Are 40% of all social accounts “spam”?



Contributing Writer
Illustration: No Spam Credit: Michal Zacharzewski

Illustration: No Spam Credit: Michal Zacharzewski

Business Week reported last week that “Spammers create as many as 40 percent of the accounts on social-media sites.”  Newsjackers saw that number and THEIR headlines morphed to “40% of all social accounts are spam. ”  Regardless of how this figure is represented it is pretty easily debunked.

So two questions to ask – (#1) who produced the statistic and (#2) what is their definition of “spam?”

This statistic was provided by the CEO of Impermium, a company that sells anti-spam software.  The “up to 40%” figure indicates that it’s an educated guess of sorts.  The fact that these accounts are identified as “spam” indicates that they are active users (posting at least once per month).  The problem with 40% of new accounts qualifying as spam is that both Twitter and Facebook hover around a 50% split of active and inactive users.  We would then deduce that more than 40% of active social accounts are spam, and anecdotally it doesn’t make sense.  How could half of all social accounts be spam and anyone still be using social platforms?

Which leads to the question – what exactly is spam?  On Imperium’s website they define spam as ”any unwanted content that someone experiences on social network or in user-generated content sites on the Internet.”  This explains it.  In other words, pretty much everyone is a spammer.  Look at this tweet from the exquisite singer Joan Osborne:

 


By Imperium’s standards this tweet is spam, because it is unwanted content that I have experienced on a social network.  I don’t want to read Joan Osborne offering to give a concert in the living room of kmsstratct (if that is his real name).   That concert should happen in my house Joan!  (Call me)

Point being, using a more traditional definition of spam (phishing and other tactics), 40% is a pretty preposterous estimate even when only considering new accounts.  By the looser definition my mom could be considered a spammer, and that’s kind of a cruel scarlet letter to brandish her with.  She just wishes I would call more often.
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Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

Jim Dougherty

@jimdougherty

Writer about social media and tech at Leaders West, I also tweet as @leaderswest.

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Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

  • http://www.timegears.com Chris Pritchard

    Where is the distinction between a normal account that may send spam, and an account that was created solely for the purpose of sending spam messages? If a business creates a business account, or a seudo account (like “Dear Abby”) would that be considered a spam account? I think the title and the content here don’t really match up that well, but it’s an interesting topic.

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    Thanks for commenting Chris! Whether you think it’s relevant to the title or not, you hit on my point which was that “spam” isn’t a particularly well defined concept. By defining it broadly and promising to eradicate it, a number like 40% is helpful to an anti-spam company, but to characterize the activities of individuals on social sites it’s not accurate or helpful. Cheers and thanks for reading!

  • http://www.triplestrength.com/ Jason Beck

    The funny thing is that the accounts can only really be considered “spam” if you Follow someone, and then they Tweet things that go against what they’ve followed before and indicate in their profile.

    For me, it’s more of a “feeling” like when I hop on Twitter and someone has posted so often that they’ve dominated my feed, or if I notice a pattern a few days into following someone… they only post links to their own content or product, they use deceptive language (“Hey I’ve just joined LinkedIn, too”) or they post a lot of “popular quotes” but go pretty lean on sharing unique, useful content.

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    Perfect point Jason! Because spam is such a subjective idea, the best protection is to be your own spam filter. Different strokes for different folks!!! Thank for reading and commenting!

  • http://onlinebusinessowners.biz Yusuf Chowdhury

    I agree that spam is not well defined concept. So is 40% on all 350+ social networking sites or with specific sites?

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    You know that’s the million dollar question. If we stringent applied the Twitter definition of spam, the number would probably be 100% because it is so broad and subjective.

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