Twitter has been in the headlines again. You can now pay a company to find potential followers, approach them and ask them to follow you and it's apparently a very innovative approach. It must be, that's why the BBC thought it newsworthy.

Actually I'm not so sure. I think I've seen things like this many times before, sometimes respectable and sometimes less so.

Let's consider what this Australian organisation is doing. It's buying or harvesting a list from somewhere, and it's mailing the members of that list. Mercifully it's not selling the list so just anyone can mail them.

Nonetheless, it's sending out unsolicited Tweets. I'm not actually so down on this, myself, it's called marketing and sometimes people do it through email. Or Twitter. I do hope it doesn't grow too much, though; one of the best things about Twitter at the moment is its informal, uncluttered nature - sure, there are a lot of Tweets that are going to be of little interest but the vast majority is well-meant and has a person behind it. It would be a shame to see that go.