The Mis-Use of Twitter Direct Messages
October 5, 2008 by Colleen Coplick
Filed under Social Media
This has been bugging me for some time now, but I think in order to explain my annoyance, I have to give you some back story.
At BlogWorld Expo, I was hanging out with people I’d met at SxSW and knew from Twitter. A couple of them hassled me (gently) over my following to followers ratio. You see, I’d gotten fed up with the fact that I was missing many of the people I really wanted to know about on Twitter, and so ruthlessly slashed and burned. If we hadn’t had an actual exchange on Twitter, I was out. I culled those I was following down to approximately 250 (from about 1100).
So, ok, fine. I come home from BWE and start looking at ways to get the updates from my 250 or so “main interest” Twitter folk, while still following back just about everyone who followed me. I found that Tweetdeck will give me an “attention” group, despite the fact that the program takes up a lot of screen real estate and is kind of unwieldy.
So, I’ve begun to follow almost everyone back (unless you’re a spammer or a bot), and I’m getting a deluge of direct messages! “Thanks for the follow. Check out my blog!”, and my favourite, “Five reasons to move to Sweden”. Um, thanks but this is not why the direct message feature was introduced!
People, restrain yourselves. Just stop it! I will find your blog if I am interested. Sending me a direct message and telling me to check you out is going to leave a bad taste in my mouth and even if I do manage to find your blog on my own, I’m not going to stick around. (image sources: screenshots taken by me)
So please, please people. If you want to say thank you for the follow or whatever, it’s ok to do that publically. It’s not a secret. Use the Twitter DMs for what they’re ACTUALLY for, ok? Thanks.
Edited to Add: Matt makes a good point. I got all ranty and didn’t talk about what the DMs are actually FOR. I use them, as do many of my friends on Twitter, as a quick communication between two people that we don’t necessarily need all 1400 people or however many are following us to see. I use them more or less like text messages – quick and easy, something that I can direct to one person rather than something that I want on the public timeline, but that doesn’t require as much effort/space as an email requires.
So, how are YOU using Twitter DMs?
Well, you never actually say what they are for… I honestly don’t know. I tend to use them when I want to say something out of public, but I also get those stupid DMs, and you’re right, its annoying as hell.
Maybe we should point out directly what they are for… :)
Matt
I must concur. I don’t know how many “Thanks for the follow, here’s my blog” DMs I get. I’m not social-media retarded. If I found somebody to follow on Twitter in the first place, I know where to look to find a link to their site.
Lately I’ve been getting a lot of “Vote for ____, go to http://_____” and “I’m doing a walk for [insert charity here], check out my page & support the cause!”
Wouldn’t these people think that if they’re trying to fund-raise or get votes, a PUBLIC tweet would me just a tad more effective?
I got a VERY weird DM today:
Just wanted to send you the bannar ads for my company. Did not want u to think I’m a spammer.
WTF?
Anyway, how do you get the “attention” thing on Tweetdeck? Sounds like exactly what I need.
Colleen,
Great point about DM spam. I use the DM as you described, just as a short 1:1 private message to someone else that the whole Twitterverse does not need to know about. Thanks for the reminder.
I’m starting to use more DMs as a way of talking to people, as I know that I tend to do @ replies a lot and people don’t want to see those necessarily.
I’m one of the guilty people who thanks my followers with a direct message. I always send a DM with my email address included so if they want to contact me for something more personal or needs to write more than 140 characters. I’m a recruiter in the PR industry and most of my followers are PR pros. I tweet publicly, but as a first start and to initiate a conversation with a new follower I don’t already know, I figure a direct message more discreet than drawing attention and letting everyone else know this person is interested what @PRjobs has to say… like the boss or other colleagues. Given my profession, I think it puts some of my followers at ease. But maybe I’m wrong?
I somewhat disagree with you. I hate DM spam that means nothing, but I def don’t mind when someone sends me a DM the first time I start to follow them. Something like “hey, thanks for following me. here’s a link that represents what I write about” isn’t annoying to me. I actually think it is polite to acknowledge someone new is following you.
Of course, is someone is constantly DM’ing me for no reason other than to send me links, that’s another thing.
Well, I have to say, though, that I don’t following everyone following me. I only follow the select people who interest me – less than 50 people. So, I guess subscribing to 1000 people at once and getting messages from all of them would be overwhelming.
@Matt – you were right, which is why I editied it. :)
@Stacy – there’s just far too many of them in my world…
@Simon – that’ll be my next post, I promise. :) I’ll go over everything. I had trouble trying to figure it out at first too.
@Warren – no problem. :) glad you liked it…
@Raul – but that’s part of what Twitter is about. Doesn’t matter if people don’t want to see them …. the replies and conversations on Twitter – for me at least – is what it’s about.
@Lindsay – See, that’s different, because you’re using Twitter as part of your recruiting tactics. The people who are DM’ing me their blog links are just random folk, who know nothing about what I am interested in because they don’t take the time to listen to what I say first…. So I get random and bizarre links. I can totally understand the way you’re using it.
@Allison – fair enough… :) I’m not getting it that way tho, I’m just getting “here’s my blog” and I’m finding that I’m getting so many of them, before anyone has actually said anything to me first is frustrating, especially when it feels like they haven’t bothered to find out what I’m even interested in… it’s just been frustrating I guess.
I think there’s def a lesson to be learned here – if you’re going to message people with a link to your blog and a “thank you for following,” it should be personal, not just a generic message. I mean, if you want people to visit your blog, you should visit theirs. I try to send messages that say something like “thanks for following. I noticed you wrote a networking blog. I wrote about green networking a few months ago here” with a link. I think if more people did it like that, it would be less annoying!
Is it just me or do some of the Twitter folk seem to have a way of instantly sending a Direct Message immediately after you follow them. I honestly don’t know of a way to do this, but you click follow, and.3 seconds later, you have, not only the standard issue “Twitter” email, but a direct message from the person you are now following…and 99.9% of the time it will have a message saying “Hey, I’m Cool…Check out My Cool Site http://www.heyi‘mcool.com and be cool with me and my cool friends.
While I like the idea of Twitter, there are some annoyances that make me wonder if it’s worth being a part of.