Friday, March 13, 2009

More ways to lose Twitter followers

I read an article today called How to lose Twitter followers in 10 steps. I've probably read about 20 such Twitter Ettiquette articles, and most are pretty good. They don't even all say the same things, which means there are many, many ways to be an obnoxious Twit. Twitterer. Ahem.

And yet there are still more ways to lose followers, because they have yet to cover MY list. Here are things you can do to get me to stop following you:
  1. Tweet long sentences over multiple tweets. Listen, it's a 140-character medium okay? Don't try to bypass it with a continuation.
  2. Be a celebrity-turned-Twitterholic. Hey I love your movies, and hearing about your glorious life was fun for a while, but now you twitter every tiny thought and movement you make as if I have nothing else to do but follow your 140-character fanzine.
  3. Tweet a link without information. People do this...a naked link, its identity obscured by a tinyurl, and you think we worship you so much to follow you into a blind alley.
  4. Tweet linkless information that needs a link. The other day someone announced a really cool sounding conference but gave no link.
  5. Make your followers listen to your side of the one-on-one conversation you're having with a friend. Hey get a room. A chat room. This is Twitter.
  6. Twitter using a context that only a tiny number of your followers know about. Recently I stopped following a colleague who kept tweeting things like "is excited about the new website" and "posted my first article to the new site. Can't wait for the reactions." What website would that be?
  7. Tweet with the same hyped-up, caffeine fueled excitement and optimism day after day. You got tickets to SXSW, FTW! You ate at a new five star on Randolph, FTW! You got tickets to Coldplay, FTW! Okay, okay I give up, I hate myself and I want to be you!
  8. DM everyone on your list with generic messages. People tend to have their twitter set up to get emails when they are DM'd. How out of it can you be about Twitter that you immediately turn it into a vehicle for spam?
Read on Twitter today from someone at SXSW: "Everyone starts out on the internet as a douchebag. Then you do something to move above or below that line."

No comments: