Twitter may be working to stop companies that partake in the controversial practice of selling higher follower counts, according to one Australian company that claims Twitter is trying to shut it down over allegations of spamming.
On Monday morning, a marketing company called uSocial sent out a press release to say that a brand-management firm hired by Twitter had contacted it to express concern over spam messages it was supposedly sending through Twitter. According to some Australian news outlets, the firm in question is Melbourne IT, which has not confirmed its involvement at the time of writing.
uSocial offers deals like 1,000 new Twitter followers for US$87, and made headlines when it claimed that the family of late pop star Michael Jackson had used it to purchase over 25,000 new Twitter followers.
Services that let you buy more followers on Twitter or friends on a social network are controversial, to put it lightly. But uSocial says it isn't spamming.
"The definition of spam is using electronic messaging to send unsolicited communication and as we don't use Twitter for this, the claims are false," uSocial CEO Leon Hill said in the press release.
Twitter could not be immediately reached for comment.
This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.
Play video
There are currently no comments for this post.