Great post about this issue. It was an odd week on Twitter. I was wondering how the spam DM was spreading. I un followed a couple of people thinking "why would they send me such a link" before I realized what was going on! Yes, spam has many faces. Non pretty.

It baffles me that people are still so naïve as to click on links and enter login information. I've received over a dozen dm spans in the past week, and I'm getting tired of telling people to change their passwords. I realy hope I never find myself to be the one sending one of those "promising" spams!

-Jerry

I became sensitized to these kinds of risks about 2 years ago when I received an email purportedly from a personal friend, whose subject line said: "Pimp your toolbar!"

If that wasn't giveaway enough (that my friend had clicked something he shouldn't have, which then send viral email to everyone in his address book), then the name in the "from" line was: His name was misspelled (it gave his first name as "Donal" instead of "Donald" - probably due to a character limit in the spammer's script).

Fortunately there were no career consequences for him: he's a retired transit worker. (On the other hand, he's African American, so I imagine the appearance of the word "Pimp" in a spam email that stole his name and his address book was doubly mortifying.)

Not long after, something similar happened. This time the victim was a career coach I know. I got an email purportedly from her, inviting me to join a network called "Hi5." I checked with her and, as I'd suspected, she hadn't sent it. She'd merely clicked something she shouldn't have - just like this week's Twitter DM spam victims (one of whom is a prominent financial blogger I know, and in whose name I too received a "promising" unprintable DM of the type you mentioned).

Agreed -- I am super wary of spam... I never click on anything that has even the vaguest whiff of it.

Also, strange timing on this post because just today I discovered what appeared to be spam in my Skype inbox (or whatever you call it... obviously I don't use it that frequently!). I was surprised to see it cropping up there, though I guess I shouldn't be. -Christine

Great post - I personally almost never click on any links I get as DM - it's just not worth it!

I always @ or DM back to make sure the person in question has actually DM-ed me if it includes ANY link anymore.

I'll give you part of this, but the hashtag hijack?

Well I think that twitter parties are just organized spam. If Nestle wanted a discussion they could have had one, but what they wanted was to pay some folks to swoon in public. No one was ready to answer any sort of questions.

As companies want to market to women (and to moms most often) by creating a twitter hashtag, they invite discussion. I refuse to believe that anyone who asks difficult questions is a spammer.

I would point the finger right back at the big corporations who pay to have a hundred women twitter their brands. That to me is the most spam like behavior I see.

To me, the autoDMs when you follow someone are spam. If I follow you, and you send me an autoDM telling me to follow you on Facebook? It's like me saying yes to a first date and the person replying with..."so at which hotel should we meet?" To quote the Simon and Garfunkel song "Slow down, you move too fast..."

Thanks for this post Jessica, and for the link to my post on hashtag highjacking.

Twitter is about as diverse as a community can get. Just like in a real-life community, there are black-and white rules that just about everyone can agree on, and then things get murky fast. But over time, unwritten rules and guidelines will pop up in the smaller communities that develop. People who don't follow those rules - highjacking a hashtag, for instance, or screaming rudely at a person or a brand - won't really face any consequences, and will even gain respect among the people who already agree with them. But they probably won't make any headway within the community they crashed, either. So I have to ask what the purpose is.

the comment spam drives me nuts. such a time waster that I have to moderate all my comments.

Undisclosed product endorsements with profit-generating potential (ie. affiliate links or pay-per-click ads) whether in tweets or blog posts are another form of spam that I dislike greatly. I know it's a little bit different from what you're discussing here, as I'm not forced to read, but the intent is the same: to trick readers for the spammer's profit. Spam is no longer restricted to crazy people selling male enhancement drugs or attempting to solicit funds from Nigeria--regular people are starting to cross the line on their websites, newsletters and tweets, maybe without even realizing it. Everyone should be aware of how their interactions are perceived, and whether or not they are being up-front with their readers.

As much as I have been tempted to just stop following the people who sent me all that porno SPAM, I recalled months ago how I had been a victim. I tried to @ each person to let them know they were being hacked and all were very grateful. Auto DM's I hate - don't thank me for following me, you just wasted me a few clicks in my email to find out a redundant message and that irritates me.

I agree with Nicole that comment spa drives me nuts as I have to moderate it all.

Needed a fresh article on this topic Jessica, thanks!

Besides the insane amount of email spam I still receive, "Viagra discounted 76%" and "You're the winner of one million pounds in the UK lottery", I find it interesting to see how many people spam bloggers. I have several blogs that I check up on weekly and low and behold there seems to always be an ad for Ugg boots in at least one of them. The other big one I noticed was craigslist. My significant other has been trying diligently to find a new job and it seems that about 90% of jobs he applies to turn out to be product endorsements of some kind. It's SO annoying!

Great post! Loved it. I was wondering what was going on last week and glad to know I wasnt only one receiving it. Thanks again.

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Sorry, I couldn't resist!! Apart from all of those hacked DM's that i've been seeing, the above is what is showing up most often - comment spam. I went from getting virtually no comment spam to having to delete several every day. What's more upsetting is that I actually know of highly respected women working online who have staff who does just this - go from blog to blog leaving comments with linkbacks. In fact, that is their full time job. It's sad.

As for Twitter, recently Guy Kawasaki spoke a bit about this at the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. I love what he says to everyone who argues that HIS choice of how to utilize Twitter is spam - #UFM

Unfollow Me.

It's that easy.

Thanks for another great post!!

I hate spam as much as the next person. I've been getting a lot more of it on twitter lately too. To me, spam is when someone is sending me, via @ or DM, information or links that furthers their own agenda and that is completely unrelated to anything I posted or tweeted.

