Colin Carmichael maintains there is no such thing as Twitter spam. Colin recently asked friends on Twitter to send him their thoughts on this. He has published some of the responses, including mine, on his blog.

I think he is well intentioned, but his arguments are simplistic and miss the mark.

Spam is generally thought of as unwanted marketing email, but in an environment like Twitter, where email plays such a trivial role, spam is harder to define, so I employ the broader definition of spam as “forced, unwanted marketing messages.”

I am not referring to Twitter’s notification emails when I say Twitter has spam. I am talking about the interaction that occurs when someone follows you on Twitter, and the ways in which information gathered about you from Twitter can be used.

Upon receiving a new follower, the majority of Twitter users validate that follower by checking their profile. Colin says there is “no reason beyond ego or sheer curiosity to check out folks who follow you.” Nonsense. Twitter is many things, among them a social network. Every social network has a procedure and etiquette for adding connections. Of course I am going to see if a new follower is someone I should follow back. I’m there to have conversations. That implies two-way communications.

We all make decisions on Twitter regarding who we follow back. Many people who follow us are friends, colleagues, business partners, people in an allied field. When I am followed by someone, I check out who they are before deciding whether to follow back, and that’s when I find that @toshibaflat (no longer active, but I was followed by this user) is advertising for a flat screen. I have now received an overt, unwanted marketing message.

Colin proposes that you can’t prevent a Google search, but what does he imagine people are doing when they try to learn about you through search? Lots of Google searches are done by bots who then spam you if you were unfortunate enough to have your email address published somewhere. It is not the fact that someone is following you, or doing Google searches on you, that is problematic. It is what they do with the information they gather.

Privacy is a delicate matter covered by both law and convention. Colin sees the expectation of privacy as simply meaning “you published the information on what you knew was a public forum and therefore should have no expectation of privacy.” (Paraphrasing, not quoting.) That is a logical non-sequitur. What matters is not that the information is publicly available, but what people do with that information.

If I publish a contact email address on my blog, is it OK for people to send me emails promoting porn and Cialis? Of course not.

And just because something does not violate the letter of the law, does not mean it is ethical, or that it does not violate privacy. If your house is close to the street and I stand on the sidewalk and stare into your window, and observe your private life because you left the curtains open, that is perfectly legal, but is also very creepy.

The problem here is confusing Twitter’s Terms of Service with reasonable behavior and respect. It’s sad, really, that we use semantics to excuse bad behavior. But most Twitter users just plain don’t like spam, in whatever form, including being followed by purely commercial entities. And that should count for something.

Tags: twitter spam, colin carmichael, privcay

Someone is selling their Twitter “handle” on eBay, along with 1397 “followers.”* As I am composing this, the bidding is at $1125.

What is the commercial value of a Twitter account? Nothing, I say. Would you pay over $1000 for a web site with 1397 unique visitors? Not monthly visitors — unique visitors for the life of the web site. Passive visitors. That you push to 140 characters at a time. That will stop reading your updates the minute you sell or market to them. With no known demographic profile other than computer literacy.

Is this in any way deceptive? Yes. Since anyone can follow anyone on Twitter, the seller may not have had any obligation to inform followers of his eventual intention to “sell” them, although he most certainly deceived them into following him under the pretense of being an independent provider of interesting conversation, and not a commercial enterprise.

Is it in violation of Twitter’s Terms of Service? Probably not. There is one rather vague item in the TOS stating “You must not create or submit unwanted email to any Twitter members (’Spam’).” It’s vague because it does not say you can’t spam them via updates or direct messages, the only means available within Twitter, and there is no certainty the buyer will do this, but why else buy it?

* As of the time the listing was posted, the number of followers was 1397. It has since risen. Thank you Laurel Papworth for the original post that brought this story to my attention.

Tags: twitter account for sale, ebay, andrewbaron

I posted earlier today on the increasing emphasis placed on physical attractiveness in a world of cheap, universally available video. I was inspired to write that piece when I learned that Sam Lawrence, CMO of Jive Software, is recruiting for a director of communications using video.

He started by posting a video job requisition encouraging candidates to reply by video. Initially, Jive did not get any video responses, but a few were posted, like this one:

Click To Play

For the most part, I like this idea. It is particularly appropriate for recruiting a director of communications. Jive wants someone who is articulate, intelligent, well spoken, creative, and maybe a bit fearless. Jive also did a great job having several Jive employees and agency representatives on the requisition video to give candidates additional perspective on the company.

