Tech of the day: Twitter spam

I was asked by a friend why all of a sudden he's got a bunch of people following him on Twitter. He has never updated his Twitter after he joined.

Well, the first thought came to my mind is of course: spammer! The twist is: by following you on Twitter, they can't spam you yet 'coz while they see your update as a follower, you don't see their update because you're not following them.

And the last part was the key! In the early days of Twitter, when you follow a friend (or just an acquitance), s/he usually follows you back as a courtesy. I guess the spammers are hoping that you would still do that. (Apparently PBS came to the same conclusion prior to I did)

So, don't just blindly follow anyone who followed you (of course you could always unfollow a user if you did it by mistake)

Tech of the day: what is wrong with Twitter?

Well, I don't know but this blogger came up with this lengthy article about a non-issue (btw, he used to write for TechCrunch. See the connection?) Basically he claimed Twitter's developer are not Twitting much and not following a lot of people. He worried that by not using the product they developed, they won't be in tune with what users expect.

Not sure if he knows anything about software development. There is a thing called "testing environment," which is separated from the production environment he has been doing his so-called analysis! I'm pretty sure Twitter's development team uses Twitter a lot, in the testing environment!