"Facts are many, but the truth is one"

Rabindranath Tagore , (1861-1941), Bengali poet
(May 7, 1861, Rabindranath Tagore was born)

Marketing or spam?

Twitter has become one of the most widely used 'microblogging' and communication tools with thousands of users around the world. Consequently, many companies have turned their eyes to this service. Some use it honestly, while others, however, are using techniques reminiscent of spam.

This tool works in the following way: when a user creates an account, they can sign up to others' so that they can get their comments and updates. Similarly, other users can sign up to their account. When this happens, the user receives a message at their usual email address informing them that they have a new 'follower' together with a link to see the profile of the person who has decided to follow their updates.

"Usually, when you get an email like this, you want to know more about the person who has decided to follow your account, as you could be interested in following theirs as well", explains Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs." Actually, this exchange of messages and this way of meeting people are the essence of this tool".

Many companies and advertisers are using this to send unwanted ads to users' mailboxes, bypassing anti-spam filters and masquerading as Twitter users. These advertisers sign up to tens of thousands of twitter accounts, so that thousands of users receive the email that informs them they have a new follower and the URL that takes them to the advertisers' Twitter account. If the users click the link, they will see an account with a single message -there hardly is any more- inviting them to buy certain products or visit some Web page.

"This way, advertisers ensure a large number of advertising hits in a rather dubious way", says Corrons. This type of account is quite easy to identity: they usually have a large number of people in the 'following' section, that is, a large number of people they are following and have sent an email to, and a low number of people in the 'followers' section, that is, people who are following them as users decide to stop following them as soon as they realize it is a spam account.

Here are two examples of advertisers' accounts in Twitter.

Photo 1

Photo 2