Twitter has released their most detailed rules yet on what they consider spam within their system. Commercial users take note. Although they emphasise that commercial or promotional use of Twitter is allowed these following activities may be considered spam by them and result in account suspension.
1. Following other accounts in order to gain attention to your account or links
2. Creating a series of accounts in order to promote the same thing
3. Sending large numbers of @reply messages that are not genuine replies
4. Creating updates in order to show up in search results
5. Disguising links (i.e. writing about one thing but linking to another)
6. If a large number of users have blocked you (relative to those following you)
These rules are in addition to their standard TOS clauses.
I don't think these will impact too many ethical marketers but there maybe some implications. Point 3 would seem to kill off any automated response scripts for example. Point 4 would seem incredibly hard to prove, unless taken to extremes. What do you think?
Hat tip Paul Silver
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