This is a very nasty trend. Now I can see why all those bot accounts have been created. - Robert Scoble

This will be the death of Twitter if it continues. Wow, people have figured out how to get spam into your replies on Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Twitter should give you an opt-in way of telling whose @-replies you'd like to see. In its current state it's just like email and blacklists won't really help. It's too easy for the spammers to create a new twitter account... - Holger Eilhard

Holger: absolutely. Go over to TechCrunch's followers. There you'll see hundreds of bot accounts that were not created by humans. These accounts could be used to spam tons of people. - Robert Scoble

I don't know why Twitter won't use the Capatcha method when one signs up and verify email addresses. - Danny Minick

Go look at TechCrunch followers: http://twitter.com/TechCru... see the accounts that have a default icon? They are not human in many cases. And these are the ones we can see being created. - Robert Scoble

@Danny: Because that doesn't really stop spammers. :( - Holger Eilhard

Danny, Holger is right. There are farms of people who'll get around that crap. Friendfeed is a lot more resistant and this will start to be a competitive advantage, but once millions of people move over here they'll spend the time to try to attack friendfeed too. It'll be interesting to see if friendfeed is resistant enough. - Robert Scoble

why didn't I leave my twitter account deleted when I had the chance *facepalm* - Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ

Robert: How is FriendFeed more resistant (despite being not as popular as twitter)? What would stop a spammer to create multiple accounts and post random comments on your posts? I wonder what Facebook does against spammers. Didn't really run into a problem with it over there. - Holger Eilhard

Yeah, you both are right. This could become a problem. Well if Twitter goes down the drain, at least there is still friendfeed. Though I wish they would make an iPhone app... - Danny Minick

Holger: on Twitter I can spam your @replies and you can't do anything about it (see Loic's article). Spam also shows up in search results. If I block you here on friendfeed you show up NO WHERE. That's a HUGE difference. There's other defenses too. For instance, since I started this item I can delete your comments here. So there's decentralized moderation. Twitter has no way for anyone to delete anything other than their own tweets. No way for the crowd to "clean up the mess." - Robert Scoble

There should be something filters like following for @replies, to have @replies to show up 1) From all twitters 2) From people with custom icons 3) From people that follow me 4) From people that I am following. One shouldn't be allowed to post a tweet until email verification. - Hameedullah Khan

Robert: How much fun is it to clean up x numbers of fake comments every morning where no user name is the same, thus hiding or blocking a user doesn't help? I don't have a solution, I just see a problem that - at the moment - is only really obvious in my email inbox (or not, thanks to Google's spam filtering mechanisms). - Holger Eilhard

Holger: are you seeing fake comments here on friendfeed? I haven't seen many. I've only had to delete about 10 comments and perform blocks since I joined friendfeed more than a year ago. One reason I like it so much more than my blog is it is much nicer than even Akismet spam blocking service. - Robert Scoble

Hameedullah: That's what I meant in my post above. The custom icons point in the list won't really help though. It has to happen sooner or later. - Holger Eilhard

Robert: Not yet. - Holger Eilhard

I was going to insert a fake, fake comment, but since Scoble is my only follower I did not want to get blocked. - Jeff

Just to be clear on the issue will the bot pick me up if I reply to techcrunch? - Jeff

Jeff: peer pressure here is a bitch, isn't it? It works both ways, too. Generally keeps me from calling too many people names because if I do you'll block me. I think this social contract is one of friendfeed's best attributes and why the community here is the best on the Internet. - Robert Scoble

Jeff: I have no idea how the spammers target accounts. I just know that when I look at Techcrunch's followers I can see a ton of bot accounts and I bet that those will be turned on to perform this "@ spam." - Robert Scoble

Jeff, I have a very small social circle on Twitter, yet a few weeks ago over a two to three week timespan I was hit with maybe 10 or 12 new followers who were obvious bots. I blocked them all, but my point is that I don't think it makes a difference who you follow. - Andy Bold

Then this will raise another issue for brands, and brand mgt. If bots are flocking to whole foods and people are getting spammed when mentioning whole foods, then they would be less likely to comment (assuming they knew where it was coming from). It would suck if twitter became hotmail due to spam. - Jeff

Earlier today I've posted in both Twitter and FriendFeed some testing questions regarding different issues, including technology, life and other stuff, to see where I can get the best answers under a time frame. Unsurprisingly, friendfeed won in all categories, having the more adequate and faster comments, which brought me to the conclusion that people on FriendFeed are more dedicated to the community while Twitter users are more into themselves. - Nir Ben Yona

Nir: this is because on Twitter the ability to have a conversation just plain sucks. We've already covered this, though, about why. - Robert Scoble

Jeff: personally the way Twitter treated its early adopters completely sucked and now that treatment is going to come back to haunt them. The most active users of a system are the ones who'll put in the most work to get rid of spam and bad actors. The thing is, I have 890 days on twitter and Oprah has, what, 20. But Twitter decided to reward Oprah with a recommended follower rating and decided not to give that to the early adopters (me, Calacanis, Kawasaki, Laporte, Winer, etc are all NOT on the recommended follower list). - Robert Scoble

Translation: I'll spend the time helping out friendfeed, not helping out Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Robert, true but even a simple reply for a simple question is more fruitful in here. BTW, I've rechecked all of my FF subscribers and it seems they are all smart and interesting without exceptions. - Nir Ben Yona

