Block – Dirty word in Twitter land

Chances are you don’t block many of your followers and you aren’t alone. Blocking is looked upon as a dirty word. Bringing it up results in confused looks up to outrage. Judgmental, big ego, and more labels may be assigned to you for admitting you block more than the occasional spammer. But let’s take a look at who folks block.

Blocking – Not just for Spammers

Spammers aren’t the only ones you might want to block. Spammers covers those users (or robots) sending out a steady stream of noise. There are a few other types to block:

• Multi-Level-Marketers aka MLM – enough said
• Get Rich Quick – preys on those looking for easy street
• Get Followers Quick – looking to find those that seek the fast path to many followers
• See my video/pictures/site – usually adult oriented. Fake profiles to snag in the easily tempted.

But how do you go about finding and stopping them?

Twitter Block Tools – Spammers Eat Dirt

Manually blocking followers is work. Consider one of these useful tools for blocking.

• Twittfilter – http://www.twittfilter.com/
• TwitBlock http://www.twitblock.org/

So still think those who block have big egos? Or it’s too much work?

Twitter Friends Block Spammers

My friends block spammers and the like as well. Here’s just a few:

• @gloriabell
• @creativereason – Yessiree. I block all that I see follow me.
• @PhilGerb – woot! Blocking in the USA (Channeling the spirit of John Cougar)!
• @levitanl – I block them all!
• @Allisoncds – Holla! Block & report here!
• @MilliGFunk
• @deborah91473
• and more…

What’s keeping you?!

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This poll is a follow up to the intense discussion and debate on Twitter Blocked Facebook Banned LinkedIn Locked.

One person, Rex Dixon, lead most of the discussion in the thread. His thoughts inspired this small poll.

So quick as a tweet, click and vote.

Those are common headlines these days it seems. Your company and mine are blocking just about every man of social networking and social media site. I’ve hedged about committing to lambasting this sort of policy. I’m a social networking addict.

My friend Phil Gerbyshak over at Slacker Manager has a different take though. Here’s a quote from the article Block New Media at Work.

We block these because we have no way of monitoring all the stuff people might say while they are using their work computer. I work for a financial services company, and we are required to keep a copy of EVERY piece of electronic communication our associates might send to their clients. And it’s not possible to do that right now, at least not easily, if we allow access to these sites.

It seems there’s another side to this issue. So often folks like me only look at what’s being denied to us; we fail to see how our very use of these tools could be harmful.

I don’t work for a financial company yet our company is just as concerned about negative interactions and keeping track of emails and such. Any appreciably large company is at risk for what they send out either verbally, in email, or by some odd chance video.

The only issue I have with this approach is that folks are free to use Twitter when they aren’t at work. They could just as easily bad mouth the company or its clients at those times. As a matter of fact, it’s likely they’ll be more inclined. Witness the recent spat of folks losing their jobs by stuff they posted when not at work.

So what’s your take? Block? Not block? Is this a political or legal issue? Moral issue? Challenge yourself on this issue.

Oh yeah, if you’re reading this at work, thank your HR department.