As for candidates, remember, once you post a video to a public site like Blip.tv, you have now interviewed with perhaps thousands of people. If another employer finds your video through a search, and they will, it will influence their perceptions of you as a candidate. If your video presents you well, great. If not, maybe you should delete it when you know the current search is done.

It’s nothing new in public relations and communications to hire attractive young people. And it’s perfectly acceptable that an employer recruit someone well spoken and articulate, and not unattractive, in a visible role as a company spokesperson.

Nonetheless, the video interview/application presents ethical issues for the employer. The most troublesome of these is that a video tells an employer the age of the applicant, information which has generally been unethical and illegal to collect. I hope employers will use this information fairly. To not do so would be unfair to candidates and might cause an employer to overlook highly qualified candidates who might not be at their best performing on the “small screen.”

Tags: jive software, video requisition, video application, blip.tv

Not too long ago Robert Peek, a PR professional and Director of Corporate Communications at Jacksonville Port Authority, criticized me for using an obscene/profane word in a column I write for Talent Zoo. Robert felt my use of the word was “gratuitous” and not in keeping with who I am and the kind of work I do (corporate communications in particular). So I asked the webmaster to edit the column for me to remove the offending word.

I had called b******* on corporate communicators who claimed ignorance of social media ethics or suggested that emerging media was a frontier of communications that presented new and unforeseen ethical challenges. These claims are a dodge, the timeless virtues of ethical behavior still apply, and it’s not that hard to know when you are being deceptive or manipulative. Unless of course you’re immoral to begin with. But I digress.

Robert made some excellent points, and responded unemotionally and with a well reasoned argument against my use of the word. After some reflection, I decided to change the editorial, replacing b******* with Nice try. I even turned to a colleague, fellow Talent Zoo columnist Jocelyn Brandeis of JBLH Communications, who gave me invaluable help with the edit. It works almost as well and has changed the editorial from PG-13 to G. This was a case in which I felt I needed to honor the conversational aspect of social media. What good are a blog, RSS feeds, pings, trackbacks and commenting if I ignore the comments and criticisms I get? I certainly don’t ignore the praise.

Which leads me to the questions in this post’s title. Was I influenced by Robert, or was I censored? Was changing the editorial, something I have rarely done except in the case of a fact error or misspelling, a valid compromise or did I compromise my integrity? You’re the experts. What do you think?

Tags: editorial integrity, obscenity, profanity, joel postman, robert peek, influence, censorship, Jocelyn Brandeis

Robert Peek, a PR professional and Director of Corporate Communications at Jacksonville Port Authority, criticized me for using the word “bullshit” in a recent column I wrote for Talent Zoo on social media ethics. In a post titled On Obscenity in Social Media, Robert suggested I was violating the very same tenets I “espoused,” and I was making “gratuitous” use of the word, which was indicative of an alarming trend in social media.

My use of the word was not gratuitous, nor was it indicative of laziness or contempt for my readers. It was a show of respect. I try to write naturally, and authentically. The word was my gut reaction to what I was writing about, communicators who claim ignorance of ethical, legal and professional guidelines. (I do not claim any such ignorance.)

Corporatized business speak can be evasive. I could have written, “Communicators who continue to explore new strategies in social media run put themselves and their companies at great risk. Perhaps they are well intentioned but ill-informed.” But that would be disingenuous. (I would have used another word for it, in fact.)

The use by fine writers (I am not putting myself in this class) of such words for emphasis and brevity is not without precedent. In Macbeth, William Shakespeare wrote “out out damn spot,” often quoted, as it is here on The Accidental Scientist, a food blog.

I would point Robert and others to Harry G. Frankfurt’s book, On Bullshit, a very small but interesting treatise on the topic, which incidentally, won a 2005 Bestseller Award in the philosophy category. Frankfurt is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University and also ought to know better about the gratuitous use of obscenity. Frankfurt quotes Max Black’s earlier work, The Prevalence of Humbug, when trying to define the word “bullshit:”

“Humbug: deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody’s own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes.”

Thus, it was the perfect word for what I was writing about. (Sorry, but I could not have used “humbug.” Dickens was the last one to use the word in literary discourse.) And whether my use of the word was appropriate or not, my use of such language in my public writing is so rare and so judicious, I am insulted that Robert would single me out as the lead example for his post. I believe this is indicative of another social media faux pas, inadequately researched writing.