RSS FeedsChoosing Who To Follow : Twitter
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The email pings and you see someone is now following you in Twitter. “That’s interesting” you think “let’s see what this person is all about, maybe I will follow them back, let be, or block and report”.
Here are sure signs that you should be blocking some accounts
(click on images to enlarge)
1. Picture of pretty girl
1a. Not quite matching the male name….?
2. Weblink going to an affiliate page not a blog or webpage
3. Following way more people than is following them
4. Links go to crap affiliate sites using trending keywords as bait
5. Promoting products using trademarked words such as “Twitter”
1. No bio or web details…who is this?
2. No tweets but following lots of people
3. Following large amount of default avatars
1. Majority of tweets via Twitterfeed (automated regurgitation of RSS feeds)
2. Large amount of tweets via API (script generated Tweets)
Some of these taken in isolation may not be OK. There really ARE some pretty girls out there on Twitter who have avatar pics to prove it… but for the most case you get a feel from what they are saying, and where they link to, to make that judgment call whether to follow or block.
Blocking is a very important activity, and one that we should all be performing when we spot accounts like this. Too many blocks and flags go up in Twitter and the accounts are reviewed and regularly purged. If no one blocks then these accounts will continue to flourish.
Short note on reporting to @spam on Twitter: only report accounts that have sent you unwanted advertising messages. Reporting abuse or even accounts like those should be done via a ticket to Twitter, to send anything else to @spam is messing up their timeline and possibly putting a black mark against your account too.
Thanks to Tanakawho for the Duck image
