The other day I got an @reply from MrTweet. The message said “EzyBlogger recommended you to @MrTweet, boosting your reputation. Check it out: http://cli.gs/mMQDNd”.
The message was generated because EzyBlogger started using MrTweet, a service I tried out a month or so ago (it’s actually pretty good!).
The message reminded me that any user can reply to you, whether you are following them or not (or vice versa). Clearly, this is something which can be abused.
How the @Reples system could be used for evil
lf you are using Twitter through their main site (i.e. not through an application like TweetDeck), then there is 3 ways you can interact with followers. You can :
- View tweets from your followers in the home page dashboard.
- View messages which reference you (i.e. the @USERNAME page).
- View direct messages
I have spoke about users are using auto replies to thank people for following them through direct messages, which can make checking for real direct messages a pain. However, this is only a real problem if you are following a lot of new people on a regular basis.
For me, the @Replies (i.e. @USERNAME) option is incredibly useful, particularly if you speak directly to other users or get a lot of retweets. But I believe it can be abused.
What if, for example, a famous actor said something offensive on television which upset a lot of people. People who were pissed off at the actor could express their anger directly by tagging them constantly. If thousands of people did this it would make it impossible for the actor to check genuine replies. You could argue that the actor deserves such a response but what if a community/group decided to do this to someone for no reason?
In theory, a script could be designed to tweet randomly tagging people, which would be useful for spammers as they could promote their website/service to millions of people (it wouldn’t surprise me if the script already exists!).
They could also use it to continually tag someone, which would fill up their @Replies page and make it unuseable. Users would then have to block/report them but there are scripts available which make setting up new Twitter accounts quick and easy so what’s stopping from doing it over and over with new accounts?
Tagging people who don’t follow you is an important feature of Twitter. Though I do believe that it is currently possible for a large group of people to spam someones account until they could no longer use it. Also, because of how flexible the Twitter API is, it is not beyond imagination to expect someone to create a script in the future to automatically tag followers, something which, as I discussed, could be abused greatly.
Its ironic. That which makes twitter powerful, is also what can make it useless if left to the hands of spammers.
Which is more important?
– adding new followers by following them?
– adding new followers by @replying to their tweets?
– having new followers find you by seeing a tweet or retweet by happenstance?
In my opinion, somebody who chose to follow me based exclusively on something that I said to them in a @reply would be much more meaningful than the other two items listed above. But if we curb the ability of any user being able to @reply to any other user,…….
….doesn’t the value of twitter also diminish?
I agree. Followers which follow you based on something you said are more targeted (generally speaking anyways).
I don’t believe that we can curb the user of @replies, nor would I like to. However, I do think that Twitter is a little vulnerable because of it.