I would think that in a time when Facebook has purchased Friendfeed and is adding all kinds of Twitter-like features, Yahoo introducing Meme (it's own micro-blogging platform) and the many other social networking options out there, that Twitter would not want to chase anyone but the most egregious spammers away.

Instead, they announce that they will ban repeat Tweeting. This will hurt many of their core users, and the users who bring the most value to the service: bloggers. Many bloggers have figured out that if they tweet out a new blog post once, only a few followers will see it, but if they tweet it three to four times, about four hours apart, they stand a pretty good chance of getting thier announcement into thier followers view. It also would likely get people who tweet for charitable causes banned.

I can see this having a huge unintended consequence. Spammers, the target of this policy, will just open a whole bunch of new accounts, and just Retweet each other. This is already a problem, but it will get much worse.

Again, with Facebook now owning Friendfeed, a twitter-like service that will most likely be integrated into Facebook at some point, I think it is dangerous to alienate a large portion of it's users. Read the articles below.

From Social Media Today:

and I saw this via twitter last night:

Let’s look at the facts:

• Twitter is going for the business market. They’ve already announced a plan for premium accounts and courted business through FAQs tailored to them.
• Twitter’s whole technology is built around the idea of a continuous, real-time stream of information, from which TWEETS FALL OFF.
• Bloggers, businesses, and anyone who actually wants to have a chance of being heard has to tweet the same message more than once. (Especially those who don’t have many thousands of followers.) If they don’t, the chances are miniscule of their tweet being seen by anyone, let alone large numbers of people. (See my last blog post, When is it spam?)
• Although repeats are annoying for client users, the latest stats suggest that a majority of users access through the Web site, where tweets will not be seen unless recurring tweets are allowed.
• Retweets aren’t enough, and recurring tweets help level the playing field. The larger your following, the better your chance of being retweeted. The combination of recurring tweets and hashtags gives tweeps with smaller followings a better chance of getting their message out, and building bigger followings.

It’s clear that many people use Twitter for social reasons. But a big part of the value on Twitter is its ability to surface new information. Twitter users are information junkies. Recurring tweets have a role to play in fulfilling that user goal.