Although I registered for Twitter about a year ago, I’ve only begun seriously using it since late last year. I’m interested in how Bing has been faring, and to reply to a question in the AdWords Help Forum, I remembered that I’d seen one of the people I follow, mentioning the full path to Bing Local Business services. I believe that Bing Local Business matches the old Live/MSN Local Business services and matches the Google and Yahoo versions of the same.
I’m used to the phenomenon of users ReTweeting, in which the original author is given attribution. Are there really so many Twitter users out there, with nothing original to say for themselves, and who don’t have the generosity of spirit to apportion authorship, or is there a sponsored campaign going on to post substantially identical messages *except for* the shortened URL?
And there’s more…
As I say, I’m a relatively new Twitter user, so it is possible that this morally dubious behaviour is common. I hope that there some kind of community sanction that can be taken against users who ReTweet without attribution – but I don’t see anything obvious short of claiming them as spammers.
As Twitter increases in importance, this bad practice of plagiarism seems likely to increase, and starts to decrease the social networking value of Twitter.
It may also point to how corporations are starting to use Twitter to manipulate opinion; trying to force particular topics onto the “breaking list”. If I’m behind the curve on this, who is covering this kind of stuff about Twitter use and abuse and the likely future threats to Twitter’s value? I’m certainly going to be a lot more reluctant to consider the breaking meme listing, knowing that it may be being manipulated without apparent oversight or action.
Some of these are clearly spamming – the two different accounts at the break in the screenshots are obviously related and identical postings – operated by a common source, I suspect. Some appear to be fairly normal accounts, though I didn’t go looking for other plagiarism, it is possible that they may have been systematically ReTweeting without attribution.
Summary
It appears that Twitter is definitely reaching an importance level that means we can expect results to become affected. I know I’ve seen manipulation of trends, but I’d understood until very recently that this was mostly larking about. It could have been test runs to exercise a promotional network and demonstrate to likely buyers that the service would work.
Attribution, always an important topic for search engines, is even more important for social networking. Its part of trusting your news sources. Seeing this has damaged, for me, trust in the Twitter service.
If you tend to the dark side, along with spamming Google, spamming and plagiarism on Twitter probably are part of your mix, or will be.
As an ordinary user, I can’t see any sanction other than to report spamming; but it looked to me as if many of these people were otherwise just ordinary joes. Account closure for minor bouts of overenthusiasm seems harsh.
Updates
Danny Sullivan finally catches up with ReTweeting, misattributed and malattributred Twitter spam. (I’m joking – I got there earlier, he got there in more depth – good article).
Joe Bowers wrote,
I’m guessing these identical messages are the result of a “Tweet this” control offered by some upstream web site. Users click a button, log in to twitter, and the message is posted (or something more complex but operationally identical).
I suppose this sort of *is* spamming, but it’s spamming with the complicity of each poster. Perhaps the punch line is, think three times before clicking the “Tweet this” button/link/whathaveyou on a site you think is worth sharing.
Link | June 5th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
Thanks Joe – that would do it. Hmm. Never occurred to me to ever click “Tweet This” with someone else’s writing. Perhaps I’m too much of a control freak. When I speak, I try to make it me :)
Link | June 5th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Kim Clink wrote,
Even *if* it is a tweet this issue appearing as spam in this case I think it is just a matter of time before we have a spam issue on Twitter. Spammers have worked their way in everywhere else, why not Twitter?
Link | June 5th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Richard Ball wrote,
I think Joe’s right. It’s crowdsourced spam, enabled by Twitter, encouraged by MerchantCircle (who’s scraping TechCrunch content).
Link | June 5th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
Thanks, Rich – I should have known you’d penetrate the details!
Hmm. Twitter-culture wise, doesn’t this seem a dangerous usage? Or is this part of the emergence of trending topics?
And what if, as in this case, it appears to be based on re-presenting old information as new? The original source needs to get “community de-rating” as an unreliable source?
Link | June 5th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
detoxdiet wrote,
my initial test result shows that Bing is as good as Google when displaying relevant search results. Google might be having a tough competitor with Microsofts own search engine.
[[Posted from IP address 122.55.51.100 - see other comments in the same vein, from the same IP; JeremyC]]
Link | August 6th, 2009 at 9:11 am
melatoninlady wrote,
Microsoft Bing would be the closet competitor of Google. but i still use Google because it shows more relevant results on the serp.
[[Posted from IP address 122.55.51.100 - see other comments in the same vein, from the same IP; JeremyC]]
Link | August 22nd, 2009 at 11:13 am
George wrote,
i have been evaluating the search results of Microsoft Bing compared to Google and they are comparable. Bing gives almost the same relevant search results just like Google.
[[Posted from IP address 122.55.51.100 - see other comments in the same vein, from the same IP; JeremyC]]
Link | September 2nd, 2009 at 7:15 am
Jimmy Sy wrote,
i have been using the BING search engine for a couple of weeks. it seems to be as good as Google but for some reason i would still want to stick with Google search engine
Link | November 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Yumi Vega wrote,
i am using both Bing and Google a nd i think both search engines give relevant search results. i would still prefer Google though, because it gives a little bit more relevant search results than Bing.
Link | December 8th, 2009 at 11:13 am