SocialToo just announced a number of new features that will allow Twitter users to fight the increasing amount of direct messaging (DM) spam, which is becoming a major hassle on Twitter. SocialToo can now replace the default email messages that Twitter normally sends out when a user receives a DM with a customized email from SocialToo itself. These emails will allow users to immediately flag another user as a spammer and block any further messages from their account. In addition, SocialToo is also launching its own spam filter, with which users can block DMs based on a user-defined list of keywords and phrases like “get 500 new followers a day” or “make money.”
All of these services will be available for free.
Both the DM email service and the keyword-based spam-blocking feature look like excellent ideas. In addition to blocking spammers to your account, SocialToo will also alert Twitter’s @spam account whenever you block somebody and flag them as a spammer (TweetDeck, we should note, offers a similar feature).
Fighting Twitter Spam
SocialToo, of course, was responsible for quite a few of these spam messages in the early days of Twitter; though this February, SocialToo’s CEO Jesse Stay announced that the service would end support for auto DMs, and SocialToo had been already offering some basic tools to fight auto-following spammers. Others have now jumped into this market, and the problem is getting more pronounced by the day. Of course, the problem of Twitter spam in general is getting worse, too, and we are still waiting for a good third-party solution to filter spam messages in our regular Twitter stream or for Twitter to put its foot down and implement better spam filters itself.
