The zombies are here and living amongst us

Not until I started work on WorkFu did I appreciate the number of zombie accounts on Twitter.  Not only do these accounts exist with meaningless profiles, tweets/retweets and, of course, the obligatory Egg picture but they also form large networks with each other – a huge writhing mass of pointless server costs and carbon footprint.

I’m still not totally clear on the reason for their creation – are they part of massive ‘Follow Me Back’ networks that receive payment to boost ‘Internet Marketers’ follower’s lists or are they useful in some way for SEO purposes?  If anyone can explain the reason for the creation of these profiles I would be interested to find out more…

What I appreciate about Twitter is that I am not forced into any kind of interaction with these accounts – my world of Twitter is full of interesting, real people who make an effort to contribute to the ecosystem.  It just startles me that such a high percentage of Twitter’s running costs must be dedicated to supporting this spam activity.