Is it Spam?

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot more spam coming my way, particularly on my blog and twitter, and it’s got me thinking: Where does the line between spam and not spam lie?

There is obvious spam; Pharmaceutical companies bombarding blogs with unintelligible messages, porn twitter accounts and corporate accounts that use any means possible to market their products, like Habitat’s appalling use of the Iran election hash tag to promote their goods.

These practices are, in my opinion, unacceptable.  But is there a spectrum of ‘spamminess’?

Last week I was irritated by lots of new ‘naked followers’ and a twitter account that automatically retweeted any tweet with the words ‘your mum’ in. It didn’t really do me any harm. But set-ups like that just increase the noise on Twitter and make it even harder to sift out interesting content.

Then in a conversation with my good friend @redclaire an unused Wagamama cookbook was mentioned. Within minutes this tweet appeared

@noodle_bar @redclaire @NikkiGirvan is it a crime to have a Wagamama cookbook and never use it?? if not it should be :)

I tweeted back an amicable response, but never received any further interaction, which lead me the opinion that this was spam. @noodle_bar was not interested in joining my conversation, just promoting a product.

Later that day I was talking about a school in the Knowsley area (where I live) when I received a cheery tweet from @KnowsleyCouncil:

@KnowsleyCouncil @NikkiGirvan If you're interested in news, events and information about Knowsley, why not follow us?

When I looked the thread the same message had been sent to A LOT of people. I smelled a web-bot and tweeted the question ‘Is this spam?’

The response was mixed, some people responded saying it was spam – why couldn’t they just follow and let me make the decision. Others reasoned it was justified as I was talking about the area and there was a good chance I’d be interested in what @KnowsleyCouncil had to say.

I was unconvinced until I received a tweet direct from Knowsley Council. The following interaction ensued.

@KnowsleyCouncil @NikkiGirvan Just saw you were talking about Knowsley and wondered if you'd be interested in following us, no worries if not!

@KnowsleyCouncil ah right, so you're actually doing the tweeting manually? Nice to know you're not a web-bot!

@KnowsleyCouncil @NikkiGirvan Oh no, we're real people! :-)

A simple exchange, but it made all the difference. I went back to the twitter feed and scrolled past the @messages (the same as the one I received) and I found interesting tweets about my local area, pictures, links and even videos. I immediately hit ‘follow’ and came to the conclusion ‘not spam’.

These approaches can cause affront because you feel like someone has been eavesdropping and butted into your conversation. But in the digital age should we really be surprised? Interaction and conversation is what it’s all about, after all.

Maybe the line between spam and not spam is weather people pay any attention to how people take to their methods and messages and respond accordingly?