However, if I tweet about something and someone replies or DMs me with information that presents an alternate point of view on that topic, I do not consider that spam. I consider that debate, conversation, dialogue, discussion. I may not always like what they have to say, but I do not consider it spam. I consider it a normal part of interacting in the social media space. If someone wants to have an uninterrupted conversation on a topic, they shouldn't do it on twitter. Hold a private meeting, set up a private chat room, use a password protected discussion forum.

You said: "We can look at spammers in two ways. The voice and the vehicle. The voice is the person who has the intention of spam, the vehicle is their means of spreading said spam." With all due respect, your definition of spam here seems awfully close to every definition of public relations I've ever read. The company ("the voice") has the intention of spreading a message (some may call that spam) and the bloggers/tweeters ("the vehicle") are their means of spreading said message (or spam). Why is the agenda of a corporation any more legitimate than the agenda of an advocate? Maybe it is because our culture values consumerism and capitalism over ethics and social change. Personally, I'm trying to use my blog and my twitter presence to change that. It doesn't mean that I get it right every time and I do apologize when I screw up, but I don't think that raining on corporate parades is off-limits.

Jessica, I have such amazing respect for you and your work. But hijacking a hashtag is not what you've linked to. It isn't about people having differing views from a company whose 'representatives' (or bloggers on a junket, or brand ambassadors or whatever) using the same hashtag the company begins spruiking with.
Hijacking the hashtag happens when people use it to talk about stuff completely irrelevant to the topic.
The link you provide is one where this is not addressed. The NestleFamily event saw people tweeting positive Nestle messages and not wanting others to discuss real issues they felt were very relevant, and necessary, to do with Nestle. That's not hijacking. That's conversation. That's the role of social media. I have blogged on this very recently http://www.mediamum.net/2010/03/01/who-owns-a-twitter-hashtag/ All the best!

Annie and Jo,

This post was not meant to be about the Nestle debacle. However, the ideas behind Amy (Selfish Mom's) post I thought were well thought out and well, logical.

I think that asking questions, even hard ones, during a Twitter party is an opportunity for a company to engage and do their best to answer them. However, I do not think the method of completely derailing the conversation or putting fellow bloggers in the role of crisis managers by their own peers is appropriate.

I don't represent Nestle. However, had they been a client of mine I would have immediately recommended that they offer the means for people to submit their concerns and a clear process for how they would follow up. I would not have recommended making the bloggers present at the event attempt to answer the hard questions on Nestle's behalf.

Look. Let's turn this the other way around. If you were having a Twitter party about spam, the discussion we're having here, on Twitter, using a hashtag and I represented the company that makes Spam, the meat product...I would not come in and start offering recipes about Spam for your next dinner party. Even though the hashtag could mean the same thing, theoretically, because it just wouldn't be the time or place.

I am totally on the same page with what you all are saying. When the hard questions are asked, there should be an answer. But if it's not the topic the discussion was intended for...I think it's also fair to allow the company or brand in question to offer an alternative means of having said discussion. Because really, in the Nestle case, I don't think 140 characters at a time would do that conversation justice. Do you?

Jessica,

I agree that 140 characters at a time does not do the conversation justice. That is why I submitted 17 questions to Nestle via the e-mail address they provided. When I received responses, I posted them, along with my commentary on their response, on my blog. I think that was a productive way to continue the conversation.

However:

(a) I don't think they would have given me the time of day if I had not disrupted their twitter event (note: this comment is specific to Nestle based on what I know about them and is not meant to generalize how companies respond to criticism or feedback).

(b) I don't think it is fair that they are given the opportunity for tons of positive press on twitter, but I should have to use private backchannels to have my critique heard.

The spam we are talking about here and spam the meat product are two very different things by the same name. Nestle the company that wanted bloggers to say how great their products are and Nestle the company with unethical business practices are one and the same.

It does seem we will not agree on this one. :) As you may know, I am writing a graduate thesis on this very topic. My research is extensive. The thought that "derailing the conversation" happens when it shifts from one side of the conversation's agenda, doesn't reflect the nature of social media. There simply are no derailings. The conversation not only happened, but it continued strong and unabated for many days. That's not derailing.
It appears there is definitely not going to be a socially accepted allowance of an 'ad break' in someone's personal stream. This was shown by this event. Women were not just inconvenienced, they were outright offended by bloggers saying positive messages about a company they had very strong negative opinions about. They appear to have reacted so strongly because someone's twitter stream is an individual community, created by the person. To find these messages when you thought people either shared your views, or would at least listen to them, was affronting.
Finally the notion of "this isn't the time or place" came up a number of times from attendees and other corporate aligned twitterers. I guess it's time to realise that "the appropriate time and place" is where and when the community decides. In that case, the community decided that was appropriate and no backlash from the minority was going to silence it.

Fair enough.

I'm fairly passionate about issues myself (whether political or otherwise) however, I usually don't take them to Twitter really debate them anymore because I feel like it can so easily turn into a conversation that is not productive, for those that agree OR disagree with me.

I also find that with the nature of Twitter being so real-time, it's easy to react emotionally to what's written because of how many people potentially ARE watching the conversation.

So my litmus test now is whether or not the conversation is going in a productive direction. If it's not? I take a breath and go offline. If it is, then I'll make it a priority to keep it going. (This is me, Jessica, saying this...not Jessica the blogger, not Jessica the FH employee...just me, the human being).

Spam = Anything sent directly to me (email, comment, @ or DM on twitter, text, phone call, etc) that I did not sign up for. Period.

If I do sign up for something and end up *feeling* spammed, (contacted too often, content not relative, etc) I quickly unsubscribe.

We do have the option, especially with Twitter, Facebook, and Email lists to UNSUBSCRIBE.