While I support the whole Twitter thing, it got to be overload to the point where one of the people whom I follow, I wanted to unfollow until it blew over b/c I would get 20 tweets in a row, and would over fill my feed.

I wonder if this will be a major test of the old "there's no such thing as bad publicity" rule?

From the BBC article:

"The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to."

It seems the underlying issue as commented in the BBC story is the practice of using trending topics without reviewing the terms. Probably automating and running some routine to harvest terms and insert in comments to drive business.

I find this practice worse than the two specific words highlighted in this article.

@dragonfire81: There is bad publicity. There's the ethics 'Front Page of the NY Times' rule too. Don't do it if you wouldn't want to see it on the front page of the NY Times. Companies never cease to fail there (AIG, Lehman, Comcast, Habitat)

I've been seeing this practice more and more lately. It seems I can't search the top trending topics anymore without half the results being spammers just tacking the hash tags to the end of their ads.

No offense, but "stayfree" in the article title almost looks spammish :P

I totally support the cause, but I have apparently laughed at too many spam/scam emails in my day and now I cant look at it without giggling.

Well, what this appears to be is that the advertising model used updates ads to appear in search topics for highly searched words. This is a sound strategy in that it does promote the website in terms of appearing in search results, but as it does not take into account the subject matter of those words (other than excluding a list of offensive terms, which in all likelihood are consistent top performers in searches.) I think this is more interesting in that it is an example of an algorithm and advertising design flaw, and not because it is somehow innately outrageous or offensive.

It's a savings revolution! For the greater glory of money.

This is bad, but far from the worst examples I've seen while following the Iran protests. The worst would have to be the people who say something about Mousavi or freedom, then a tinyurl, then #iranelection or #gr88. You click on the tinyurl expecting a pic or news story and BAM. Goatse'd. Incidentally, a blogspot account called twitspam is tracking spammers/Goatse/deliverers of misinformation. Perhaps Habitat should be added to their list.

It is simply impossible for lists of popular topics to remain pristine where the web is concerned. There's the age-old (well, web age-old) practice of stuffing popular search terms into the html code for your website using the various tactics that have been utilized ever since the first search engines popped into existence, and now there is hashtag abuse on Twitter.

Like dragonfire81 alluded to above, this stuff really won't stop unless the businesses who employ these tactics begin to see a negative reaction in their bottom line instead of a positive one. If you don't like this kind of stuff, then your mission is to avert your eyes from this sort of attention-getting method and also keep a mental list of places you won't shop. That's really the only way to make your preference known, because it's the only thing the people doing it care about.

It makes me mad when random people follow you because of keywords in your updates.

@Benguin: Spwitter?

I don't know what's worse, people FINALLY realizing twitter can be used for advertising using popular keywords, or twitter fans thinking it never would.

Here's a shocker: Twitter: (Tweet) sing like a bird: (simile) to divulge secrets with little coercion

I checked out their store in Glendale, CA a while back. Frankly, I wasn't impressed by their stock or prices so it's not like their twitterizing made me any less likely to shop their. My hunch is that all they did was drive up the number of people walking in then walking back out in five minutes muttering "meh" under their breath.

The media aren't exactly in the position to be "appalled". I can't find links to verify this, but I recall that several media conglomerates (the BBC, CNN or perhaps other) have been caught sending out memos to corporations telling them to "buy advertising time for the next disaster". The media are encouraging companies to pay ahead of time so when another disaster occurs - a terrorist bombing, plane crash, war or whatever - the companies who buy will get prime advertising time during the "reporting".

If anyone knows of such memos or reports leaking out, please post them. Such bloodthirsty advertising is revolting.

This reminds me of the first time spam appeared in the newsgroups so long ago. There was an uproar and then it became commonplace. At least someone is trying to figure out how to make money with Twitter.

Adam
[www.twitterbacklash.com]

I knew Twitter would develop a robust Dark Side sooner or later.

Don't Twitter myself or follow any friends' Twitters. Sole exception is my alma mater's Twitters which I follow via emails and are not so frequent as to be annoying.

And thus the last straw appears on the camel's soon-to-be-broken back.
Short of locking down the tags to authorized posters (sort of destroying the premise?), this seems to be a terminal problem.
Beyond the ADD aspects of the whole scheme (in my mind, but hey, 1,000 flowers blooming)

Did you mean #Neda?