Maybe I’m not cut out for this whole social media thing. Maybe I just don’t get it. I have people add me on Twitter once in awhile because (I think) we share an interest, or if I’m being really ambitious, that person though my tweet was funny or insightful. And yeah, I get the Twitter spammers, who seem to fall into two camps:
1. People who want to buff up their following/followers list
2. People who want to market or sell something
It’s a lot more of number 2. Since I’ve mentioned my iBook, I have people whose sole purpose on Twitter seems to be jailbreaking iPhones trying to be my Twitter followers. I think I know what jailbreaking an iPhone is, but since I have no desire to own one, or take a second mortgage out for the data plan, it’s kind of futile.
The thing I don’t get is the people who tweet constantly. They ask questions, then spend the next 10-15 minutes posting all the answers their followers send them. It’s great when I’m at work and working on something with a Firefox page open, and TwitterFox floods the screen with a bunch of nonsense.
Argh.
Anyways, yes: I’ve removed the offending Twitter-ers from my timeline.
Dale Said:
on January 14, 2009 at 12:04 am
You’re not alone. And I’ve seen lots of discussion of this.
I’m with you, and only follow back people who are not marketing, and appear to share an interest. It’s still strange to have a teen from rural New York state or a mid-western craft oriented mother follow me when I can discern no common interest.
Tools like TweetDeck let you create groups and use filters, making it easier to create coherent message streams if you have lots of followers.