Posted by John Romano in Opinion, Technology on October 10, 2009
Back in the old days before The Sugarmen I was a solo singer-songwriter dude doing open mics at small L.A. clubs and promoting my music on MySpace.
Twitter and spam, who will win?
Cleo Antonelli, an L.A. music biz stalwart, turned me on to MySpace early. For a while the site was all that first generation social media could be: connecting with friends and fans while finding new fans almost daily. However, MySpace turned into a predatory landscape of spam and scams pretty fast.
Tonight I started the Yes, But, However Twitter feed. Twenty minutes after launching the feed, YBH had five followers. Three girls who “just broke up with their boyfriends” and two coupon code websites. Uh oh, I thought and continue to think. Shades of MySpace.
Granted, I can choose to not follow the five folks back (or block them, which I did), but if I left them as followers other YBH-ers would see them and potentially click on their links to God knows where.
It is uncertain how Twitter will make money long-term. Avoiding the deluge of fake spam users that killed MySpace would be a great start in ensuring Twitter even has a long-term.
It should also be noted that Twitter’s cousin Facebook has done a very good job so far in avoiding large amounts of spam within its community.