Without Links, Twitter Is Dead To Me

I think Mashable might want to rethink their #2 entry (Bots) on the 10 People You Won’t See on Twitter Anymore post. According to the post, The rules express a clear preference for the human touch when it comes to Twitter updates, stating that you could be in violation of the TOS and subject to termination - "if your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates."

To begin, users retweet posts with embedded links in huge numbers. Secondly, Twitter investor Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures has said publicly that The Value Of Twitter Is In “The Power Of Passed Links”.  I'm fairly certain that what Twitter is referring to in the TOS are the spam-oriented links generated by accounts that are/were created specifically to generate said spam. There are some relatively basic things Twitter could do to restrict this activity if they want to.

Personally, the vast majority of the value I get out of Twitter comes from information passed via links. In fact, although you probably wouldn't classify it technically as spam, I would classify 80% of the "personal updates" from people I follow to be of little to no value whatsoever.

Without links, Twitter is dead to me.