As you may, or may not be aware, twitter updated the email notifications a while back to display more information about new followers you have received on your account.

Im hoping that they will expand upon this a little more to make the process of following people back a little simpler and also  to help weed out and spot twitter spam accounts and twitter bots, the true bane of using twitter effectively.

(I cannot and will not go into a rant on this post detailing how much I hate this and how adverse its effects are, that’s for another day, one which might just include a hangover).

The Original Twitter notification email

In the first instance (back in the day..I cant believe I’m saying that) you would have got a plain text email from twitter notifying you that someone is now following you, it looked like this:

Hi, justinparks.

Scott Stratten (unmarketing) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out unmarketing’s profile here:

http://twitter.com/unmarketing

You may follow unmarketing as well by clicking on the “follow” button.

Best,
Twitter

–
Turn off these emails at: http://twitter.com/account/notifications

Now obviously, there’s no information in this email at all except the name and username, so to check that user out I have to click the links go to the profiles, read their bio, location and info, decide if they are a bot, spammer or even just plain interesting  in order that I can decide to follow them back or not.

The example above is NOT a twitter bot or twitter spammer in any way, its Scott Stratten and he’s someone I would highly recommend, he’s just unlucky enough to be used as an example and I just wanted to clarify that.

The Current Twitter notification email

So that email notification above is now obsolete.  Twitter created a new email notification format and I got the first one through on Friday the 8th May 2009 and here’s an example below and one that you are all no doubt familiar with.

ProBlogger (Darren Rowse) is now following your updates on Twitter.

A little information about ProBlogger:

69,854 followers 12,930 updates following 40,501 people

The Twitter Team

Turn off these emails at: http://twitter.com/account/notifications

Great! Everyone rejoiced at the new information included in the email.

At a glance now we can all see who this new follower is, what they look like (bald with specs in this case, sorry Darren, your an Ozzie though so I’m sure you can handle a bit of “making the mick” ), the number of followers, how many they are following and the number of updates they have made.

But the same problems still exists as the in the original twitter notification email.  This information doesn’t help us decide if we want to follow this person back, and indeed we shouldn’t base that decision on this information alone, in fact its almost misleading!

Again, Problogger isn’t a spammer or bot, he’s cool.  Would also recommend you follow him if you’re into becoming a blogger.

What we really need in Twitter notification emails

In my opinion we need a little more help from twitter in the notification email department. First things first, I would love to see the other normal information included that’s already available on the users twitter page, this means, show me the location and their bio.

The only reason that I can think of that twitter would not want to include this is to encourage us to visit the profile pages physically, and that’s fair enough, I understand the reasoning behind that.

Show us how many times you have been blocked on twitter

One thing I would love to see to make those twitter bots eat spam though is how many times a user has been blocked by other twitter users.  This is not available anywhere (as far as I know, but please do correct me if I’m wrong).  This one small piece of information will immediately help me access the new follower at a single glance.

It would also help us to help each other, I believe, as we can begin to actively manage the twitter spammers and twitter bots as a community, helping each other to spot and remove these damn things asap.

I cant see any way to automate the process, its impossible, and there’s no way Twitter can manage it by themselves, that would just be insane and the reporting feature of tweeting @spam followed by the username seems to be totally ineffective. Basically lets effectively crowd source the ability to fight the twitter spammers and twitter bots.

Twitter Block numbers and the downside

The downside of this of course is that not everyone who’s getting blocked will be a twitter bot or twitter spammer.  I’m raining on my own parade here but I like to be realistic about these things. If you have a large following or are a celebrity or such, then it is inevitable that your account will be blocked more than the average user but this could balance against the amount of followers they already have and should be quite obvious.

Indeed, if you are being yourself, that doesn’t always mean you will be popular, and this could cause your account to be blocked more than normal, or if indeed you manage to offend some group or other then you may find your blocked a lot more than you’re being followed, for no other reason than you have an opinion, or disagreement over something and its made tempers flare or caused offence.

This could of course balance out I guess and it still acts as a representation of the user to a certain extent, but it is something to be wary of. Of course this is mentioning nothing of potential “Twitter Blocking Campaigns “ that could be initiated targeting other users but I think the case for is stronger than the case against, at least from my point of view. Maybe adding in a tweet to explain why you decided to block an account would, for the record, help us all in advance as well so we would end up with notification emails that look like this:

Twitter Spammer (Twitter Spam Bot) is now following your updates on Twitter.

