Will the rise of porn pushers turn Twitter into the next MySpace?

Read this on Gawker and it got me thinking.  I’ve gotten quite a few requests recently by people wanting me to follow them on Twitter; most of those requests have come from questionable accounts - basically people with a single post directing me to click on a link to a website.  Of course I never click the link because their user name and user photo usually give away what will be on that site.  It isn’t really that big of a deal to ignore those people.  It is my understanding that some people have some kind of auto-follow feature turned on that automatically follows people that follow them; I don’t have that and I don’t even know where to go to activate it.

I did used to have a MySpace account and I would say that the number of people looking to be my friend in order to promote their porn sites was quite high.  It was annoying as well because, in order to figure out they were fishing for viewers, you had to go to their site to see if they were someone you might actually want to be friends with.  Once there you could be hit with all manner of pop-ups or horrible pictures that could never be considered safe for work.  Twitter does not have this problem.

If anything, Twitter is the perfect platform for dealing with spammers of all types because you are under no obligation to follow them back and they have no way of bombarding you with unpleasantries unless you click a link that takes you outside of Twitter.  Not only has it made it easier for me to avoid the porn people, it also has let me avoid other annoying types.  The struggling band that wants me to attend all of their concerts and buy their t-shirts, the internet marketers who do nothing but retweet posts and throw out links to articles on internet marketing, the crazies that are out to spread their conspiracy theories about death panels and secret armies, all can be avoided just by not following them back.  If you don’t follow them they will eventually stop following you.