Frankly, I'm surprised it took so long to happen. Or maybe I just didn't notice it happening much until now. When google pioneered contextual advertising, I assumed that the rest of the world would follow in spades. We'd be getting emailed, nudged, banner-added and text messaged whenever we displayed online intention or contextual curiosity. There is a world of nuance between blatantly unsolicited email spam and "relevant online communications," and I assumed that businesses would rush in to fill this gap. But I really haven't seen it that much. Until now.
Enter the Twitter Hawks. Businesses that hover on top of Twitter search terms and then @ you if you mention something relevant to their business. For example, I just got an @ message from an airport shuttle service when they saw me use the name of an airport in my tweet. Obviously, they're monitoring the public feed using Twitter Search or the Search API and replying publicly to tweets that mention airport travel in their business service range. But is this spam? Well, I suppose not the traditional type, but it's definitely unwelcome when my @ stream is filled with unsolicited business messages from orgs - no matter how "well intentioned" who are hovering over my communications.
Like any good enabling technology, people see opportunity and rush in to explore, address, solve, and experiment. I'm not surprised that people are exploring this gap, I'm just surprised it took so long.
Twitter Hawks
Submitted by Keith Hopper on Mon, 11/17/2008 - 13:53
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Comments
I care less if a company
I care less if a company quasi-spams me through a Twitter Hawk-like service. I don't need to reply. But what if I do reply? What if everyone replies? Is that company sufficiently staffed to handle what could be an influx of replies?
@comcastcares is an
@comcastcares is an interesting case study in this.
"Fame is simply an imbalance between inbound and outbound attention."
— Clay Shirky
It's a messy business,
It's a messy business, companies on Twitter trying to figure out how to use Twitter, and what counts as spam on Twitter seems to be really nuanced depending on how the person from said organization/company/brand interacts with other Twitter users.
In your example of the airport name tweet, I think that's a form of spam, or at least targeted advertising that is impossible to block. However, if I tweet that I love DeskAway, and @DeskAway says thank you, and then DMs me about information and I'm cool with that, then it's not spam, in my mind. Even better is when @DeskAway, or @springpartners, or any of the other companies who are mutual follows on Twitter interact with me on non-product stuff, since it gives me a sense of not being a mark, I become a person they interact with, giving me an even more positive view of their company and what they have to offer.
Technically it is adding more
Technically it is adding more noise to Twitter and if I hadn't experienced it myself I would probably frown on the practice.
Problem is that the quality of customer service that I have received from some of these services have been of significant quality. This morning I had an issue and was hoping that Amazon was doing the same thing.
I don't see how this level of customer service could be sustainable though, so check with me in six months. I will probably be much more negative.
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