Get Lost, You Twitter Freak!
(Warning: contrary to my normal posting style, this post is edgy. That’s trendy publisher-speak for the fact that it’s a rant and it contains adult language, mature content and strawberry-flavoured ice cream. Only continue reading if you are comfortable with these things. Though the ice cream will be gone by the time you get there. Too bad.)
This is a post about using Twitter. I’m not going to explain what Twitter is, because if you don’t know, you probably don’t have an Internet connection and won’t be reading this. Either that or you have some sort of Virtuasociophobia which means that any time you see the words “Social Network”, you break out in an itchy rash and have to run away and swallow masses of pills.
Twitter is supposed to be The Best Thing Since Sex when it comes to interacting with other people. Though it only works online, as far as I can tell. Twitter, that is. What all these online experts and promoters of the service seem to have missed is that – just like doing the horizontal tango – a lot of people are doing it wrong.
Now, I’m sure people would maintain that enthusiasm wins out over lack of technical ability, but some folks are just mindlessly banging away without any thought as to the consequences (yes, we’re still talking about Twitter here).
So here’s some thoughts for all those who figure that using Twitter can get them recognition, popularity, a wider customer base, millions of sales or a whole ton of people to have sex with (which would either be a lot of skinny people or one really large individual).
- Post something. I won’t follow you if all your entries are RT or replies to people. I don’t give a damn if you’re popular: I want to know what you have to say.
- Tell me who you are. I won’t follow you if you don’t have a bio.
- Get a proper name. JimBob7629 just says you’re a bullshit account, not a real person.
- Don’t be a marketing whore. I don’t give a damn if you think your products are wildly interesting. I won’t follow you if all you do is rub my nose in your sales offers. I can find dog poop on the street, thank you: I don’t need it delivered to me in 140 characters.
- Post a profile pic. Cartoons, business logos and those bizarre owl eye things don’t make you interesting. They make you look like a marketing whore.
- Don’t send me a god-damned stupid, automatic email thanking me for following you. Especially if it says “Thanks for the follow.” Why would I want that crap in my inbox?
- Don’t tell me you just got Twitter. That just shouts “I’m adding everybody I can find! I’m a marketing whore!”
- Twitter isn’t a frigging marketing tool. Stop pushing your shitty products and pretending it is. Stop “monetizing” (that isn’t a word, by the way, you buzzword-vomiting idiot) absolutely everything as though money were the be-all and end-all of everyone’s life. Read my lips: I. WILL. NOT. GIVE. YOU. MONEY.
- Don’t tell me you just posted a (potentially naughty) pic of yourself at a URL. That just makes you sound like a marketing whore (one with dubious personal privacy issues, too).
- I don’t give two hoots whether you have a massive following or not. The most interesting people are often the least followed (cf. Ashton Kutcher). And how the hell do you even pretend to be able to follow more than 10,000 people? You wouldn’t have time to breathe, let alone eat or take a pee.
- Equally, I don’t care if you don’t follow me back. Why would I?
- Did you read my bio? Then why the fuck are you following me? I don’t even like football.
Now, don’t forget, children. Practise safe Tweeting: wear a TweetDeck so you can filter out all the arseholes without unfollowing them and suffering the terrible consequences of never having virtual sex with a RT robot.
(P.S. This was humour, in case you missed that.)
Read it twice now but I am still looking for the ice-cream, any hints?
Don’t you just love opening your twitter mail box and seeing all the new followers who are following a thousand or two, have 64 followers and two posts. BTW posts normally refer to the T trick or T secrets.
Or the nice girl avatar in the tight jeans, or the family of four; Mom Pop Baby Bro n Baby Sis whose website promises you wealth in no time without having to do any work.
Mind you did come across a tweeter who had an avatar (BDSM) that opened up into exactly what it said on the can. Glad my wife was in the other room.
Could have said it was research, could have got thumped.
If I can stop chuckling long enough.. research… hehehee…. brilliant stuff, Shack! (Though I just had another follower with a dodgy on-the-bed pic. Shame it’s marketing.)
Whoa… this site is pretty awesome
your layout is really well designed, and your blogs are (judging from what i’ve read) very interesting. heehee… consider yourself favorited. 
Twitter – should have an ad like, “I still can’t believe it’s not butter.”
To be honest, I still don’t ‘get it.’ I guess as someone who’s a touch anti-social, perhaps that’s the reason I see it as a profound waste of time. What’s the appeal to it? When it was new, it had that going for it. But now it’s not new. I tried it. Got tired of it. I’m ready to move on. What keeps you into it? Or is it like smoking? Once you’re started, it’s hard to quit even though it makes you feel like shit?
Justin: Welcome to the mad-house! Love your blog name, by the way (and that baby graphic is brilliant). Coupon dispensers… excellent…!
Steven: It’s just group messaging. I get a lot of good pointers out of it for sites. In my eyes, it’s like an RSS-feed to all my favourite bloggers (and some other folks) without having to load a reader: URLs to their posts, occasional gems of insight, funny stuff and so on. It’s also, scarily enough, been the source of a couple of potential jobs.
And smoking’s nice, by the way. Very pleasant.
Hi Steven, Hope you don’t mind if I pop my two pennyworth in.
I had always avoided all social networks since I didn’t have time to do what I was already failing to do.
