As we’ve relentlessly documented, the Twitter-based game Spymaster went from a private alpha, to insanely popular, to feeling a full rush of backlash in about 3 days. While a lot of users were upset with Spymaster tweets from their friends filling up their streams, even more annoying to some was the constant direct messages (DMs) from friends to join the service. Now there’s a couple ways to stop getting those.
First, Topify, the power Twitter emailing service, saw the Twitter crowd’s negative reaction to the DMs and decided to add a feature to prevent it. If you’re using Topify, and get a direct message you don’t want from Spymaster, simply forward it to StopSpymaster@topify.com, and Topify will create a filter to stop these message from inundating your inbox.
This is a smart move by Topify, as it not only is a nice feature for current users, but it gives other non-users a reason to potentially use the service. That should be even more true going forward, as I’m sure Spymaster is just the tip of a very large iceberg when it come to viral spreading Twitter games.
But if you don’t want to use Topify, Spymaster itself has come up with a way to opt-out of these invitation DMs. Simply visit this page and you click the opt-out button (which verifies your Twitter name), and you will no longer receive the DMs. Co-founder Eston Bond notes that while Spymaster never sent DMs without another user specifically requesting invites be sent to friends via DM, he realizes that it was pretty annoying for some people.
As I noted above, the key thing to realize here is that Spymaster is just the first of many viral games coming to Twitter — you can’t imagine how many I’ve already been pitched. Ultimately, Twitter is going to need to step up with better filters on their end to stop these type of things from people who don’t want them. Otherwise, you’re going to have people being forced to unfollow people they may not otherwise want to unfollow. And that simply doesn’t make for a very good social service.
MG, I’m also excited that this is creating so much friction, because in the end we’ll get innovation. Great coverage of Spymaster btw.
Now I must assassinate you.
Fine then. It’s on.
How unfortunate, I have failed.
This is racist !!
I don’t understand why Twitter is so slow at implementing new features. There are a number of features that would be helpful:
- Retweet button
- Groups
- Spam blocking
- Automatic refreshing
Because:
- no revenue
- no revenue
- no revenue
there’s already another one that’s spamming my twitter and facebook feeds — http://140mafia.com
Those spymaster comments are more annoying then me talking about http://www.worstpizza.com here all the time!
Who’s really complaining about the Spymaster messages? From what I’ve seen, it seems to be the people that are NOT playing the game. Clearly there need to be additional controls within Twitter, but isn’t this specifically what an open communication channel is made for “communicating what you are doing”? My own perspective, not the company’s, on it is that if you are following a limited number of people who’s actions you actually care about, and not simply trying to boost up your number of followers on Twitter by following others, these messages are a small issue. If you are following 15k people that are all playing Spymaster, I understand your frustration.
More thoughts and discussion on my blog : http://www.dmit....com/blog/?p=52
I have an easy solution. I just remove the person who had the gaul to DM with the stupid thing. Don’t have the common sense and decency to leave me out of stupid garbage like this? I’ll make the decision easy for you.
Agreed and that’s precisely what I’m doing, although it’s not even just about DM’s for me. If you’re simply even cluttering up my stream with that garbage then I’ll just stop following you.
The pirates/ninjas/werewolves junk is why I lost interest in Facebook, but at least they have filters to block those stupid apps now.
Yes. This is true, i lost a few followers between last night and today morning.
Now this is actually quite useful.
Spymaster should use a system like TweetLater’s @optmeout, there is no reason to require giving it access to your account.
Why would anyone give their account credentials to a service they want no part of? I spent far too many years as a network security architect to do something that foolish. Then again, what a fantastic Twitter credential harvesting tool.
It uses Oauth therefor it’s unable to collect passwords.