Digital Savant

Omar L. Gallaga writes about technology culture for the Austin American-Statesman. He's worked for more than nine years at the Austin American-Statesman and edited Technopolis, the newspaper's personal tech section, and ¡ahora sí!, Austin's Spanish-language newspaper. He's been a writer and performer with Austin's award-winning Latino Comedy Project and is a contributing writer for Television Without Pity, MSNBC.com's books section and The Almost Late Show with Bobby Bones. He writes a comic strip, "Space Monkeys!" with his brother, Pablo, and lives in New Braunfels with his wife and three technologically savvy cats.

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The entry titled "What Not To Tweet (or, Twitter-Me-Nots)."

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Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2008 > December > 18 > Entry

What Not To Tweet (or, Twitter-Me-Nots)

By Omar Gallaga | Thursday, December 18, 2008, 03:00 PM

I will admit it: after nearly two years of using Twitter, I’ve gotten a bit set in my ways. I have all kinds of unwritten rules in my head for why I do or don’t follow specific people. That’s because I’ve tried very hard to keep the list of people I follow small, as I explained in my post on how I use Twitter.

Despite the number of people I follow growing past 350, I still try to read every Twitter post from every person I follow, even if that means skimming through 20 or 30 pages of overnight posts every morning. It’s doable. People don’t all post at the same time. In fact, a lot of people I follow rarely post at all.

I can imagine the day will soon some when I can’t continue to read everything. It’s happened a few times. But so far I’ve been able to keep it under control by making snap judgments about whether to follow back people who add me to their list and when to cut the cord on someone whose posts have annoyed me or no longer seem worth reading.

It’s harsh. I never feel good about it. But it’s necessary. For me, at least.

So, what determines whether I unfollow someone (or choose not to follow them when I glance at their profile page, which I do for every person who adds me)? Here’s the list of things people do on Twitter that annoy me. They don’t all warrant an unfollow (and I’m guilty of committing some of them myself), but it’s the things that keep coming up that weigh into my decision to drop someone. It’s followed by a list of things Twitter friends sent in that annoy them as well. There’s definitely some overlap.

Things people do that annoy me on Twitter

• The biggest is rapid-fire posting to no particular end. Tech blogger Robert Scoble used to be the worst perpetrator this, but he’s calmed down quite a bit. He still does it on occasion, usually late at night when he’s traveling abroad, but his blue moon news scoops make up for it to me, so I’ve kept him in my Following list.
• Twitter accounts that are just RSS feeds or links to blog posts. I don’t ever bother to follow those accounts in the first place. My only exception is Amazon’s list of daily MP3 deals.
• “Please nominate me for (Internet award nobody’s heard of!” I’m skeptical of Web awards to begin with, but I will be blunt: If you truly deserve to be nominated for a particular award, someone will nominate you without your having to ask.
• Constant, overly sexual posts. Hey, I’ve dropped a double-entendre or three (a triple-entendre?) but constant smutty pillow talk gets tiring on Twitter. It just makes you sound like you’re starved for attention. Take it to LiveJournal or MySpace.
• Multiple pimpin’ tweets asking people to check out the same blog post. At some point, wily marketers convinced some bloggers that since not everyone is on Twitter at the same time, it’s OK to mention the same content over and over so nobody misses it. That’s exactly what a marketer would think. One tweet per blog post unless the blog post itself has new information or something significant has been updated.
• I won’t follow people who have these words in their bios: “SEO,” “maven,” “imagineer, “dating,” “sales,” “Web 2.0.”
• Those who try to make me feel guilty for not following them or for unfollowing. Trust me, I have my reasons.
• On that note, complaining that you can’t direct message someone because they’re not following you. Yeah, we know that trick. That’s why we have e-mail.
• Getting @replies is great, but not when people ask questions that the most basic Google search would easily answer. (“What does ‘ftw’ mean?”)
• Welcoming every new follower you get. If I see a post like this: “Welcome, @john, @steve, @tracy, @wholefoods, etc…” I will generally unfollow. Oddly, the people who do this the most are the ones with so many followers that they have to post four or five of these shout-outs a day. Annnoying. Stop.
• Retweeting without attribution. I’ve unfollowed people for repeating something I just posted when they didn’t say where they got the info. It’s just good manners.
• Posting a continuous stream of @replies to the same person, especially when it’s something that should be discussed over private messages. That will usually cause me to unfollow one or both of the conversationalists just to break the stream.
• When someone posts a stream of posts from a conference, trying to quote what people on a panel are saying. Usually, the information is out of context and way too obvious to be very useful: “Panelist says the Internet is changing the way we all work. #techbore.” I’ve done this myself and I am ashamed.
• The dreaded Brightkite auto-post. I don’t really care that you just arrived in Austin from wherever you were driving that day. And, also, nobody uses Brightkite anymore.
• Ignorant, racist posts. This should go without saying, but I was amazed when someone I followed posted something so ridiculously stupid and racist that I wanted to not only not-follow them, but block them as well. They ended up unfollowing me a few days later. I was glad.
• Politically shrill posts. Often, the worst offenders are preaching to the choir. And preaching badly. I unfollowed a lot of people during the presidential debates.
• Private Twitter accounts. Nothing personal. I just can’t read anything to determine whether I should try to follow or not if I don’t already know you. I usually just move on.
• Twitter accounts with no bio information or link to a person’s Web site. I won’t follow someone if I can’t figure out who they are or where they’re from. I try to keep most of the people I follow in the Austin area unless I already know them.
• Sucking up to popular Twitter personalities in the hopes they’ll reply or follow back.
• Those who follow large numbers of people then unfollow everyone who doesn’t follow back right away. We know what you’re doing. It ain’t classy.

