Twitterbots Need To Try Harder

I don't engage much on Twitter, mainly because it feels like the only parts of MySpace that people actually liked: quick reactions to anonymous posts. Twitter is fast replacing RSS feeds for pushing links to web sites, so now I have to keep track of both. Facebook's mission is for real people to share real things. Twitter, not so much, though nothing is stopping you from keeping it real there, it's just too easy to be fake. Plus, Twitter makes it very easy for search bots to contact you, even though what you posted may have no bearing on what they're trying to sell you.

Case in point: I reacted to the Euro 2012 headline of Germany trouncing Greece, and kept the original headline:

If that ain't a metaphor for the Euro Zone, I don't know what is. | Offshore Drilling, Euro 2012: Germany 4, Greece 2 bit.ly/KSh6LX
— Joseph Morris (@joeschmo1of3) June 22, 2012

Over a week later, because the headline had the phrase "offshore drilling" in it, some twitter bot attached to the blog of a retired offshore oil drilling engineer found me, and followed me. At least it was unintrusive, unlike the twitter spam of "ladies" who just happen to want to share pictures of themselves with you, just like those messenger "ladies." I guess spam evolves with the social media niche. With email, before the spambots automated everything, you had those stupid chainletters asking you to forward them, otherwise you would have bad luck. Now Facebook has the same thing, except it's pictures of the text that used to be in those chainletters, and they ask you to post these pictures for an hour or whatever. Hopefully Facebook will keep a tight rein on that crap, so spambots never get involved unlike how almost all email is redirected spam. On Twitter, there's the lonely ladies spam, but there's also the less annoying follow-you-follow-me spam. But twitter search bots need to do better than a two word phrase to try to get people to follow them back.