A little information about Twitter Spammer:

6,825 followers 5 updates following 8,501 people Blocked: 1,240 Find out why…

The Twitter Team

Turn off these emails at: http://twitter.com/account/notifications

Now wouldn’t that be helpful?

Other thoughts on twitter spam and twitter bots

If you want to read more info on how this spam and the bots are adversely affecting twitter, there are plenty out there but heres a few that came through while I was putting the finishing touches to this post.

From my friend @bungeespin Social twitter or just spam? and @problogger tweeted this today from Twitip.com
3 Ways to Recognize Bots and Spammers on Twitter . Of course if your interested in what the tweeple think there’s always the latest views on the #twitter-spam hashtag.

So what’s your point of view?

Do you think this would work, or have you another suggestion on how to deal with this problem created by twitter spammers and bots?  Its growing and for me I want to see it curtailed before it becomes detrimental to Twitter and before it becomes so out of hand that we all decide that its simply not worth being involved in Twitter any more.

Your a twitter newbie, you’ve heard about it so you have decided to do the twitter thing and find out what its all about.  Here is my version of the twitter newbie startup guide in 14 parts to help you take the first steps, understand what its all about and get the ball rolling.

1) Get a Twitter account

Getting an account is simple.  Visit www.twitter.com and click the green “Get Started- Join!” button.

On the next page you will be asked for “Full Name” and “User Name”.  The difference between them is this.  Full Name is the name of the owner of the account, your real name in other words, and user name is the name by which the account will be recognised, so it may also be your real name, your company name, an available name close to the one you want or your super secret superhero identity.

There are a few steps to import contacts and also a suggested user list (SUL) you can skip these steps by looking at the bottom centre of the page and clicking the “skip this step” link.

2) Edit your Twitter profile

Once you finish the steps above its time to look at your profile.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this can be filled with funny or irrelevant information.  Far from it in fact!

The Location and Biographies are really important when other people come to search for you as it is this information they will be looking at and which will put you in the results so if your looking for people in your area or with similar interests or skills then make sure location and your biography are accurate and include the words that best describe you.

3) Twitter Profile Photo

Add a photo please.  not of some new transformer or logo you like.  Make it a photo of you, and preferably one that doesn’t look like you have just been arrested. The only time you may not use your own face is when you are using the account to represent a brand or company, but even then, the more personal you can make it the better.  Remember its social media for a reason.

5) Using a Twitter desktop application

Personally I use Tweetdeck to interact with Twitter and my network, it serves all my current needs and has a diverse range of options and functions that can be employed to ensure you get the most out of your information stream.  For more information on Tweetdeck have a read over my introduction to tweetdeck.

6) Getting started on Twitter – Searching, finding, networking.

Getting started on Twitter is simple but it can take a little while to learn all the tricks and the significance of different functions.  Using Tweetdeck does make this easier due to the interface but that’s not all that you need to know about Twitter itself.

The value of twitter is in the followers and people you follow.  Period.  For a more detailed brakdown on whay I would advise in getting the most out of twitter have a read at this post about your twitter follower count and the real value of people on twitter.

7) Advertise your Twitter presence

Dont hide the fact you are on twitter.  Most mediums in social media, such as FaceBook, Linkedin and a range of others, will support inclusion of twitter to varying degrees, some will simply link to your twitter homepage, others will allow you to add a feed of your latest tweets to your page.

Make sure you have an appropriate way of informing visitors to your website or blog that your also using twitter by adding in a button, link or even a post about it. Dont make people work hard to find you!

Using 3rd apps for Twitter

There are hundreds of twitter applications that you can use to enhance, grow and develop your twitter profile and quite simply it will take time to understand what they all mean and do and how much benefit they will bring to the table.

To get you started I have listed some essential sites that use the Twitter service that should be looked at straight away:

www.twellow.com
www.justtweetit.com
www.twitteranalyzer.com
www.tweettabs.com
www.tweetpromote.com

After you look at these, there seems to be about 1 billion other tools and apps you can look a selection of which are available on this post about Twitter tools and APIs

9) Twitter Search with Google

Finding people you consider high quality is the most important factor on twitter and will benefit you either personally or in business if you spend the time to source them and build a bridge to make stable and established connections with them.  If you use Google and are comfortable with it there is a way of effectively searching using the Google search to find interesting twitter users.

10) Get mobile with Twitter

Have you an iphone? Twitter is perfect for using in conjunction with your iphone and only recently TweetDeck released an excellent tweetdeck iphone application, which is completely free, to install on your iphone.  It syncs with your tweetdeck on your computer once you install it via the iTunes shop and works fantastically well, bar a few bugs at this tage, but I cant do without it.

