Q&A: What is “SpiderDuck” and How Does It Influence Twitter Marketing?
Answer:
Near the end of 2011, Twitter released a URL fetcher called SpiderDuck. Its purpose is to fetch every URL shared in tweets. It does so in real time and then analyzes the content that is being linked including metadata. It then serves that information up for use with other Twitter services.
According to Twitter, SpiderDuck assists with:
- Discovering Tweet Counts (# of URL Shares)
- Analytics to Reveal Many Statistics Gathered Regarding Links Shared via Twitter
- Detection of Spam and Malware
- Enhancing Search Relevance with Respect to the Indexing of Resolved URL’s