Recently I ‘had’ to join one social network, all be it a professional one and my head could accept that. However what with time being short I was very selective and slightly anti social even then. I think that by being so selective it has paid off for me, because the information feed I received was of high value to me.
I followed some advice and joined twitter and again have been very selective, I very nearly only follow writers, authors, publishers and agents. Ok and a small handful of marketers.
If someone follows me who is not into my interests and/or fails to tweet me as to why they are interested then they fail the ‘potential noise’ filter and I don’t follow back.
I have had some fantastic links on twitter, that have given me some real insights and it is also now providing a jobs feed.
Ok, really I haven’t changed, I don’t tell everyone what I had for breakfast or if the dog needs a wee. I do re-tweet anything that I like and so my followers who might not be following the original tweet can benefit.
I do use tweetdeck’s groups and filters extensively to manage the tweet stream (avg 5 per minute) otherwise I would miss the info and I simply can not afford to keep watching the stream.
Currently I am trying facebook, but the experience is bad so far. Loads of games and surveys, no way to check a person properly before you make them a friend. Apart from greater than 140 ch messages and the chat it is not so far delivering any advantages.
Steven: Here’s a good post on it, actually (just today) – http://www.blogworldexpo.com/blog/2009/05/31/10-things-i-learned-from-twitter
It’s perhaps not for everybody, but I find it amusing. Like Shack, it’s been a source of some useful stuff and more than a few guffaws!!
@Andy
all be it=albeit
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/albeit?r=75
Anyways, maybe I’m just not doing it right. I don’t know. It seems to offer an awful lot of junk to sift through.
Bless ya cotton soxes Spike! About bluddy time someone sentient and literate said what so desperately needed to be said….
Classic example: Got a follower notification this morning. It had the requisite ‘I only ever want to bonk You’ seductive girly picture and came packing the following impressive stats: ‘Following’ – 914, ‘Followers’ – 46 ‘Updates’ – 1 ONE!!! How the bluddy hell does that work??? Another 45+, anglo-saxonesque, over-caffeinated, bed-bound, male ‘technofile’ wondering why nobody visits anymore? I wonder?
I’m with you dude…and I reckon Twitter may need to diversify…Twatter, Twotter, Twetter, Twutter & Twy-hard!
Cheers
Stephen G
I’ve been reading, learning, chuckling and damning myself because I’m supposed to be writing a novel. Go away, leave me alone. Stop being so damned funny!
Damn You Carolyn Cordon! Write that bluddy novel! …or I’ll sick my ‘auto-Twitter-bot’ on you and all of your ‘semi-automated-followers’… ;- )
Which reminds me…what happens if/when there is a ‘critical mass’ of ‘auto-Twits’? Auto-bots following auto-bots, following auto-bots…and don’t forget the cataclysimic ‘auto-“Thanks for the follow”-replies’. What is ‘auto-bot’ cubed anyway?
Are our beloved ‘marketing whores’ (Hope you don’t mind me plagiarizing your eloquent term Spike? :- ), ‘unTwittingly’ creating a virtual black-hole? Will it suck-up all of planet Google’s bandwidth in one giant feedback ‘Tweet’?
Have you finished that bluddy novel yet Carolyn?….Now?….what about Now?…Hurry up DAMN YOU!
Cheers
not Stephen G
It’s two novels actually, the first is of no interest to you guys, cos it’s all about women and how they maintain friendships and relationships with men (and various other girly things like clothes and hair styles.
The other though, that has (or will have, once I actually write about them) a serial killer and werewolves. It might end up being called ‘Hounds of God’ or maybe, ‘Please, Put Down that Knife!’
How many words could I have written today if I had worked on either of my novels instead of fart-arsing around the internet? Lots, huh?
Oh well, there’s always the brief moment of time before I have to go to my writing class and fib about how well my novel is going!
See ya!
Geez Carolyn, aside from the girly clothes and hair style thingies, that’ll be a pretty short novel won’t it? ;- )
Maybe you could combine both novels and call it ‘God! Please put down that hair dryer, you’re burning my Hound’?
Oh! And when you get to writing class, tell your ‘Industrial Strength’ Teacher that your novel/s are going great, that you’ve been doing a lot of research and that the creative process cannot be forced…
But seriously, I do wish you all the best and hope to see you on the best seller list soon. :- )
Cheers
not Stephen G again
“the first is of no interest to you guys” – oh, Carolyn! The stereotyping!
I’d actually be far more interested in the first than the second, I think. Though I do think you should have a serial killer who uses a spoon to kill werewolves. Then you could make “silver spoon” jokes.
I don’t quite know what someone’s been putting in Stephen’s coffee. Whatever it is, it’s probably illegal in most countries. Down, boy! Down!
Hehe!.. Cuppa anyone ;- )
Cheers
I forget…
Spike, do you actually know this Stephen G person? He sounds dangerous. Does he live on your side of the planet, or on yours? O r underneath it, or floating above it?
Don’t you hate it when you press enter when you should have read properly what you had written! You know what I meant to write there.
Don’t worry Carolyn…I’m quite harmless :- )
Oh and I’m in good ol’ ‘Osstraaalya’ cobba! Where it’s ‘byaardaful’ one day & we don’t worry too much about the next…
Cheers
not him again! :- )
I can see the film title now: “Stephen G. – Escape From Arkham Asylum”.
Cuppa anyone… ;- )
Another top job, Mr TheLobster. You sure make every post a winner! P.