The backlash took less than one day to set in on @Spymaster.
Although there are plenty of ways for the twitter user to filter out the spymaster tweets (as described in the comments from the above Techcrunch article)...lots of folks are talking about how Twitter needs to do something about it. I think I am siding with the "twitter doesn't need to do anything" crowd. I think it should rely on the client/developers to see what problems arise and deal with them, and let twitter remain the "platform"...one thing spymaster is doing is getting users and developers to look at the infrastructure and ecosystem to try to puzzle out solutions...or point to ones that already exist.
Many of the most useful twitter "features" came from the users...@replies, hashtags, etc. This is a (sorta) pivotal moment for Twitter when they will need to decide whether this ("this" meaning spymaster being perceived as spam, and as a degradation of the twitter experience) is actually a problem or not. I think this falls into the user-driven innovation pile, and this will inevitably influence the evolution of Twitter...we can't say yet if that's a bad thing, and some would argue that evolution is neither good nor bad, it just is. I think spymaster is a very very clever use of twitter, and the first of an onslaught of social games I am sure.
But, the bottom line is, (I think) users (and I include developers in that term) will figure the best way out of this "problem". People say "zombies" ruined Facebook. I have had a relatively zombie and poke-free Facebook existence, and I expect my twitter experience won't be ruined by a few spies.
