Further to this, I think Abir has raised a subject that gets little attention on this list, user behaviour. It is relevant as we must take it into account as we design our apps.
My initial response to the OP was of course facetious. If a message arrives in my timeline I will read it, which is why spam must be dealt with mercilessly by Twitter. As another poster pointed out recently, keyword based fake @replies are a violation of Twitter TOS. As with email spam, this should apply equally to automated and manually composed messages. But it would be interesting to know more about the behaviour of different types of Twitter users and for this one would first need to establish a typology of users. I suggest two broad categories, readers and writers, and maybe a third category that would include those engaged in massive mutual following. Users who follow thousands of accounts can't possibly be reading much of their streams, and may not be writing much either. As a writer I tend to regard members of this group (those that are human) as disoriented, and focus my attention on followers who are following reasonable numbers of accounts. As for the effectiveness of 'targeting' users by keywords, I've seen a clever implementation lately whereby I was followed by an fully automated (or possibly, 'curated') account that was just amassing followers based on keyword. Checking out their website one finds thousands of similar keyword-based accounts, a big system. Evidently the intention is that you should follow them and click on a link or whatever. It was almost credible, I'll hand them that, but could not withstand any real scrutiny. Still, plenty of high quality accounts had followed them back.. What can you all say about user behaviour that you have observed? > From: and...@badera.us > Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 04:59:56 -0500 > Subject: Re: [twitter-dev] @ Message read rate for non-followers > To: twitter-development-talk@googlegroups.com > > On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 3:00 AM, Ken Dobruskin <k...@cimas.ch> wrote: > > Zero percent, and report for spam. > > > >> Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:13:33 -0800 > >> Subject: [twitter-dev] @ Message read rate for non-followers > >> From: abstar...@gmail.com > >> To: twitter-development-talk@googlegroups.com > >> > >> Hey Guys, > >> > >> Do you know what % of people read @ messages if you are not a follower > >> + targeting them based on keywords or search api's? > >> > >> Thanks, > >> Abir > > ++ to reporting as spam. > > ∞ Andy Badera > ∞ +1 518-641-1280 Google Voice > ∞ This email is: [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private > ∞ Google me: http://www.google.com/search?q=andrew%20badera > > > ________________________________ > > Windows Live: Keep your friends up to date with what you do online. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live: Keep your friends up to date with what you do online. http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/windows/windowslive/see-it-in-action/social-network-basics.aspx?ocid=PID23461::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-xm:SI_SB_1:092010
