Spam is everywhere, it’s mass, it’s personal, it’s viral and now it’s on Twitter. Twam is really baffling me and consuming a fair amount of my strategic thought.

I am trying to understand a few things:

1. How do these twammers choose who they are going to follow to make up the 20 000th follower.
2. What value does it offer them? If I don’t follow them I can’t see what they tweet.
3. Are they real people who have actually clicked “Follow” 20 000 times?
4. Why would you follow and receive updates from twammers?

Let me explain; a twammer by my definition is someone who insists on following thousands of people and in return hopefully get a percentage of those people following them.

Example:

This person

And this person

Another form of Twam is the constant links that are posted from people promoting their blogs. Mass twammers who follow thousands of people are the worst sort of link-twam posters. It’s frustrating.

I am all for posting links to your blogs if they relate to the current discussion or if you genuinely feel that people will find it of interest, but don’t twam me with every post. I have been trying out twitlink-something-or-other (there are too many apps nowaday to rememeber all their names). I don’t like it and will be removing it soon as I can remember where it is!

Basically I just don’t know how it is that I am lucky enough to be chosen by people like the two above as someone worth twamming. Is it when you reach a certain number of followers? Is it location driven, can they possibly be following your content and think you have a common ground? Surely not. Whichever it is, leave me alone.