a bif question.  Is someone tweeting a link to their blog going to be considered spam?  If so, then everyone is a spammer.  If it is not considered spam, then how can any Tweet hoping to direct people to a certain site be considered spam?  It is a very slippery slope.

The next problem will be abuse of the button.  Someone says something on Twitter you don’t agree with, report them as spam.  Then get your friends to report them.  Who then gets to go through all the report and decide who is and who is not spam.  And more importantly, what is the definition of spam.

The larger question is this.  Do we actually need this button in the first place?  I don’t think so.  Here’s why.  First, you can change your setting to only receive @ replies from friends.  You can also block people.  Then there is the question of how efficient spamming in the way they describe actually is.  The spam they describe requires the spammer to put the users’ names at the beginning of the spam tweet (speet?).  Since there is a limit to the number of messages and api hits in a givin day, you can only do this so much.  Is it really efficient enough for the spammers to take seriously?

Before any of this moves forward, I would like to see someone draft a definitive description of what actually is spam on Twitter.  Then, and only then, decide how to curtail it.  Right now we have the cart planted squarely in front of the horse.