As far as the world of social media and advertising is concerned, twitter is one of the greatest ideas ever conceived. It avails one the oppurtunity to reach out to as much people as possible. With twitter, you can create a little community that bothers around you and share ideas with those that matters to you.

One of the major problems currently facing twitter is the issue of spam and I quite beleive that its dragging it down the drain. It is not uncommon to see someone with as much as 10 twitter accounts registered using different names and identity. Everyone is interested in getting followers and so the struggle continues. People spend several hours spamming others. They mass follow others, hoping to be followed back in return. And you know what, Most times, it works for them.

It appears that the inventors of twitter are most contented with such. Twitter appears to be a utility developed to encourage spamming. One way or the other,it appears that its management beleives that building in an inherent support for spamming will greatly increase the popularity of these supposedly noble social interaction media. And as such, they make rules to support such (e.g follow 1000 persons daily, auto follow anyone who follow you etc).

What are the effects? Numerous twitter account owners follows hundreds or thousands of people. Can they manage all these people they are following and read there tweets? obviously not, they are not concerned about reading anyones tweet. They are only concerned in having others read there tweet. They just mass
follow, to be followed in returns and have individuals read there tweets and click on there links.

The numbers of these spammers are greatly increasing (presently constituting 30% of twitter population). If these trends is allow to continue, twitter will soon be a family of spammers. Yes, its already tending to that. I experimented with with a colleagues account. He had about 2000 highly targetted followers (the forex niche). I posted a short news and links that botheres around thesame niche. And guess what, only 2 people click on the link. Why? Its obviously not because they are not interested but because they didnt see it. they dint care. they probably have thousands of followers posting one news or the other and most passes unnoticed.

Twitter management could have implemented these if they were interested in curbing spamming …

1. 100 daily follower limit

2. Remove auto follow feature

3. initiate phone verification for each new account opened

4. Hide individuals followers and those they are following. e.t.c

Honestly, I see Twitter going down. Facebook & MySpace are currently more of a conversational tool than Twitter. Twitter is all about gaining targetted followers through spamming. Twitter users are just interested in others reading there tweets and are never interested in reading others tweets.