People that uses Twitter knows how effectively powerful and awesome it is as a social tool and a communications outlet. Whether it is sharing opinions, photos, thoughts; it is all what makes people come back for more. The question is “What are you doing?” not “How can can you annoy people right now?”.
There are some that does not get it and those that abuses the privilege of sharing. It is what it is. Micro-blogging your daily activities, communicating with friends, trading links and pictures. I just seeing a lot of problems lately on my timeline. I’m not one of the first adopters of Twitter but I learn by observations. In fact, I’m like a lot of people that first opened up a Twitter account and just left it dormant after a couple of updates. What drew me back was realizing how powerful of a tool it is to meet people and be part of the conversation.
Twitter is what the user makes it out to be but I think they are missing the boat on how to get their messages across.
I recently did a clean-up of who I am following and I made a simple guideline for myself. This was what I was looking at while doing the removal.
1. I kept my friends. People I know and care about. People I have followed for their insights and created more than just communications but friendship. There are countless people I have met through Twitter and a pleasure to meet. Some of these people I know are from outside the Internet world and most of them are developed through my daily use on Twitter.
2. People that abuses ‘re-tweeting’. I did not follow you to see other people’s tweets. I followed you for a reason. You did something to catch my attention and now you have blown it by constantly ‘re-tweeting’ somebody else’s update and most of the time it is something I’m not interested with. It totally kills my timeline and the relationship I have with you. What happens in the long run is that you become invisible. I ignore your tweets because I am expecting mediocrity from your updates. Stick to your own ideas and thoughts but please keep the echoes to a minimum. Once you have crossed the line, I stop following you .
3. People that post what they are listening to. There are outlets for this such as blip.fm. To me, it is cool to post a good tune you listen to but not a mass amount of music you are listening to every 3 minutes. Like reason #2, it gets old and annoying fast.
4. People who just are not interesting. I’m sure I’ve been eliminated by numerous users for being a chatter-head or I may be boring but I feel like this rule is a given as universal. If I find you boring, you are outta here!
5. People who uses automation. Do I really have to explain this one? I want real people behind an update not a bot.
6. People that just not interacting with me. Now this happens to a lot of Twitter users. I don’t have many followers but I guarantee you I try to keep up with everyone of them and communicate with them when they interact with me. Most of the time it is a big name user or a c-class celebrity that think they are too good for responding to a fan. I can understand they have a huge following but if there is no trading of feedback, especially when I know they are following me back? If they don’t bother to answer anything I ask whether it is in the public timeline or a direct message than it is not worth my time.
So, if you are gone from my timeline, I apologize but it is nothing personal. I want my Twitter experience to be great and worth my time as much as yours. I’m sure there will be a backlash to this but if you have a valid response on why my reasoning are invalid, please let me know. Maybe I’ll put it in consideration.
