Why AutoFollow on Twitter is a bad idea

I’ve really grown addicted to appreciate Twitter for many reasons, and encourage my clients to participate in Twitter to help brand their businesses, and interact with their customers and/or potential customers. Through using Twitter, I’ve been able to meet some great people, and feel much more in tune with the current trends in my interests such as WordPress, IMVU and Digital Art. Yes, I enjoy following some on Twitter just for fun too!

Unfortunately, just like anything else, there are a few bad apples that would be perfectly happy to ruin the experience for the rest of us. Lately, this is happening in the form of something called “DM Spam”, best explained by Mashable:

It looks as if Twitter is being plagued by another DM spam attack. We’ve received a few ourselves, and plenty of Twitter users are taking to the medium to express that they too have received inordinate amounts of spam messages via direct messages. A quick search of “dm spam” on Twitter is yielding a bevy of results.

The DM spam attack, presumably being spread by hacked Twitter accounts, contains unknown but dubious content, and we advise you to avoid clicking on anything that appears suspicious. Be on the look for tweets like, “hi, did you do this quiz thingy.”

The thing about DMs

Admittedly, I haven’t been seriously interacting on Twitter for very long, but even so, I’ve seen this type of DM attack go on almost weekly… and when it happens, you know it immediately because a large percentage of the people you follow are complaining about it. Call this a ‘rant’ post if you must, but something’s been bothering me ever since the very first time I witnessed the DM spam phenomenon going on…

See, the thing about these hacker attacks is that they only work if you click a link in a Direct Message. The thing about DMs is that only people you follow can send you these private messages on Twitter. So obviously, the less people you follow, the less likely you are to find this DM spam is a problem.

After recognizing the pattern of complaints by people that have huge numbers of people that they follow, I realized that they must be using one of the Twitter applications set to automatically follow anyone that follows them. At this point in the game, this is just inviting hackers to follow you. I guess some people feel obligated to return the ‘follow’ in the neverending quest to increase their own follow numbers.

Personally, I use Twitter in a much different way than most, so my follower count is nothing more than another statistic to me.

I Use Lists To Combat DM Spam

I enjoy my time on Twitter, and I like the stream of Tweets I see come into my account. I find it rather soothing to be honest, because working from home can sometimes be too quiet, so it’s nice to have some interaction to break up my multi-tasking. I learned early on though, that Twitter’s really what you make of it… there is no expectation to return a follow… follow who you want, unfollow them if you decide those Tweets aren’t for you. A relaxed atmosphere to enjoy any way you see fit. That works for me.

There’s absolutely no reason to follow people just because they may at some point Tweet something you wouldn’t want to miss… that’s what the new List feature is for. Lists make it possible for us to only keep those people that we really want to see in our main Twitter stream, while collecting others in lists according to our topics of interest!

I have lists for WordPress, SEO, IMVU, Design, Google, PhotoShop, Twits (I couldn’t use “Twitter” as a list name, so sorry Twitter resource folks, you are now Twits lol), and even a private list for the things I don’t need everyone to know that I keep an eye on.

Once I made these lists, I was able to prune down the number of people I followed. I feel less like a stalker, and have a much more manageable Twitter stream. Now I can click a list link, and catch up on my chosen topic at my own pace, all neat and organized like. Of course, this requires the ability to combat the instinct to be polite and follow back everyone that follows you! I tend to keep an eye on people that follow me by going through my follower list every once in a while, deleting obvious spammers, and checking the streams of others. If they tweet in a way I think I might want to witness more of, I decide whether they belong on a list, or whether I want to follow them… or both.

Less people followed, means less people that can DM me. That means less DM spam.

Do you use a Twitter application that allows you to AutoFollow anyone that follows you? How do you combat DM spam and hacker attacks? Please let me know how you use Twitter, and what you do to combat the DM spam. I respond to all comments, and welcome deferring opinions!

Comments made to this post provide posters with return links via CommentLuv, and easy sign on via IntenseDebate.

Credits: Mash up of Twitter illustration and Spam photo by GingerWench

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