Is Twitter Pimping Porn to Family Users?

(page 2 of 2)

What's also objectionable about the new rash of Twitter spam is that it's so clumsy; a company as well funded as Twitter—it has raised $55 million—should find such garbage easy to catch. My husband's 43 new "followers" all used one or the other of the same two pictures and all had the same cooing message on their Twitter page: "Hey, wanna see me naked on a webcam and have a dirty chat : ) Add me on MSN. We can have some naughty fun. ;) xo xo."

Judging from the list of others they were following, these spammers were clearly adding huge groups of Twitter users alphabetically, by last name—another glaring red flag of spam behavior. My sister-in-law's "new follower" didn't even have a real name. We're not suffering at the hands of viral-marketing geniuses here.

Does Twitter Wish to Encourage Porn?

Making matters worse is that reporting spam on Twitter is way too cumbersome a process. While Twitter features a "block" or "message" on a person's profile, it doesn't offer a "report spam" button. You have to follow an account called "spam," and then copy the URL and send a direct message to that account with the complaint. My husband did this for "Keri" and "Kelli" and "Jasmine" and their 40 doppelgangers, and each account got suspended. Great. But many users won't figure out how to report the names—or go to the trouble. If it takes the same number of steps to flag a spamming account as it takes to create one, users will never win the battle. There's no reason why Twitter shouldn't be catching spam, or at least making it easier to report.

Unless, of course, Twitter wants to be the new MySpace (NWS). After all, a lot of that site's early growth came from call girls, strippers, and purveyors of porn. Tila Tequila, who has been pictured in Playboy, Penthouse, and other publications, even got an MTV show out of MySpace. She was its first power user with 1 million friends. If Twitter wants growth for the sake of growth, porn will do that.

But knowing the founders, my guess is that the site doesn't want that kind of success. Lewd content helped hobble MySpace's advertising efforts.

T&A Will Scare Off Family Twitterers

In the past, Twitter has taken a hands-off "live and let live" approach to the content traded over its platform. Craigslist famously favors a similar ethos, but even that site constantly cracks down on spam and solicitation. I'm all for tolerance, but if you want to run a mainstream site, you need an online equivalent of "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service."

After all, its mainstream nature is what has been so remarkable about Twitter. The site has achieved something unique in the social networking world: Families, mothers, and grandmothers are comfortable using it to stay in touch with each other and the world around them. People who would never use MySpace or Digg or even Yelp are joining Twitter.

Many are like my mother-in-law. They have a few followers and are slowly getting comfortable about sharing information about themselves. They don't have the built-in tolerance for these kinds of shocking images that the MySpace generation does. And sadly for Twitter, they'll be quick to drop the site if it becomes more about T&A than tweets.

Lacy has been a business reporter for 10 years and is currently writing a book on global entrepreneurship. Her first book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, was published by Gotham Books in May 2008. She also blogs for TechCrunch.

Business Exchange

Track and share business topics across the Web.