Twitter users saved from spam overload

TwitterHawk allows marketers to monitor Twitter posts and send pre-determined ads

TwitterHawk, a new target marketing provider, said on Saturday that it would curtail its services to try and save Twitter users from spam.

TwitterHawk allows marketers to monitor Twitter posts for keywords and then send users pre-determined advertisements. Twitter users can be targeted according to their location and whether they have contained links or questions in their posts.

Reports this week suggested that Twitter users' accounts would be infiltrated with spam due to the new service.

In response TwitterHawk owner Chris Duell has restricted advertisers to sending only one message a day per Twitter account, and said that the restrictions on advertisements may be increased again if the service is abused or causes the Twitter community "unwanted problems".

"We did not expect such an explosion in use of the tool and considerably underestimated its effect on the social medium," he said.

Duell said that he would not condone the use of spam, and wanted the service to bring relevant information and services to Twitter users that would "add value" to their social networking experiences.

He added that he wanted to provide a "non-intrusive service" similar to Google Adwords, which allows marketers to target people according to their search terms.

TwitterHawk is just the latest provider to offer a targeted marketing service for social networking sites. Both LinkedIn and Facebook have allowed advertisers to target users on their profile information for over a year.

Earlier this week, Facebook came under attack from privacy activists, who accused the firm of setting up a "market research database" with the launch of a new Polling Ad that allows advertisers to poll a selection of users based on their profile information in order to test the waters for new marketing initiatives.

TwitterHawk is still in beta and is not associated with Twitter, although it does use Twitter's public application programming interface.