How to Spot a Twitter Whore

As with any social network, there comes an inevitable point in time were the service falls victim, and becomes plagued with spam accounts – and taking a leaf out of the pretty much dead Myspace’s book (with the exception of a handful of music artists, pre-teens just starting out who don’t know any better, and not forgetting non-conformists) – you also get Whores.

You see, they’re not real Whores. Not the lady of the night types you see skankily clad (not a typo) in the doorways of seedy Soho clubs – venues of which I’d imagine have “greasy” walls and also haven’t seen a duster and a lick of Cif since the early 90′s when it used to be called Jif. Not even the Whores with hearts of gold that are trying to make money to look after their jonesing-from-birth crack baby.

They’re Faux Whores – Slags of the Interwebs – and more on point, the bane of my and many others’ Twitter followers list.

Call me what you will. I’m fully aware that in a way, I am too, a Twitter Whore. Some 16,000 tweets plus prove that. However, as an early adopter, I can safely say that back in the day, I didn’t have one Whore or spam-bot follow me. Now, I get on average three non-legit accounts follow me a day – and that’s not mentioning the SEO lot.

If you don’t have a handle on it, ‘cus some of these spammers circumvent the automated new follower alert e-mails, and check regularly and nuke ‘em from orbit, you’ll find that these lingering trashy accounts build up into some kind of virtual TSTFD* syphilis.

So here’s my guide for veteran and new-users alike to spotting, and nuking, a Twitter Whore in eight easy steps.

1) No profile pic.

While there are genuine users who don’t have pics for whatever reason, you can often tell they’re on the level by their Following-to-Follower ratio and the content of their timeline; but 9/10 times, you can safely bet that your new Follower sporting the once ogling shifty lil’ o_O’s, now favoured by a tweet-bird, is most likely a spam-bot or Whore.

2) Twitter Handle has numbers in it.

Again, you have to be careful ‘cus I’ve got friends who have numbers in their Handle, but a good rule of thumb is that if you get a new Follower with a name like thus:

That they’re probably a Whore.

3) Following outweighs Followers.

This one’s pretty easy. If there’s a difference of, say, a couple hundred, thousand between those the user is Following and those that are Following them back… you get the picture.

4) Only one post, and that post is about doubling amount of Followers, how to earn cash or get pills to enlarge a certain part of your anatomy.

What it says on the tin.

5) Profile pic is of a woman, but username is of a man.

Ahem.

6) Handle/Username has the word “Foreplay” in it.

Seriously?

7) Same profile pic used for two different accounts.

The credit crunch has hit us all hard, but really?

8) All, and I mean ALL of their tweets are links.

Because I don’t already have an RSS feed, obviously.

Or any combination of the above. Also, if your Handle contains the word “Bieber”, I’m not following you. I’m blocking you, and considering reporting you as spam. Principle alone dictates that I must.

I’m sure there’s more I’ve left out, but after reading this, statically you are now 38.5%** safer and more prepared.

I know that you’ll get spam wherever you go on the Internet, it’s just a thing we have to deal with, and they’re crafty buggers trying to trick the system, but they really don’t give us much credit now, do they? A pic of a woman, who’s Handle is funky and who’s username is a blokes’ who’s trying to sell you something? C’mon.

* – Twitterly-Spam-Transmitted-Followers-Disease.
** – Figures plucked from the ether. Not proven.