Twitter spam? Marketers see social media as a new frontier

PHOENIX, AZ - Like he often does, Len Gutman checked in on the social media application Foursquare when he stopped off for coffee one morning at Urban Beans in Central Phoenix.

Foursqare alerts others to where he is.

Unbeknownst to him, that simple gesture made him a target for an unsolicited political message.

"Within a few minutes of that check-in got a Twitter from David Schweikert," said Gutman.

Gutman received a tweet, a 140-character message from David Schweikert , a Republican candidate for the congressional seat currently held by Harry Mitchell.

The tweet read 'It's time to stop Nancy Pelosi and Harry Mitchell, join us in the fight for our country.'

"It was unsolicited," Gutman said. "I don't know David Schweikert, and didn't tweet about David Schweikert."

Schweikert admits the tweet Len received came from an Australian-based service called TwitHawk that his campaign pays for.

Schweikert says the service scours Twitter for certain keywords, then sends a message to that person on behalf of the campaign.

"It only sends out four or five a day and that's only if it finds someone hitting keywords," Schweikert said.

Gutman says he didn't type any of those supposed keywords.

But TwitHawk goes one step further.

It also utilizes geo-tagging, that is to say it sends out messages to people tweeting in a specific area like the coffee shop.

"It doesn't mean I'm getting someone who will like me politically," admits Schweikert.

"You try to tell your story, some will like it, some won't, that's politics," he added.

Politics aside, you should know that if you choose to use geo-tagging in your social media, thanks to services like TwitHawk, you could get messages you don't want.

"It's sort of predatory, like a hawk, a predator," Gutman said.

"If you don't want to hear it, hit the block button," Schweikert countered.

Think of it as telemarketing on Twitter.

A new tactic to an old trick.