One of the biggest complaints we hear from Twitter users is the increase in Twitter auto direct message spam. You know, those “thanks for following me” DMs that include a link, almost as an afterthought, offering you a free gift, the ability to earn a ton of cash, or the opportunity to check out a new product. Well, we’re a bit sick of them too.
Apparently, SocialToo CEO Jesse Stay feels the same way. Last month SocialToo users were given the option to turn off auto DMs from other SocialToo users; today, Stay announced SocialToo is completely disabling auto-DMs.
“Based on my statistics, while a small percent of you are using auto-DMs for legitimate business reasons (for instance, sending instructions to followers if you are doing an online promotion that includes following the Twitter user as part of the promotion), over one-third of you sending automated DMs have some sort of URL in your message to followers. The remaining majority is just sending simple thank you’s, which while I think are truly genuine, are now being ignored by most people that receive them,” Stay noted on his blog this morning.
While SocialToo was not the only service that provided auto DM support, it was one of the two main providers of this functionality. TweetLater still offers auto DM if you must have it, but if you too are sick of them and want to disable auto DMs, take a look at Jack Bastide‘s post on opting out of TweetLater.
Many of us have been inundated with auto DMs and so a huge thank you to Jesse Stay for leading the fight against auto DM spam. If you want to join us, why not send him your thanks via Twitter.
Update:
Also of interest (thanks Louis Gray) is that SocialToo is working on a filter of sorts for other auto DM services.
“If you provide your Twitter username and password (this is required because other services require it – it will be via OAuth in the near future) and check the box, “Turn off automatic Direct Messages from other services?”, we’ll set you up to block DMs from as many services that do this as we can, automatically.”
