
Despite ongoing efforts to address the problem, spam remains a thorn in the side of social leaders like Twitter and Facebook.
In fact, nearly 10% of all Twitter “users” who
tweet in English are “non-consumers,” according to new findings from Networked Insights. Worse yet, these accounts are responsible for pumping out about 15% of all tweets, the analytics
firm found.
The persistence of the problem is partly due to innovations on the part of spammers, says Jaime Brugueras, vice president of analytics at Networked Insights.
“Both
the quantity and the quality of spam is improving, meaning that spam is harder for Twitter and other platforms to detect and filter,” Brugueras said on Monday.
Spanning the social
landscape, marketers produce most of the spam that consumers come across. Indeed, coupons, product listings, contests and giveaways make up nearly 6% of all social spam, Networked Insights reports.
(Technically speaking, “non-consumers” include social bots, celebrities, brand handles and inactive accounts.)
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On social, some brand conversations are entirely driven by spam. For
Rite Aid and beauty brand Elizabeth Arden, a staggering 95% of branded posts and conversations, including their names, are classified as spam, according to Networked Insights.
Other super
spammy brands include Visa (81%), MasterCard (76%), beauty brand Ulta (75%), and American Eagle Outfitters (73%).
With consumer sensibilities in mind, social giants have been working to reduce
the rate of spam and other unwanted content.
Last year, Twitter admitted
that nearly 10% of its userbase were bots, which automatically ping the site with updates. Yet, at the time, the company estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monthly
active users.
Among other efforts to clean up its News Feed, Facebook recently took
aim at spam, including scams -- “Click here to win a lifetime supply of coffee” -- and deliberately false or misleading news stories: “Man sees dinosaur on hike in
Utah.”
Late last year, Instagram vowed to wipe out spammy fake
accounts. As a result, some of the most popular brands on the network saw significant declines in their followings.