Why can’t Twitter stop spammers?

Anyone who’s used Twitter will very probably have received spam; you only have to mention some things, like iPads, and you’ll get a load of spam bots sending you messages.

Personally, I’m pretty suspicious of the number of svelte looking women with odd names in my followers list; I doubt they’re all interested in my take on Digital TV, and expect to be spammed by them at any moment.

What surprises me most, though, is that Twitter doesn’t seem to do anything at all to filter out spam – and I think they need to get a grip on that.

Ok, some of the usual techniques might be hard; it’s in the nature of Twitter that people will use shortened links, so you can’t see what they are, and that the same link will be reposted by many people, so that’s not indicative of spam.

But, looking at many of the spam messages I’ve received – where someone has sent them to me as an ‘@’ message, it’s pretty obvious, and I’m amazed that Twitter doesn’t stop this.

These messages all come from people who have recently joined – in the last couple of days – and have zero followers, follow no other people, but yet have sent hundreds of messages a day to other people.

Can anyone honestly tell me there’s a rational way of using Twitter like that? I can’t think of one, or of any good reason why you shouldn’t stop a brand new account with no followers from sending hundreds of @ messages to different people, every day. I can’t even envisage someone brand new to Twitter firing off 400 messages with links a day to people they’re not following, just because they’re new.

Today I’ve had spam from someone who joined two days ago, and has sent 72 messages; another who joined today, and has sent 438, and another who joined today and has sent 445. All with no followers, and not following anyone else.

Sure, a lot of Twitter clients (but not all) have a report spam button, but I’m starting to get a bit tired of doing this for them – and I bet a lot of people just don’t bother, either.

Does Twitter really want to wait until their service becomes swamped before tackling spam?

How social do you want your TV?

Or why Panasonic’s Twitter client misses the point

Now you can tweet from your TV! Panasonic's Twitter client, shown here running on a 2009 V10 series Freesat TV

I mentioned last week that one of the things that Panasonic talked about at their Convention this year was the rebranding of VieraCast as VieraConnect, and the addition of some extra services. One of the ones that they made a big fuss about was the new Facebook service, which complements the Twitter application that was rolled out last year on some VieraCast sets (apologies for the slightly ropy quality of the picture).

One of the things you can see is that, for reasons best known to themselves, Panasonic has decided that when you use Twitter or Facebook on your TV, you want to do it full screen.

I can see that might make it a bit easier if you’re wanting to do certain tasks, but equally, I’m just not sure that this is really the way that people really do want to use these applications on their TV.

Sure, social networking is about sharing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to share absolutely everything with the people in the same room as you; some people just feel a bit uncomfortable at having other people watch as they write messages, others might not want a message from certain people to be seen – and when Facebook or Twitter is taking up the whole TV screen, it’ll be a bit embarrassing when someone points and says “So, who’s ‘BigBoy69’ then?”

How to tweet on TV

What’s really missing from the social applications I’ve seen on TV so far is a very simple thing – limited social functionality, while you’re watching TV.

The reason I might want Twitter, for instance, on the television is not as an alternative to using the computer or mobile phone – both of which are considerably easier to control than a TV with a remote – but as an adjunct to those.

If I’m watching Question Time, for example, or the Eurovision Song Contest, I want to watch those programmes – but if the TV could also provide me with a ticker or scrolling list of tweets with the appropriate hash tag, either beside or below the picture, that would be a fun addition. Add an option that lets me retweet the finest bon-mots to my followers, and that’s it. All I need.

When I want to share my wonderful insights or caustic cattiness with everyone, I don’t want to reach for the TV remote, mess about with a numeric key pad, and take three times as long to compose a message as normal. I’ll just pick up my phone, or my laptop, and compose the message there. The TV shouldn’t be trying to replace the other ways I interact with Twitter; it should be an adjunct to them.

Most people I’ve mentioned this to (hardly a scientific survey, I know) feel the same; if you’re going to put Twitter – or any social networking – on a TV , please do it right, and think about how people actually use the service. Otherwise it looks like someone in marketing just thought “Yeah, Twitter’s popular, let’s build it in to our TV.”

Panasonic rolls out iPlayer update for 2009 Freesat TVs

Update: adds Twitter too

Panasonic has just rolled out the long-awaited update to 2009 Freesat TVs, to enable users to access BBC iPlayer via the red button service.

However, it’s not immediately obvious to users – if you go to the Setup menu and tell the set to look for new software, it won’t find any, as it doesn’t appear to be broadcast “over the air”, that is via the satellite signal.

Instead, you need to start the VieraCast function by pressing the dedicated button on the remote control, and you’ll then see a screen telling you there’s new software available. Click OK, then select Yes, and the software will download via your internet connection. So, you’ll obviously need the TV connected to the net to download the update, but you have to do that for iPlayer anyway (and see this article for my recommendations on how to connect up a set).

I’ve tried this on my set, which is one of the V10 models. I’d love to hear from other people with 2009 models, so we can establish whether or not the update is available across all the VieraCast models from that year.

When you’ve updated, your set’s software version will be 2.303.

Now you can tweet from your TV! Panasonic's Twitter client, shown here running on a 2009 V10 series Freesat TV

This update also adds a Twitter client to the set, which is a surprise – I thought that it would only feature on 2010 models, which have USB ports and keyboard support. But you’ll find Twitter in there too, and you can compose messages, if somewhat laboriously, using the numeric keypad on the remote control.

Thanks to GreenBars on the Digital Spy forums for the heads up on iPlayer.