10 posts that clog up Twitter
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I've seen all kinds of stuff posted on Twitter. While I accept that some of the things I don't care for may be of interest to others, there are some things that I think are bad for everyone. Here are 10 posts that in my view, do little else besides clogging up Twitter.
1. "I just did this" on any social network. I don't mind if people say "I just made lunch" or "I just bought some new music", but when it's "I just became King of the World on Foursquare!" or "I just added a video to my favourites on YouTube", where's the value in that tweet? Also, what's with the exclamation marks at the end of everything Foursquare-related?
2. Links with no indication of what they're about. Check out this great post from such-and-such, no go on, it's really good, you'll love it. How do you know that? You don't. Maybe I'll love it, maybe I'll hate it, but why not tell me a tiny bit about the link so I can make up my mind without having to click it? I'm clicking fewer and fewer links because of this.
3. BlogCatalog topic links - which once clicked, don't actually display ANY relevant links. This one is best explained with an example. Follow the link in that tweet and tell me if you can find any links relating to CMF Ads. What's the point in that link?
4. Public replies to people whose profiles are private. Sometimes, I see a tweet from someone I'm following, in reply to someone I'm not following. I'm curious to read what the other person said. So I click "in reply to..." to check out the tweet... only to find that the other person's profile is private. What a waste of time.
5. FollowFriday retweets. It's one thing to suggest a few people to follow for FollowFriday. But when the tweet becomes a huge long list of names, which then gets retweeted by several other people, and some profiles seem to have little besides these incessant mass-name-tweets on their profile... well, it's not exactly compelling reading, is it? To me it looks like a link farm.
6. Links to blog posts when the author doesn't check for replies, let alone reply to them. Now, I'm all for using Twitter as a way to share your latest blog posts, but it seems rather rude to throw your posts onto Twitter and not bother to see if people are replying to them.
7. Hijacked hashtags - such as those really clever people who think they can become rich and famous by including EVERY trending topic in their tweet. Good one.
8. "Be-a-Magpie" or any other affiliate links - How many people really get rich from these schemes? Well, the people running the schemes probably make a fair bit...
9. "Please follow me so I can send you a direct message" - if we've been chatting and for some reason I haven't followed you yet, that's fine. But if it's the first time we've ever spoken, why on earth should I help you to spam me via DM?
10. I don't know what to write about. Then why tweet?
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Comments on 10 posts that clog up Twitter
2
Related to #2 is the link accompanied by a cryptic remark. I'm thinking of one person I follow in particular. For the love of pete, please give us something more than the following (all real lead-ins to links):
Godwin, Revised
Huh... Scary
Fire, and the Playing-with Thereof
Less useless (but only slightly) are the auto-tweet scripts that take the first 100 characters or so of your blog post. I've yet to meet a blogger who starts posts with 100 characters that tell why I should read it (and with good reason).
3
Here r a few which I find a bit weird:
Tweeting from bed
Wish I could sleep.
#Now Playing
4
I am so glad I've got proper Twitter etiquette! I guess those Twitter hipsters would call it "Twittiquette." lol.
The one thing I really can't stand (aside from when ppl don't reply to @'s...who are you to not reply?!...so rude! Anyway, you already mentioned that) is when people just RT all day. Like their whole stream consists only of retweets.
Ugh! I unfollow promptly.
5
#4 is a huge pet peeve of mine. I've had to stop following interesting people because they take the whole FollowFriday thing way too seriously--tweets, retweets, thank-yous, etc.
I mean, it's cool to make recommendations, and it's polite to thank those who recommend you, but I think we should do these things in moderation. Huge laundry lists that get bounced back and forth all Friday long add nothing at all to the conversation.
6
Great list Ben. Now, if we just had a way of turning those guidelines into enforceable laws :-)
7
All of there are pretty annoying. A few more I'd add:
Follow Friday without saying why the tweeters are being recommended. Just bloggers or cool artists or something would be sufficient.
There's no need to tweet the news headlines unless you're breaking news or giving your own perspective.
Don't thanks me for a retweet or a Follow Friday. If you really want to say thanks then retweet one of mine, but I don't mind either way.
8
The #FF without some indication of WHY those Twitterers are worth following bug me. So do the links with no idea what they're point to. I just don't click links unless something in the other characters of the tweet compel me to.
I also hate the, "I'm eating such and such". Inundated with all these various different meals all hours of the day, even when I'm starving hungry and have to resort to a tin of spaghetti on toast for dinner. I really don't care that such and such just had a BLT and such and such is having lemon chicken for dinner.
And, these annoyances apply on Facebook and Plurk too.
9
Thanks for the comments everyone - and welcome to the first time commenters. It's like a little community here - I hope you'll stop by again :)
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Yes - Yes - YES!! You hit the nail on the head on each one of these. Great write-up.