I lost hundreds of followers on Twitter last week and I couldn’t be happier.
Although one can never be given enough advice for making money, Twitter decided it was time to clean house and remove spam accounts. For some, this meant significant fluctuations in the number of followers displayed.
Just as I was about to cross the 13,000 mark, my spam clean-up kicked in and knocked me down to about 12,500.
I used to think increasing my follower number was the best thing I could do to make myself a driving force on Twitter, but it turns out that’s not true. Although I’ve heard that in some workplaces, you get an espresso maker for reaching the 15,000 milestone (hint, hint).
Porn spammers offering sexy pics and caffeine junkies alike would never believe this, but size doesn’t matter.
You hear that Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore? Even as Twitter’s royal couple approach 5 million followers, there’s more to life than numbers.
What I find most important, no matter the social media platform I’m using, is friending real followers that want to interact with me just as much as I want to interact with them. And if those users are in the Chicago area, well, that’s a bonus.
Sadly, while Twitter should be commended for taking this necessary step, it doesn’t seem to be a battle that the good guys can win. Just as one load of spam was removed, I spotted more waiting on the sidelines.
Spammers are getting smarter too. Accounts without avatars used to be a dead giveaway the account was less than pure. Now, spammers are uploading photos of beautiful women to entice users. Like the sailors who ignored the seductive Sirens in Homer’s “The Odyssey,” your best course of action is to resist — don’t follow someone back if you don’t know them. At the very least, check out what they are tweeting before taking the plunge.
Do you have a secret weapon for fighting social media spam? Tweet me, poke me — just tell me.
REST OF THE BUZZ
New home page
If you’re logged into twitter.com right now, please log out. What do you see? Yep, Twitter’s shiny-new home page. And the focus is search. Instead of just a simple list of trending topics, you see a big search box and the popular topics right now, of the day and over the past week. Now log back in and start tweeting.
Facebook now more mobile
If you can’t wait to post photos and videos to your Facebook profile and you don’t have access to a Web browser or application on your phone, you now can just e-mail them in. Go to the Facebook Mobile page at facebook.com/mobile to get your personal upload e-mail address. The subject line of the e-mail becomes the caption and you can always edit it later.