Yes, it’s quite a cranky list. I am quite the curmudgeon, I know.

Here is a list of similar complaints from others on Twitter:

• I get cranky with epic-length entries that spill over into three or more posts! You have to read upwards, piecing them together, and often they’re interrupted by someone else’s tweet. It completely defeats the purpose of Twitter.
• People who tweet (is that the word?) about 5 times in a row, like, all the time (especially if I don’t know them). These tweeters complete monopolize my feed and that’s just bad.
• The last couple of folks I unfollowed were because they were tweeting holier-than-thou “shame on you for not thinking/voting/believing the way I do” kinds of messages. I love twitter for allowing us to converse and all have our own opinions; I don’t have time for someone who doesn’t respect the thoughts and beliefs of the others around them.
• Anyone who makes a discriminatory statement (race, ethnicity, gender, religion) gets dropped like a rock. This has happened a couple of times and I immediately wonder why in the heck I followed those folks in the first place!
• Telling us what they are eating and even linking with a pic. I mean, really?
• Constantly ripping on something I enjoy; being way too damn serious all the time.
• Automatic “thanks for following” dms are my current top Twitter annoyance.
• Ponder their bodily functions, or brag that they are Twittering while on the toilet. I do not need the visual aid.
• My #1 criteria for unfollowing is machine-gun posting: posting piles of tweets in a v. short time, drowning out all other voices.
• I unfollow when people say “Good morning, Tweeps” and “Good night, Tweeps” (or “Tweeples”). It reminds me of the damn Meet Markets @ Television Without Pity.
• I also unfollow when people Tweet 7-8 times in a row and when their Tweets start talking continuously about their personal monetary debt.
• Twitter things that annoy me: advertising (alltop, magpie, or other kinds of repetitive ad tweets). I haven’t unfollowed anyone yet, though.
• When people update every five seconds and have nothing interesting and/or funny to say or just say inside jokes that I don’t get.
• Re: unfolllowing, if a tweeter sends out 17 pages of tweets in less than 12 hours, I unfollow.
• It’s hard to quantify but there is such a thing as too much tweeting. When home page at any given time is 80 percent one person.
• Begging: twitting a blog post, then subsequently tweeting ‘0 comments’ ‘0 comments’ ‘0 comments’. So sad.
• You’ve probably already gotten “carrying on a conversation for more than two tweets with the same person” or something similar.
• Using twitter regularly as an announcement service for posts to your blog, Flickr page, Facebook, Brightkite location change, etc.
• 1.) name drop 2.) post links with no context 3.) talk (brag) about how many followers they have 4.) link to Rickroll
• I’ll unfollow some1 who’s every post is a news “link” or RT. If I wanted news I’d read it.unless it’s a special account like statesman
• How about when peole nominate themselves and ask everyone to nominate them?
• Twitter gripe: When people angrily or sarcastically note whenever they get unfollowed, despite having hundreds of followers.
• Recently unfollowed a fellow author because all her tweets were self-promos, but poorly designed to look like they weren’t.
• Marketing drones trying to pass for genuine people; personal trivia before I’ve decided you’re an interesting person; Magpie; excess volume.
• Twitter peeve: when someone makes up a hash tag and uses it to express an aside insted of a real topic #reallyannoying
• Twitter tick off # 109: links with no explanation. just www.wtf.com/buildingmyhits.html
• I unfollowed Guy Kawasaki cuz I hated all the “alltop” biz tweets. I unfollow those who signed up for his automatic retweeting, too.
• When they say “DM me” but with the implied “if you’re important enough to be followed by me. [Note from Omar: this was in reference to my asking people to DM items for this list. Hey, thanks!]
• Anyone who makes discriminatory statements gets dropped like a rock & makes me wonder why in the heck I followed them in the 1st place!
• Nothing but ads in their tweets. don’t follow back. never @reply back. talk only about themselves.
• Constant twitter with just links in them nothing else, once in a while is okay, but if thats all they tweet then its bye bye.
• Crossposting on Facebook.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Got more? Post them in the comments.

(And a special note of thanks to everyone who contributed to that second list.)

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