No, not "or ads on Gmail". Gmail doesn't create ads that pretend to be email messages.

The whole point here is that it's a mis-use of a messaging channel - they are leveraging the fact that users _don't_ expect favoriting to be a form of advertising, they expect it to be a message from an actual human being that has favorited their post because they like it. (Similar to the problems with follower spam.)

(I'd also point out that ads on web sites at least help subsidize user's free usage of those web sites, so there is an indirect benefit to the user that isn't there in the case of spam.)

You may have your Twitter notices already turned off - I get emails from them when someone favorites or replies to my tweets, as well as notifications from their app.

Two small points. First, you can't define anything as anything, stick with your gut on that one. If you could, the word define could have no definition, and the entire concept of definitions would be invalid. Someone getting sloppy with their definitions doesn't change the generally agreed upon meaning of concepts. I can call a rock a bird, but that doesn't actually make it so. There's a pretty reasonable definition of spam at this point.

Second, the advertising on Gmail (or Yahoo mail etc) isn't an indirect benefit, it's an exceptionally direct benefit. I've gotten to use a truly great, fast, reliable email service - Gmail - for a decade, with gigabytes of storage, and all they've done is run ads on the right side that I've never once clicked on and they never get in my way. Talk about a helluva deal. You're completely correct in the fact that Gmail ads are nothing like spam.

I misspoke. The slop was in the interpretation of the definition, not the definition itself.

Personally, I mostly use favouriting tweets for my own personal needs only - to bookmark some things. My behaviour would be unchanged if favouriting became private and no one was notified that I favourited their tweet.

Sometimes, if I really like a tweet, I'll favourite it because I have no other way to say +1 (other than replying to it). But I must like it enough to want to sacrifice the integrity of my bookmarks.

Based on what I'm reading here, it seems that people have wildly varying ways in which they use favouriting.

Agreed. I wish Twitter would change "favorite" to "like" or "star" so that people could essentially +1 other tweets with out the severity that "favorite" implies.