Nir: there's a whole lot of reasons why that's true. For one, my answers are more scalable here. They are locked to your questions and MUCH easier to search for than over on Twitter. Simplicity is cool, but in the long run doesn't measure up. - Robert Scoble

Scoble, excellent comment on early adopters. I am new to FF, but I plan to move over. It sucks now that twitter has become a star it is leaving behind the people that helped build it. not cool. - Jeff

Jeff: Twitter got arrogant and with good reason: they are in the middle of an extraordinary amount of hype. But soon the hype will move on. I'm seeing some fundamental problems that are showing their heads. This is just one of them. - Robert Scoble

Jeff: it's not about early adopters, either. It's about rewarding your best and most active members or at least not screwing them the way Twitter did. - Robert Scoble

Statistically more and more people are walking away from Twitter, and many of those reasons are being shared here. - Clifford Kennedy

Maybe Twitter is the next AOL? - Waldemar Schott

I wonder, if given the same position, if identi.ca would do things the same way twitter is. I think there is a reason to have twitter and a reason to have FF. What if we moved from twitter to identi.ca? - Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ

Robert: I totally agree about the early adopters thing, but wondering maybe in terms of business models and ROI, companies would prefer the bubbly PR rather than the good content of the pros. Twitter, has chosen the first direction which clearly brought a lot of buzz but will probably end up as yet another trend, instead of a great tool. - Nir Ben Yona

Mike: that won't happen. People don't move from one thing to another unless there's a reason to do so. And identi.ca has no reason that I can see. Friendfeed has some major reasons and is NOT a Twitter clone. I'm not going to leave Twitter, by the way. Why? That's where everyone is. When everyone interesting to me or to Rackspace isn't there anymore then I will leave. - Robert Scoble

Also, if I wanted to annoy someone, I could ask the 'bots' to flood that person's @mentions making that feature unusable. - Johnny Worthington

Nir: companies follow the tides of people who move to one thing over another. Right now Twitter has the tides moving to it. Friendfeed hasn't get gained a huge swell of people (although I'm about to pass 35,000 followers, which I got to faster than I did on Twitter). - Robert Scoble

So i take it from here that friendfeed needs a super A-list member to get to their next level, either it's Britney Spears or Bill Gates, that will tip the scale. - Nir Ben Yona

is Bill Gates on Twitter? - Waldemar Schott

I once complained about a Chinese spammer in FF-feedback. Within minutes his account was removed, and his spam was gone too. - Willem (@wim66) ☠

Nir: I'll bet money that a bunch of celebrities will come over to friendfeed in the next year. By the way, Bill Gates already said thanks to me for something I wrote on friendfeed, so I took that to mean he's reading friendfeed. - Robert Scoble

Nir, oh dear god no - Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ from IM

Has anyone looked at Blellow? I saw them at SXSW; seems to be a better developed twitter only it does not have the people. - Jeff

Jeff: I like Blellow, but it really hasn't caught on and that's in comparison to friendfeed which hasn't gone mainstream yet. - Robert Scoble

Robert: i remember you've mentioned that Bill Gates thing - interesting. Waldemar: maybe, who knows, but Britney is there for sure. - Nir Ben Yona

Do celebrities care about the @ replies? - Jeff

Jeff, no, but my local radio station that is using twitter as an audience feedback service does. The uber-celebs probably don't, but those who actually use it will. As soon as the middle falls out, game over. - Johnny Worthington

Jeff: good point, but I haven't found a human yet who doesn't care about getting @ replies. Well, maybe Oprah doesn't care. - Robert Scoble

I think they have assistants who watch at the @ replies - Waldemar Schott

Jeff: I do think they care for @replies but only up to a certain extent. @robluketic for example is a great director who decided to take social media to a different level by following almost 5000 people (not stars) and posting "behind the scenes" images of his films. Regretfully he got the opposite results, with people spamming him and constantly asking to cast them in or things like that, which made Rob delete them all. - Nir Ben Yona

I guess there are different levels of celebrity. I think it will be more interesting to see how brands that utilize twitter deal with spam bot problems. - Jeff

Jeff--Large brands like AT&T, Comcast, B of A...they will deal w/ spammers just like they do their customers: they will ignore them. - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

And do you consider all these "online marketing experts" out there as spammers ? A lot of them follow me everyday but as long as I don't follow them back, they don't stick very long. - Matthieu Balmes

Someone mentioned using Capatcha earlier in this conversation, that and they should require much like Facebook people have real identities, yes you can still get around it but it will reduce the junk. - Patrick Boegel

all the protections prevent a relative nobody, like me, who happens to be standing near your discussion at the museum party and has a valuable counterpoint to make. I would be otherwise silenced and therefor cannot add that little bit of outside viewpoint, or mutation, that may promote evolution of the discussion. (at the same time I am tired of robots like xxxgames.ru suddenly following me on twitter.) - Mike Thibodeau

I said this back in February http://bwana.posterous.com/twitter... - Bwana ☠

I'm concerned about twitter future and solutions for spammers, I already received a reply spam. That's just the beginning! - Rafael

FF's Achilles heel in this area is Rooms - spamming in Rooms here takes a while for users to catch up and admins have no easy way of managing it. - Brian Sullivan