Over the weekend, Twitter found itself victim to the tomfoolery of 4chan as the online community’s members apparently launched an initiative to make “#gorillapenis” a trending topic. They were successful, but Twitter of course responded by removing it from the trending topics.
What is 4chan?
4chan describes itself as “a simple image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images.” It is known however, for its online hijinks like the infamous YouTube Porn Day, when the site’s users got together to put a punch of porn videos on YouTube, claiming it Wikipedia credits 4chan with the popularization of Internet memes like lolcats, Rickrolling, and “Chocolate Rain”.
Twitter Spam in the Spotlight
While the #gorillapenis prank may not seem like a big deal, I have to disagree. It has forced me to write the words “gorilla penis” in a murdok article. Seriously though, it does show how easily Twitter can be abused.
Even now, “#farts” is a trending topic. This will likely be removed as well, but this kind of nonsense will likely just continue until something is done about it.
Fake Accounts and Twitter’s Numbers
Those responsible for the prank had to create fake Twitter accounts. It makes you wonder how the creation of fake accounts can skew the numbers that show Twitter’s growth. Last week, we looked at new registrations in June, and the numbers looked to be up there with the month Oprah joined, but how many of these were fake? How many have been fake all along?
Those (at least some) who have been using Twitter know that there is plenty of usefulness to the service, but when newcomers sign up and see what all the hype is about and see a list of trending topics with things like #farts, #gorillapenis, #crotch, or whatever else, they may dismiss Twitter as an immature waste of time, and decide to just forget about it. This will not help that user retention problem.
