On 6/10/09 9:55 AM, Dewald Pretorius wrote:
It is a fact of life that, regardless of how benign or how powerful the tools are that you provide your users, 99% will use them in a sensible and responsible manner, and 1% will always try and abuse them.
This is why I am ALWAYS very cautious about implementing a feature in Twitter Karma - I weigh heavily on the potential for abuse and have passed over implementing plenty of features because the severity of the potential abuse far outweighs the benefits to legitimate users.
I agree that Twitter shouldn't go shutting down applications - ten more will sprout up from its corpse to take its place. Instead, simply keep an eye on the application and suspend/punish users who use it to abuse the system. Having a known ghetto is useful: it helps you focus where to patrol.
Of course, the problem is that Twitter's only recourse is to suspend accounts - but, by then, the spammer's objective has already been met, following 800-1200 people, triggering probably 400-600 email notifications and subsequent click-throughs to a page full of link spam tweets.
As long as they get a non-zero CTR and non-zero conversion rate, it was worth it. And, the proof of the spam is in the eating ... :-)
-- Dossy Shiobara | do...@panoptic.com | http://dossy.org/ Panoptic Computer Network | http://panoptic.com/ "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)
