Just like anyone on Twitter I don’t like to be spammed. I don’t think anyone does, and everyone wishes that there was an easier way to sort the content and usable products from all the spam. As a newbie to the Twitter community about a year ago, I wanted to try out TrueTwit since it is supposed to “filter the spam so I don’t have to”. I gave it a try for a spell since it was free and everything, but it didn’t last long.

 I have come to tell you that this nifty little free service is not so nifty–actually it is annoying and it only perpetuates the spammers to keep on spamming you and it also chases away potential followers because it annoys them. It is known in the Twitter community as an annoyance. If you don’t believe me, ask your followers and most–if not all–will say they hate it.

Here’s why:

1. Everyone knows how annoying the Captcha codes can be and having to solve one of these to follow someone on twitter is a turnoff.
2. Receiving an automated direct message from TrueTwit is  very impersonal and asking a favor from the get-go. You may not be asking the person to buy anything, but you are asking to “identify yourself”. I don’t which is worse. Not a friendly welcome.
3. TrueTwit also delays the follow and creates extra work for the person. Unless they really, REALLY want to follow you, they won’t bother.
4. Not only does it annoy your followers, but it can annoy you. TrueTwit will clutter up you DM box with all the validation DMs you send out. Managing your DMs will become a pain especially if you get a lot of new followers per day.

Also, please note that unless you follow someone back they can’t send you a DM. Most spam doesn’t occur in DMs–most of the time you get spammed in the stream with replies or mentions (@), and there’s nothing you can do about that except ignore it. If someone starts spamming you in your DM box, just unfollow them. It only takes a second.

There are a few things you can do to prevent or  reduce your chances of being spammed in your DM box:

1. Look at each new follower in turn. Be choosy who you want to follow by reading their profile. If there is no profile, you don’t have to follow.
2. Look at the picture. Is it a person, a business logo, or an egg? Most of the time eggs are guaranteed to be bots or spammers, but some are more crafty than that.
3. Pull up the person’s timeline. Do they tweet the same thing over and over again? Do they tweet link after link? If this is the case, it’s probably a bot, so don’t follow.
4. Like I mentioned earlier if you do all the above and the person starts spamming you, then you can unfollow them.
5. If you are trying to filter your tweeps, Twitter does have settings where you must approve the person’s follow, but they don’t require any more extra work for your new follower, just you.

After a little bit of time you will be able to spot who is human and who is not with these simple little tips. These don’t take forever to do. You can do most of these in like 5-10 seconds altogether. If you have TrueTwit and wonder why your following is bottlenecked, ditch the TrueTwit.

In summary after trying TrueTwit I have come to hate it just as much as everyone else.