"Twitter now has more than 140 million active users, and we continue to grow at a record pace," Twitter said in a statement. "As our reach expands, we become a more attractive target for spammers. Even though spam is a small fraction of the content you can find on Twitter, we know just how distracting it can be."
The defendants in the suit are TweetAttacks (tweetattacks.com), TweetAdder (tweetadder.com), TweetBuddy (tweetbuddy.com), James Lucero (of justinlover.info) and Garland Harris (of troption.com), and are allegedly in violation of The Twitter Rules.
View the suit here.
"Taking legal action sends a clear message to all would-be spammers that there are serious and costly consequences to violating our Rules with their annoying and potentially malicious activity," notes the statement.
Twitter is not the first social network to get the law on its side to combat spammers. Earlier this year, Facebook and the Attorney General of Washington state teamed up to file two lawsuits against "clickjackers" who worked to spread spam on Facebook. In 2009, Google fought "Google money" schemes and the following year targeted illegal online prescription pharmacies.
Twitter's made a move to tackle security issues and user fraud recently with its acquisition of security firm Dasient earlier this year, and what it says is its continuously -expanding anti-spam engineering team.
What do you think about Twitter's lawsuit against these websites? What do you think the outcome will be? Tell us in the comments.