Saturday November 21, 2009 8:47 PM AEST
David Field

How Twitter pwned Dave’s inbox

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By David Field
Nov 17, 2008 | 16 Comments
I’d like to apologise to everybody in my Gmail address book who I inadvertently spammed yesterday. I’d also like to place the blame squarely at the overzealous marketing people at Twitter.

You see, after my Barcamp presentation on Human-Computer Interaction, I was coaxed by people to sign up to Twitter. And after joining, I was asked for my email address and password to get my friends hooked up.

And it is at exactly at this point -- this intersection of assumption, learned behaviour and having faith in social networking companies not to abuse my information -- where things went horribly wrong.

I assumed that Twitter would log into my account, scan my contacts, compare them against its own list of email addresses and then add the matches to a list of contacts on my new Twitter account.

Kind of like what I seem to remember Facebook doing.

It didn’t.

I have just recovered from being ridiculed for failing internet security 101 on just about all of my various mailing lists. Some people were hit with the “faldo wants to keep up with you on Twitter” message 5 times, because they are in various groups for projects I manage as well as common lists.

Here’s a selection of well deserved insults from those lists:

“I frequently give away my gmail password on IRC to see what will happen, sometimes I give them my credit card details too!” - Tom

“FUCK YOU dave, i got like 9 e-mails in my inbox from you” - Arthur

“also tiwtter is awesome and everybody should get on it” - Arthur (yes, the same Arthur)

“What an insidious service.” - Rob

I agree most with Rob’s comment. With all the social networking sites popping up trying to be the next big thing, I suppose (in shameful retrospect) that it's natural for them to try and push themselves in front of as many people as they possibly can, by any means possible.

I just expected better of them.

In retaliation, I’ll probably end up voting with my feet and simply not using Twitter. And I doubt anyone who got the spammed email will either. I’ve already got a feeling that it’s going to end up on an ever-growing pile of Web 2.0 things I’ve signed up to only to never end up using, mostly because from the outset I just can’t see the point.

I’ve heard stories of people twittering things like “entering harbour tunnel” from their mobiles, then a minute and a bit later twittering “just exited harbour tunnel”. I just can’t see my level of involvement extending that far: I’m bad enough with Facebook, which I only check once a fortnight or so -- mostly to add parties to my calendar because certain people have given up on using email and phones.

And even with phones, I’ll normally get an SMS instead of a phone call. It seems like everything’s being slowly converted to text and truncated because people are slowly giving up on speech. Perhaps if I had that kind of mindset, instead of being the kind of person who composes these verbose diatribes, Twitter would appeal to me more than it does.

I’ll give it a shot, but after their little stunt I’ll have no hesitation or remorse about walking away from the service.

Surely nobody really cares that much about what their whole extended network of friends are doing anyway. I’m still convinced you can accomplish the same thing by looking at the status of the people you care about in your Gmail contact list.

Anybody want to take a guess at what my Gmail status is right now? Yep, it’s a link to this column, for the benefit of the people who I spammed. It’s partly because I’m too embarrassed to apologise over Twitter, and partly because a large chunk of the people I just annoyed will never sign up to Twitter to see a link to this if I posted it there.

Sorry guys.
 
16 Comments
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
SceptreCore
Nov 17, 2008 7:02 PM
 Im glad your not my friend!

:P
Genisis X
Nov 17, 2008 7:16 PM
 What he said.

-X
Athiril
Nov 17, 2008 7:19 PM
 For shame ^faldo^, for shame.
Girvo
Nov 17, 2008 8:04 PM
 Hah.

Twitter is kinda handy when it's put in easy reach: Twadget rules.
LordBug
Nov 17, 2008 8:18 PM
 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/4/23/

Girvo: Twadget? Sounds like something to do with vaginas. "Oi love, can you grab me a twadget from the chemist when you go past? Me twat is playing up again!"
Girvo
Nov 17, 2008 8:24 PM
 @LordBug
That's why I love it! :D
nesquick
Nov 17, 2008 9:17 PM
 Find each person who "coaxed" you into signing up and punch them in the face for every spam email someone got :P
fabricator
Nov 18, 2008 1:06 AM
 If Twitter can do it, so can real spammers. I'd like to know why gmail, yahoo etc don't just ban these social networking sites from scripted login to email accounts ?
smadge1
Nov 18, 2008 10:20 AM
 I didn't get a single email from faldo.
Bristow
Nov 18, 2008 12:55 PM
 You just pinged the whole problem with Web 2.0. Totally overloaded with unmitigated dross and lacking even the most trivial of editorial oversight. No value & no quality.
EOS
Athiril
Nov 18, 2008 3:27 PM
 I had a bad dream last night that I also signed up to twitter after reading this article... -_-
Taranthor
Nov 18, 2008 5:11 PM
 I think I got 3 emails.... but I just blindly delete them anyway :P
dsagill
Nov 18, 2008 7:04 PM
 LOL - When the mighty fall they hit harder :)

I don't even know what twitter is (that WASN'T an invitation to put me on your fecking email list!!!!).
segger
Nov 18, 2008 8:03 PM
 Never mind dsagill, neither do I. I think I've stumbled across the site before but it seemed to be full of useless one liners from randoms I don't care about.

That's some spectacular fail, Faldo.

I've seen other people caught with this on mailing lists. Does the service not have a huge warning that says "warning: by entering your e-mail address here we'll instaspam your contacts"?

If not, then that's pretty bloody poor. I'd be whinging loudly to the service's maintainers, but then I tend to whinge loudly about most things.
LogicprObe
Nov 20, 2008 7:06 AM
 It's a stupid name for starters and I always thought it was for losers.

faldo!..........wake up to yourself!
Voney
Nov 25, 2008 7:42 PM
 Lol... I suck i actually signed up after receiving the email.

/me awaits ridicule.
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