In my earlier entry recapping the BlogPotomac conference, I mentioned that the #blogpotomac hashtag made the list of Twitter trending topics — it’s featured in the sidebar on the Twitter home page, and is consequently viewed by a boatload of people.
Naturally, because of all the eyeballs, it’s seen as valuable real estate, and it’s an opportunity for exhibitionists, spammers, attention whores, and anyone else who just wants to be seen by a lot of folks, with no regard for relevance or shame.
Here are some of the off-topic tweets I noticed. Most were from spammers latching onto the trending topic to try to drive traffic to their (presumably) affiliate spam sites. It was interesting to see what kind of headlines people were using to try to trick people into clicking:
* [redacted] #blogpotomac trend? LATEST Bing HAS JUST crashed . omg http://…
* [redacted] #blogpotomac trend? A Flight has been Attacked over LONDON. . pictures have been leaked http://…
* [redacted] #blogpotomac trend? RIHANNA SEX TAPE released .. so sad http://…
* [redacted] #blogpotomac trend? its really sad that APPLE’S new tablet cost’s $1,299.. so sad http://…
So we’ve got tech, attacks, celebrity sex, and more tech. Also note the use of the URL shorteners to obscure the actual destination.
(See other techniques that Twitter trending topic spammers use, including fake retweets from prominent Twitterers.)
One spammer did a generic item that might have actually worked in context, except for the obviously irrelevant Web site URL.
* [redacted] Follow the blogpotomac http://…
And other folks were just people (presumably lonely ones) who didn’t even post URLs, who were probably just looking for followers. We’ve all seen enterprising users posting tweets incorporating all of the trending topics, creating a kind of a trending topic spam poem:
* [redacted] it was my 11thcommandment when watchinTGIF on DTV, apple Game7 get after Pedamundo, then follow on friday blogpotomac , no camels for paris
Placement as Endorsement
Outside of the pure attractiveness of the trending topics list to attention-seekers and spammers, there’s the whole idea of trending topic status as an endorsement. From what I’ve seen, as long as it’s a highly-trafficked page, it doesn’t matter if the placement comes from an auto-generated metric (e.g. most clicked, most commented) or an editorially-selected item picked by a human — making the list is still seen as a prestige event. And from there, it’s a quick step to becoming an actual achievement in and of itself — “We’ve made it!” — worthy of your “by any means necessary” efforts.
This, of course, is not new: Look back to 1997, when the Time Person of the Century poll was flooded by Ataturk supporters, or authors buying a boatload of their own books to make the NYT bestseller list. Though online, the fact that you can help influence the outcome (albeit in a small, small way), simply by incessantly posting about, say, the Jonas Brothers, means that you have an accessible, low-effort way to become part of something bigger than yourself, which ties you to the larger community.
(The self-awareness that you’re actually just trying to game the system doesn’t really come into play. It’s just another example of the American Idol effect.)
Anyway, it’s up to us as communicators to figure out both how to weed out the spam, how to pry useful intelligence (if any can be found) out of the mess, and how to harness this kind of… compulsive behavior, whether it’s for fandom or anything else. And if you have any ideas on how to do that, please leave a comment (and get ready to collect your Nobel prize.)
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