Although I love Twitter, it does have problems.

This article Ten issues I have with Twitter (and its community) | Webware – CNET sets out some of them, including the “followers” spam:

“Following promises need to go

I’m sick and tired of people who use their Twitter accounts to tell you how to add ‘1,000 followers in a single day!’ First off, it ruins the Twitter experience. Secondly, most of those techniques require you to follow people who follow everyone else. For the most part, that means you’ll be following people who will spam you. These scams need to be actively eradicated.”

This particular spam is quite amusing. If you’re bored, click on the profile of some hapless soul who offers you “1000 followers a day” or “10,000 followers a week”. Invariably these poor devils have nowhere near the number of followers they’re supposed to be teaching you to acquire.

Yes, these are supposed to affiliate marketers, but they’re really just spammers; they wouldn’t know an affiliate marketer if he bit them on the leg.

Is it up to Twitter to get rid of them?

Yes, it is. Twitter is offering a service, and that service needs to be usable. If mainstream email services like Gmail can do a great job on keeping spam out of your Inbox, Twitter needs to develop spam tools to keep spam out of your Twitter stream.

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