This month, I’ve received somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 spam @ replies on my personal twitter account. It’s got me wondering if my 16 month old prediction (that everyone will eventually privatize their accounts) might actually come true. The way Twitter apps typically work today, any and all replies using the @username convention are updated into a person’s reply column.

At some point, Twitter spammers are going to do more than mass follow. They’re going to start talking to you. And me. And everyone else. Picture a spam account created for the sole purpose of broadcasting unwanted marketing messages at anyone and everyone. Spammers don’t even have to follow you. They can send messages to your reply column  as frequently as they want.

Once this happens, and I am certain it will, we’ll be faced with only a few options.

1. Everybody Goes Private

If everyone wishing to avoid reply spam turns their accounts private. With the current setup, you can still message privatized users, but Twitter could develop technology that blocks replies from unapproved sources. Twitter would want to avoid this scenario at all costs, since tweets from privatized accounts don’t enter the live search stream. Live search is purported to be a HUGE deal to everyone, so Twitter wants to keep all the legit sources of content in the public arena.

2. Twitter Creates Public Reply Protection

If Twitter is smart, they’ll find a means to protect users from spam replies. Whether it’s a voting system that warns and then blocks people or a more automatic system like what Facebook is using (I’ve actually been temporarily banned in the past from making new friends on Facebook because I tried to meet too many new people who ignored my invitations). This seems the most likely scenario, simply because Twitter has to have already anticipated mass spam replies and we hope they’re working on a workaround. Twitter MIGHT try to make spam protection a paid feature, but that would discourage most users and likely trigger a mass exodus to the next best thing.

3. Twitter is Replaced By a New Less Spammy Site

There’s a chance, albeit a slim one, that Twitter suffers the same fate as MySpace – first to the party but too late in removing spammy or undesired content. Somewhere someone is right now building a Twitter-like service that will be primed and ready to replace Twitter should it falter like MySpace did. Facebook was already around, and they put some foundational principles and features into place that provided a safe place for users to turn to. Whether it’s Plurk, Facebook Lite, FriendFeed, any of a dozen other microblogging technologies, someone will provide a viable alternative to Twitter if the spam replies get so ridiculous that normal conversations are difficult to have amidst the noise.

I hope Twitter is around for a long time. They’ve announced commercial accounts will be rolled out this year, so we’re seeing hints of life and activity from behind the scenes. But all it takes is a dozen accounts sending spam messages every few seconds and we have a major spam irritation on our hands. Once it catches on, there could be thousands of spam accounts simultaneously contacting you and burying the real messages you want to see.

Here’s hoping Twitter is on the ball and working on that fix now.