I found this interesting article about Twitter spam at the Take Time for Living Blog.
Here's an excerpt:
For those of you using Twitter, I want to let you know that I'm on
the verge of hanging up my tweeter (?) and calling it quits with the
silliness of it all, thanks to all the TONS of MLM scammers.
I'm really getting weary of people pushing their MLM "opportunities"
with about 8 out of every 10 tweets I see. That may be a bit of an
exaggeration, but not much.
Are you experiencing the same thing? Or am I just somehow lost in
the slummier Twitter neighborhoods? Maybe instead of quitting Twitter,
I should just cry out metaphorically, "Help. I've fallen and I can't
get up."
Not too many weeks ago, I decided to make a real effort to get
started tweeting. I've even used some site (I've forgotten which one
now) to link a couple of my blogs to my Twitter account. When I post on
one of those blogs, a couple of hours later that post appears on my
Twitter account, with a link to the post on the blog. I sort of liked
the usefulness of that — because, of course, I think my blogs are
(mostly) worth reading, and this was a way to have them read.
Anyway, that was fine. Then I started looking around Twitter and
following lots of people. Those people, many of them, followed me back.
I have over 1,200 followers now.
Unfortunately, as an online friend warned me, vast numbers of those
followers are MLM fanatics. And many years ago I grew disillusioned and
put off by MLM schemes/scams. It's not just the totally impractical
nature of most MLMs and their products. It's also the lifestyle that
soured me. To be successful at MLM, you have to abandon all real
semblance of "family" or "friendship." All of your relatives and all of
your friends now become first and foremost TARGETS or PROSPECTS for
your "business."
Read more…
Spammers are always going to try and use the latest hot thing to make a quick buck… The best thing about twitter is if you are getting tweet-spammed unfollow them. It will cost you some followers but they are spammers and not reading your tweets anyway