So, is Twitter spammy?

[primsong]

Okay, I fully admit to being the internet equivalent of a verrrrry slow dinosaur here, but I'm thinking of getting a twitter account - I've never even used twitter thus far - and am sort of circling it cautiously, poking it with a stick.

Question to you twitter people - does it create a lot of spam? I'm trying to figure whether to risk linking it to my email, or whether that will get out into the wild and become a spam target if I do.

Comments

[kerravonsen]

It depends who you follow. Me, I use it to follow friends I already knew from other contexts, plus things like the Dreamwidth status twitter, so I know if Dreamwidth is down. I avoid anything remotely commercial or promotional. I don't get tweets emailed to me, I just check my twitter page in the morning and evening before and after work (sometimes more often, sometimes less). I do get emailed when someone follows me or retweets me. When someone follows me, I check them out; if they seem to be following me just so that they can get the links (because if someone follows you, your page links back to them, thus, theoretically boosting their ranking in search engines) - then I block them, sometimes reporting for spam if they seem to be a spammer account (e.g. posting only nonsense with links attached). If they seem legit, with a real reason for following me, I let them be.

[primsong]

Thank you so much! Very helpful info. I think I'll dip my toe in the pool and set it to not having emails sent to me then - I'm glad that can be tweaked that way.