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Happy Cinco De Mayo – and My New Twitter Use

May 5th, 2009 Rex Dixon Leave a comment Go to comments

First off – Happy Cinco De Mayo! Kind of cool that it falls on a Tuesday this year. >:-? If you didn’t know, a little while back a twitter friend of mine said something to the effect of “I guess my sarcasm didn’t come through on twitter?” It didn’t. So I stated, “You should have an emoticon that depicts sarcasm!” That is when I came up with >:-? for her. I now use it all the time when I’m being sarcastic.

rex-dixon-on-twitterWhat is this new twitter use? For quite a bit now, I have had a contact form on this blog’s contact page. I have also had it on another page which I call Advertise. Both have been great annoying harbors of stupid ridiculous spammers. I tried another form this morning, which just had more spammers hit it almost immediately. That is when the tweet-god went off in my head. “Why not just tell people to connect with me via an @ or DM on twitter?

Technically Speaking, the above isn’t a ground breaking twitter use idea, but for me – at least with twitter I have more control over who follows, who I follow, who I can outright block, and who I converse with via @ or DM. While not ground breaking, twitter just solved a spam problem for me. Feel free to share this idea with others!

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  • Why not?! I'm with Julia though, what about folks not on twitter. Odd that your contact form is having such spam problems. No captcha?

    My postcard form, a Google form, hasn't had any spam problems. Of course it's on a page all its own.

    If they don't have Twitter account though, that's a problem. Ha. I've also provided a phone number on my blog, as well as other choices, such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
  • @tojosan - Yes, the issue of people not on twitter is a tricky one. Although, if they have e-mail - twitter is a free sign up. :) Now of course, I use to put those links on there - LinkedIn, FB, MySpace, etc... but why all the clutter is my thought? Think my phone number use to be on the site also at one time.

    Tried a bunch of different forms, all seemed to have spam issues one way or the other. This so far has killed all spam to my e-mail for my blog. :) So - if you have an issue with spam - give it a try is all I can say.

    You want to contact further (e-mail / IM etc.) or call me - @ me or DM me on twitter. Simple.
  • Fantastic idea, Rex. I'm so happy that I was able to inspire you, and I plan to use >:-? when I'm being sarcastic from now on.

    >:-?
  • @susanisk - >:-? I think that gets the point across? If not, you may not want to waste the 4 characters of your precious 140 being sarcastic! hahaha.. j/k. Hey - I guess I should put a disclaimer on this - as @juliadalton noted - it's not for everyone!
  • That's a great idea as more and more people embrace Twitter! The only problem with DM's is they tend to get lost in all the auto DM's. I like @ 's much better.

    Happy Cinco do Mayo to you too!
  • @Heather - Thanks for liking the idea, make sure you pass it on to others that have the same issue of comment form spammers!
  • How would this work for people who are not on Twitter? Doesn't this assume everyone who would want to contact you would have a Twitter account. I am not sure I would go through the process of setting up a Twitter account just to contact someone. Am I missing something or is it your preference to have it set up this way?
  • Question to answer your question.

    Would this work for everyone that didn't have an e-mail account? See where my thought process is going now? :)

    Now to answer the question properly. 1. Tired of comment form spam, it's ridiculous and taking up tons of cpu cycles to just process and dump into my trash/spam folders. Not even interesting spam, just gibberish. 2. Solves my problem and it takes care of #1.

    It does however as you stated, assume people have a twitter account. Again, see the smart ass question to answer your comment I posted. It's heading that way really quick is the way I see it.

    Does this work for everyone? Maybe not. Does it work for those that I care to converse with? Probably so. :)
  • While everyone may not have an email address, I would say without a shred of doubt that more people have an email addy (especially those reading and potentially contacting you about your blog) over having a Twitter account.

    Also, don't you have to have an email account to get on Twitter? Email will always be more widely adopted over Twitter, that is my take anyway.

    Is it comment spam you are avoiding or are people actually spamming your contact form? Couldn't you also put in a captcha?

    And to my point in the first comment, I assumed that despite the drawbacks this works for you and targets the people you want to talk to anyway. It's your preference and I can dig that.
  • I tried several different forms - they all end up having gibberish spam get through. Just a big waste of time as far as I'm concerned.

    The point on the e-mail - think way back - but it was probably within the last decade that people were in the "rare" if they had an e-mail address. Now you are on the "rare" side of things if you do not have an e-mail address.

    The point is - and yes you are correct, you need an e-mail address to have a twitter account - is that more and more adoption of twitter is happening daily. As the service grows, it's going to be more common to hear people say "hit me up on twitter @RexDixon is my account" vs people saying "hit me up in e-mail @ rexdixon @ someemailer dot com"

    It's good to hear an opposing view, means people are actually reading - so much props to you for providing that opposing view Julia! Appreciate it. Yes, it's working for me so far - no more stupid gibberish spam via the contact forms I had on here - and now people that really want to flag me down for a conversation, question, or whatever - know an easy way to get a hold of me.

    No twitter account? Well signing up is free! :)
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