
Hashtag Spam on Twitter is a Real Problem - gloves
https://venngage.com/blog/hashtags-are-worthless/
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edent
"Hashtags are worthless" ... for businesses trying to use generic keywords to
drive engagement.

Who'da thunk it!

Yes, the content of `#marketing` is full of rubbish - go do the same search on
Google and you'll see it is mostly SEO'd links.

But take a look at #RobotWars or #GBBO when those shows are on. It's a channel
of like-minded individuals all participating in a shared experience. The same
for a smallish conference. The event is a social object and the hashtag is the
manifestation of people's delight.

Sure, you get the occasional spammer intruding, and a few companies
fruitlessly trying to inject themselves into the conversation - but mostly
it's just a global stream of consciousness. And I think that's very
worthwhile.

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domfletcher
I have a bit of an issue with their definition of a "Questionable" account. I
mostly use twitter as a way to aggregate a stream of news from people I think
are interesting and as such my following/follower ratio is about 10:1.

When the author says Questionable accounts had "4.2x more accounts than were
following them" that's not that surprising as that was part of their (flawed?)
classification to begin with but I don't think it says anything about them
being a bot.

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icebraining
I'm not an heavy Twitter user, but seems like the problem here is with the
generic tags. How were #music or #sales supposed to be useful, even if they
were spam-free?

Hashtags seem to be useful when they are specific (such as for grouping
conversations around a specific event that's currently happening) or as
annotations/side-notes, often describing state of mind.

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okket
TL;DR

Generic hashtags get spammed. Most people expect this, except marketeers, who
seem to think their brethren will not practicing their profession in their
home turf.

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bemmu
How do people usually consume hashtags? My Twitter usage is going to the
homepage and looking at my feed, which is just posts from people I follow. I
don't see how having certain hashtags would make it more likely for me to see
a post.

