Beyond the (semi)lovable “Fail Whale,” Alley Insider today reports on another issue for Twitter: a growing spam problem:

The service has gotten popular enough to attract spammers, and Twitter is trying to combat them — namely by blocking accounts that “follow” many people but don’t have any followers themselves. Presumably spammers will try to combat this by rigging accounts so that they have lots of artificial followers.

We also can’t help but notice the level of blatant self-promotion on Twitter. It’s not surprising when you consider the audience of tech-savvy early adopters — many with their own projects to plug. But as Twitter grows in popularity, this activity — if gone unchecked — could strangle the usefulness of the service.

Perhaps the social norms and community guidelines in micro blogging need to evolve.

Should Twitter users be asking themselves: “Is my tweet worth an opt-in text message?”*

On the Facebook front, perhaps a ratio of 5 posted items in the general interest of your friend network for every 1 blatant post of self-promotion?

Twitter and Facebook are incredibly useful utilities. But it is how the community norms and self-policing evolve that can keep them vibrant. If there is a social stigma to being a self-promotional spammer, perhaps the noise will die down to a mere rumble.

-Colin Nagy

*assuming there’s a monetary or attention-based value to an SMS.