Welcome to Twitter, Spambotbait!
UPDATED – A pretty cool service called Twitblock does a great job of analysing Twitter acounts for spamminess.
Here’s an idea for a Twitter API app that I’m going to throw out there for someone to use…
I’m sure you’ve seen the type – you get a message saying that you have a new Twitter follower.. someone called “Benji34″… who follows 7654 people and has tweeted 20 times..
I usually just block these bots. But then I decided to see if I could attract some on purpose.
I registered a new Twitter account under the name “Spambotbait”, and agreed to follow the 20-odd default Twitter-celebs presented by the signup process.
I then put out a few tweets, using words like sex, cheerleaders, viagra, handbags, replica watches, pharamceuticals and some other choice bits of bait.
Within 30 seconds I had 4 new followers, with names like “Anna324″, and “Vicki98″, all kindly offering me photographs of themselves.
So here’s the idea – set up botbait accounts, and seed them with bait words.
Compile a list of spam accounts.
Enable Twitter users to go to an online bot-cleaning site, where they enter their Twitter account details, and know bots are removed from their accounts and blocked.
Let users add to the bot directory by entering the name of known bots.
But I suspect most Twitter users don’t really care how many bots follow them because it’s mostly a one-sided conversation anyway.
What are your thoughts on bot followers? Do you care? Do you block them? Do you tease and play with them?
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I hate spam bots. But then again I don’t really take notice. Twitter has instituted a new spam cleaning service. I have noticed that on occasions my follow list has declined by over 100 at time. After increasing by more than a similar amount.
But this does sound like a good idea. I might give it a try.