Twitter - we’ve got to set some ground rules.
I’ve been meaning to do a review/rant of twitter for a long time. Well, ever since I began using it over a year ago. Since then, I’ve posted over four thousand tweets and gained quite a few followers from what I’ve said or done over there.
But while most of us have been in the mix of twittering, following and being followed in turn - how have we not acted as a community to fix some of the worst problems faced by twitter? There are so many little things, but the one integral part that isn’t being sorted is simple to remedy.
Some people just don’t understand it and in turn, abuse it.
If you’re a twitterer who followed a link to this blog post then you know that I, as well as others, use it to promote their content. No problems there as our main use of it is to share ourselves and in turn learn about other people. But some didn’t get the memo and see this as more of a content delivery system and never have a two-way conversation between twitterers.
These people follow thousands of people a day and only publish about their own work. Almost every twitter update is a link to something of their own creation and somehow they expect us to be nice, follow them back and even go so far as to sharing their content for them. No way.
Why haven’t our twitter techs sorted this? It’s a sad thing that if you’re a sheep, will you stop yourself from falling off a cliff or get pushed by the crowds? Without people writing and complaining, these spam-tweets will continue to grow. We need a revolt. We have spent that past few months ignoring these spammers and only thinking of it as a minor inconvenience.
This needs to stop.
Will you be a sheep or will you simply ask the twitter techs to put a limit on how many people you can follow a day? These people are following thousands a day so limiting the follow count to 20 or 50 per day would be simple enough not to cause problems to almost every twitterer. It seems like a simple fix, so why aren’t we asking demanding?
We’re the community. We should set the ground rules.
Tags: community, ground rules, spam, twitter
Keith Burtis | April 29th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Craig, I agree with you 100% - Unfortunately I have been listed in the top 100 on twitter, and I think the “Marketing” push a message at you people are beginning to target me. I agree that it s a conversational medium, and i gree that it’s ok to promote yourself and friends links, however — I DONT CARE HOW INFLUENTIAL YOU ARE — no reciprocation on a subject = NO FOLLOW.
yesterdays contacts that added me were :
A carpet cleaner
More sex Now
And some other absurd people who do not join the conversation or add value to the community.
Thanks for letting me rant!
Keith Burtis