How To Steal From Your Competitors Using Twitter

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6 pointsoutcyde3 comments

There's been a bit of debate lately amongst a few Australian bloggers about how Twitter is viewed by marketers as just another place where they must impose themselves, to shout their message. Not a damned consideration that we might not want it to be a commercial space, but instead would prefer it to be a social space.

(As the blogger Stilgherrian notes below, there are boundaries, within which, commercial action in social networks might be tolerated. But the sort of thing the OP advocates is certainly not within any conception of those boundaries that I have.)

http://stilgherrian.com/human-nature/conversations-are-not-m...

The problem with complaining about being imposed on via Twitter is that you can't be imposed on unless you invite them to bother you. While spammers, scammers and a-holes run rampant on Twitter right now they're only effective if you open the door and let them in. If you don't, your only inconvenience is a lot of fake followers which should only be of benefit to people looking to stroke their own egos with large follower numbers anyway.

Well I used to agree with what you said until I realized spammers can't start to chip away at your brand and image on Twitter. One new tactic they've just started is using @replies to show up in your stream. Just recently I've had a sex toy company and a female escort service @ reply using my handle. While everyone knows I am not a sexual deviant (at least I hope they know that.), I don't think this is good for anyone's personal or company brand. One way I have found to combat this is by just blocking the persons account. Then the @ reply disappears. But once spammers figure this one and out these types of @ replies become rampant, how long will I have to spend blocking these people?

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