If a tree falls in the forest, and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?
If you repeat a tweet, and no one receives it more than once, is it still spam?
It’s time to take a closer look at Twitter spam. How is Twitter currently defining spam? Setting aside account hacks and DM spam that are clearly more about security than permission, the major area Twitter has chosen to regulate is repeat tweets. Violating Twitter’s spam policy can get you banned. In October they issued a statement clarifying the repeat/recurring tweet ban that said,
“We don’t want to see any duplicate tweets whatsoever … They pollute Twitter.”
But there are many times in which a Twitter user might consider a repeat tweet not only non-offensive, but welcome. Twitter policy fails to acknowledge this or any exceptions or nuances. Apparently they’ve decided to deal with it on a case-by-case basis—at least for now.
Marketers using Twitter, both for ourselves and/or our clients, face a bit of uncertainty when we try to parse best practices vs. common ones vs. Twitter policy. We could do with a bit more specificity as to what is prohibited and why and a lot more discussion, user input and guidance in the gray areas.
For example:
- When I choose to follow someone, am I not granting permission for all their tweets? If they repeat themselves, can’t I just unfollow them? Isn’t that enough? I also have the further option to block them, so they don’t receive my tweets either.
- What if the repeat tweet is re-worded? Is it still a repeat, and banned? What if the re-wording was for the purpose of clarification? What if I didn’t get the meaning the first time, but I did on the second try? And I respond to the second? Could the second in that case still be viewed as an unwanted, banned retweet? Doesn’t this policy hinder, rather than help, communication?
- What if a completely different tweet refers to the same topic, link or blog post, but makes a different point? Is it a repeat, or not?
- What if the same tweet goes out over two different accounts with no overlap in followers? In this case, what if no single user receives the message more than once? Is it still a banned repeat?
- What if someone I follow repeats some tweets once in the morning and once at night? And what if I only use Twitter at night, and so I never receive a repeat? Again, is it still a banned repeat—or is it a convenience to me, because I don’t want to have to log on in the morning or use a monitor?
By failing to crack down, Twitter’s kind of admitting (wink wink) the ban goes too far. Guy Kawasaki has posted more than once why and how he repeats some tweets because he “doesn’t assume that anyone follows him 24×7.” That sounds reasonable, and his account’s still working. So what motivates Twitter’s policy? Is it concern for their users, or fear of spammers and hackers, or simply a desire to minimize traffic on their overtaxed servers? Or all of the above?
This raises still more questions:
- What are the new, more nuanced and granular types of permissions that Twitter users would like to be able to grant or withhold from the people/organizations they follow?
- Can a tweet that’s literally not received in the live stream at the moment of occurrence–but which instead must be retrieved by proactively conducting a search or configuring a monitoring tool–ever be “unwanted spam”? Isn’t searching out something proof that it’s wanted?
- Should Twitter allow repeat tweets under certain circumstances? For example, since it’s a live stream, could a “Twitter day” be divided into three 8-hour time slots, where the same tweet could be sent once in each time slot to those followers who designate their preferred time slot? If I only get on for the midnight shift, why do I care if the same tweet floated by in the AM or mid-day when I’m not paying attention?
- A few people protest that recurring/repeat tweets do pollute the environment, so to speak, and half the information content, decrease the signal-to-noise ratio, reduce the value and worse would quite correctly be seen as generating spam. But is that true? Doesn’t a view of this as a signal-to-noise problem require one to pretend that it’s possible for one human to take in the entirety of the Twitter stream? And caring about disk space in their server farm? Why should we—it’s their nickel. As many commenters have noted, in the vast majority of cases no one notices the repeats … and the few that do still have unfollow and block.
Like it or not, Twitter’s in the plumbing business. Call it realtime community or lifestreams or fanbase management if you want. Whatever. But in the end they make pipes that connect people. The closer they get to regulating the content that moves through their pipes, the bigger the risk that one day they’ll be loathed with the same fervor that many save for giant broadband/content conglomerates. Why go there? They can be wildly successful without it.
As Twitter enhances its service and develops its commercial side, let’s hope that they see a richer, more subtle and nuanced permission capability as the potential boon that it is. For marketers, and really any user interested in best practices, a little more clarity to go along with new functionality would be most welcome.
About The B2Bblogger: Steven H. Parker is founder and CEO of Parker Communications, a PR and marketing agency specializing in start-ups and fast growth technology companies. He has worked exclusively with tech companies in PR and marketing for the past 25 years. His prior agency, The Launch Company, for 10 years was one of the top 25 independently-owned agencies in the U.S. He’s also a former VP at Hill & Knowlton, and a former print journalist. During his award-winning career, Parker has provided strategy and consulting to everyone from two-person start-ups to major industry leaders including Lotus, IBM, Digital, Xerox and BBN. Thirty of his 160 clients have been acquired at a total combined value of more than $5 billion. He blogs at www.marketingdissector.com.
