< sidebar >I love articles that write themselves. Too bad I was too scheduled to do it yesterday as I would have liked.< /sidebar >

For my pals who are new to Twitter and similar services, there are several different types of Twitter spam, but today, I’m addressing/complaining about/making fun of people who create false profiles and follow several thousand people in order to try and get traffic to a link.

Here’s why they’re stupid.

1- Veteran twitterers can spot you easily. You are followed by 2 people, but following 2000. The link on your profile is to bogus crap, and a smart person doesn’t have to click it to find out. It’s called hovering. Even my Mom knows how to hover over a link and look at what shows up in the status bar.

2- Even if you could pull domain mapping or a re-direct to get someone to click the link… hm…. how can I put this delicately….?

No. One. Cares.

And Everyone will remember your obvious attempt to screw them out of the precious seconds of their lives.

3- Let’s see, you’re not getting clicked by most people. Those who do aren’t going to say, “oh wow, the Cash Surprise Viagra Pyramid Scheme! I’ve been Waiting to try it! Thank you Mr. Spammer!” So it’s still a stupid waste of time, even the false logic of “it only takes a few minutes so even if I can get one person to buy it’s worth it”.

And now, I hate you and that company for wasting MY time. Because mine, unlike yours, actually IS money.

So, this is a shout-out to anyone who is essentially a good person but in a moment of weakness thought that spamming a social network was a good way to get some fast clicks and make some money.

No.

And to the rest of you, if you think it’s not happening on your favorite social network, think again.

I love alliteration. And I love Twitter but various issues have caused me to neglect my Twittersations. Yes, I just made up that word. Maybe it should be Tweetersations?

Anyway.

Following are thre four cool things that are getting me back into Twitter that I thought I’d share. I figure there are some other sporadic twits out there. Ha.

Twitter Toy #1- Twiturly

Why It’s Fun: Keeps track of the most Tweeted links so you stay in the loop.

It operates similar to Digg where people vote on an item and it gets displayed higher up the home page, but more closely to PageRank where basically every person that links to the same final url, is considered a vote for that URL. With Each vote that the URL gets, it climbs further and further up the list.

Twitter Toy #2 – Quotably

Why It’s Fun: It makes twitter conversations easier to follow. That’s my failing with Twitter, I use it more as a news source, entertainment source (magnify the pic above) and to keep track of the status of folks I’m following so I can catch them at a good time for phone calls or other interaction.

The way Quotably displays conversations makes them easy to join, or follow. And now you can even log in to Twitter through their site an post your replies to conversations there.

Twitter Toy #3 – Who Should I Follow?

Why It’s Fun: Stick you username in there and get Relevant suggestions of people to follow. There’s a lot of folks I know or know of in the search industry who I wasn’t following and should be. Quickly rectified.

Bonus Twitter Toy #4 – Twhirl

Why I didn’t just say they were four to start with: I love alliteration. Starting with the word four kinda blows the model.

Why It’s Fun: It’s a desktop client for Twitter (that also works on Macs). With its unique display, if I have it up there’s still room on my screen to comfortably use my browser and have IM in its own space too. If I need it minimized it updates me with new tweets. It’s kinda cool to have a rolling notification of who is tweeting what, though at times it’s annoying…

But you can also pause notifications if you want to concentrate. It also works with FeedFriend, which I love. But I’ll talk about that when I do my post on tools that are bringing me back to Social Media.

Wanna get into the Twitter movement? Use these tools, and you’ll likely get the point of all this tweeting a lot faster.