11) Get Tweeting!

After all this its time to get tweeting.  The frequency of your tweets is important in the inital stages and the amount of tweets you have.  No one will be interested in following or getting to know you if you tweet once a month or have a big fat ZERO amount of tweets in your profile.

Stuck for what to say? Yes it can be difficult to get started but no one will judge you on what or how you tweet.  Depending on your profile and aims you should focus in on issues relating to you, your business, or which you find important and interesting.  This means others will also be able to find you and decide from there if you will be an asset to them, ensuring a nice positive level of growth in your network as you actively search for others and they search for you.

Sometimes its best not to try and start a conversation but instead to join in on one.  Use the “@username” to directly contact someone and give your views or feedback when a subject is of interest to you.

12) ReTweets, Hashtags and Short URLS

There are three important points to note about using Twitter.

Twitter ReTweets.

Where someone writes something interesting or links to information you believe is valuable you can perform a ReTweet or RT.  This is the most valuable action you can perform on twitter for others and for your network.  Dont be tempted to send the information on as it you are the source, that grows no value with the person you are ReTweeting, instead, offer transparency and let them know you find the information valuable to yourself and believe it is of value to your network.

What goes around comes around on Twitter, after all it is a social network, and that person will retrun the favour for you someday.

Also, dont ask for RTs in your tweets, unless you specifically need it.  There are few things more annoying that constantly seeing people saying “please RT, thanks” on every piece of information the write, it dilutes the value and really, its up to your network to decide the value of the information and ReTweet it if they think it is worthwhile.

To see the value of Retweeting you an read this post showing what happens and the return you can get when a tweet goes viral.

Twitter Hashtags

You may notice various words with a hashtag (#)  infront of them. Hashtags are used aginst words to denote a particular subject or conversation.  For example if I where to tweet “I live in #marbella” it links directly to the term Marbella and includes all conversations that include the same hashtag.  This allows you to centralise a subject matter or specific term and develop a conversation around it.

Twitter Short URLS

Because of twitters 140 character limit its wise to use a URL (web page address) shorten’er. Most web address are quite long and this leaves very little room to actually write something about the information you are sending on so making the URL short means it still works but is condensed into a much smaller more manageble link. In tweetdeck this is included below the tweet writing panel and all you do is paste the URL and click “shorten” to add it to your tweet.  Simple.

13) Some Twitter advise

Twitter takes time.  Do not expect it to work overnight.  If you invest in it, wou will be paidback but the investment is all about you, who you are and what you do.  Give to others, share with friends and the kudos you create will help you progress. Just be yourself, be relevant and be helpful is the best advice I can give.

14) Further Twitter Reading and the definitive twitter guide

On my site I have a range of articles all about different things to do with twitter, if your interested in staying up to date with the latest information then feel free to subscribe by email or RSS or you can browse through my twitter posts.

If you want a more comprehensive guide to Twitter there’s no better place to go than Mashable.  A site totally dedicated to social media and over flowing with information about social media in general, in particular it has just released this Twitter Guide Book. Enjoy!

I came across Tweettabs after being referred to it by @joe_carney (cheers Joe) while we where having a little chat about using Twitter and search on twitter. Gradually our conversation shifted to different ways and means of using twitter effectively when Joe suggested I check out www.tweetabs.com.

Being an inquisitive kinda guy (or a right nosey bugger) I checked it out as it seemed interesting.

What a beautifully simple idea. Tweettabs allows you to monitor live tweets based on any given keyword you choose as and when it happens with the advantage of letting you focus in on relevant subject matter and information in a constant stream.  I began by using the typical words I would find useful, things such as, wordpress, blogging, social media and the like and these flash past incredibly quickly on such popular subject matter.

It was only after a little thought that I decided, on a whim, to add in my own name, Justin Parks, as a term to track and that’s when the possibilities opened up for me. I began to see my name being mentioned by people who I didnt know and in a variety of contexts and on different subjects, all positive thank goodness!

I thought about this a little more and it occurred to me that a business or individual could use Tweettabs effectively to monitor your brand on a range of terms including the company name, staff names, products and services with specific titles and of course, the competition.

Following on I added in justinparks, www.justinparks.com and justin parks to see if there was a different set of results, and sure enough their is!

All this information is constantly updated and will feed you what you need to see where tweeple are saying about you and your company or brand. The value is extreme to say the least!

Nip over to Tweettabs and check it out, signup is free and once logged in the words you add remain against your account so you can open and close the site with having to repeatedly enter your terms.