From time to time I review the list of Twitter users following me. There are many I’m fully aware of and engage with on a regular basis. There are a lot though, that leave me shaking my head.
I’m enjoying the new Klout extension for Chrome , a handy tool that allows me to scan through my list of followers quickly to see who really cares that they’re on Twitter and who’s just screwing around. Anyway, today, my scan through my list and the revelation of  dozens of disengaged followers has really fired me up. Therefore, I give you . . .
The Five People Who Make Me Nuts on Twitter
- You look great! Is that a new haircut? Have you lost weight?
- You look great! Is that a new haircut? Have you lost weight?
- The egg. Really? You’re an egg? Awesome. I’ll be sure to recognize you at the next Tweetup. Please get a photo in there or get out.
- The person with no content in their bio. NOTHING. I have no idea who you are, what you’re interested in, where you are or in short, WTF you are doing on Twitter.
- The person who set up a Twitter account more than a year ago because, oh, I don’ t know, someone probably told them they needed one, but has never tweeted a single thing. Don’t lurk; engage, you creep. What might actually be worse is the user who has attracted followers and yet tweets maybe once a month or so and never, ever replies to other users.
- The person running a Twitter account for a business whose tweets are protected. Kinda ruins the point, doesn’t it?
- Here’s a phenomenon I can’t even begin to understand: the user following me because we have the same first name. Can you imagine if my name was Jennifer?
I agree on all of the above. I’ll throw in the people with a million followers but only following 1 or 2 (or 0).
There’s also the person with nothing but a)sales links b) nothing but their own links and no @replies c) nothing but “inspiring” quotes.
And then, my personal favorite, the “social media expert/guru/ninja” who fits into your categories 1-3, has like 10 followers or 10 tweets. then nothing….Yeah. I’d hire them…
though I will have to disagree with you on the Klout thing.
@KenMueller@replies Which part of the Klout thing do you disagree with?
I hate the empty bio! My pet peeve the twit that only tweets “inspirational” quotes. I don’t mind them on occasion, but get out there and have an original thought already!
@MollyFulton Oh Molly – yes — there are a couple of people I follow out of professional courtesy — but quote after quote after quote makes me want to unfollow. Totally agree!
I can’t stand the people who tweet and run. They put something out there, people respond and you never hear at thing back from that person becuase they are on to their next brilliant tweet. I don’t expect everyone to use Twitter like instant messaging. But, I do expect some dialogue happening.
@SuzanneHenry oh I couldn’t agree more. Especially when I respond to someone and there’s no follow up. My hope is that the tweet and run folks will eventually get filtered out. (This is all making me decide to unfollow a lot of folks.)
I’m personally always intrigued by the “women who teach men the skills to pick up women” category. Like, who is really behind that, eh? Should I block “her”? Or should I just let the Law of Attraction go to work?
Great post Marijean. I don’t think that i have ever met anyone with the same first name as you. I pretty much agree with everything, but still haven’t made up my mind about Klout.
I’m not a fan of profiles where a significant portion of the tweets are retweets…especially if the retweets are of Reverend Run or some Twitter “celeb” like that.
Original thoughts are greatly appreciated.
I don’t like the validation services for new followers. Don’t make me fill out a form to see your tweets. It starts the relationship off on a sour note, if I even follow through.
Ha, your list is closely matched to mine! I also don’t care for people who have thousands of followers but only follow 10! That tells me they paid for followers somewhere because otherwise how can you engage and get those many followers (outside of celebs I guess) and don’t follow anybody back! Weak!
I’ll throw in the people who tweet the same thing over, and over, and over…well, you catch my drift.
I agree with most of your list, but folks who never post don’t bother me. Some people use Twitter as a news stream, following what they find relevant. They listen, rather than engaging, and I don’t have a problem with that. In fact, I much prefer silence to those who tweet annoyingly!
OMG. I was really really hoping you were actually going to call out five people that drive you nuts. You could call it the Anti-Follow-Friday. Do it!!! I’ll give you TEN BUCKS. 🙂
You’re whole list, and the twit-forward validation thingee drive me nuts. From your list, esp the protected tweets.
The egg is an odd thing, though I’m not a fan of requiring anyone to post images. I mean, it might seem a bit irrelevant to someone who is using a text reader, for example. Or, I can see someone taking a social politics stand about visual images—I know an anthropologist who doesn’t tend to take photos of people (apart from family shots in context) because of how he thinks it crystallizes a certain objectified image and contributes to stereotyping and acts of symbolic violence. (I can’t really speak to that. I’m just saying that I can hold space for more than one point of view.) I also don’t mind sparsity of Tweeting or blogging. This is probably because I’m guilty of both, but also because I prize quality over quantity. If someone brings me a perfect berry once a month, I’ll look forward to it and savor it, preferring that relationship to someone who pelts me with McDonald’s fries on a daily basis.
I do not enjoy people who Tweet every darned link, thought, or advertisement (veiled, or otherwise) that crosses their mind. It’s the equivalent of the email folks who forward every impersonal joke, prayer, chain letter, crisis alert (without bothering to check with Snopes), etc. Really? Why should I care when you can’t be bothered to distinguish between dreck and substance? If you at least used hash tags to indicate that you are coding something as humor or an opportunity or ___insert something that makes it seem like you give a crap here___.
Equally irritating are elected folks and other political figures who Tweet but don’t respond. Again, really? You are supposed to be representing We, The People; how, precisely, do you plan to claim to do that if you don’t actually engage with us and why the heck should we care what you Tweet if you don’t care about how it strikes us? I don’t care if I’m not responded to, personally, but I’d like to see dialogue with someone.
Most annoying-chief-number-one-makes-me-want-to poke-out-my-own-eyes (or find a way to send them trial subscriptions to every magazine I can name and put them on catalogue mailing lists for every company on earth) are the folks who follow me for no reason beyond boosting their own numbers. They compound the sin when they ask to be Followed in return. I’d rather have my Twitter community be small and engaged than large and vacuous. Maybe this means I don’t “get it,” but so be it. It’s partly for this reason that I’m warming to FollowFriday. It seems like a smart way to make legitimate connections between parties that might have a legitimate mutual interest.
Oo! I sound like Bride of Crankenstein! So, I’ll stop.
Cheers! Alice
p.s. @neilhimself is one of the best Twitter users I follow. Even when he’s prolific, it’s worth the read. Even though he’s never responded to my Tweets or replies (Ha! He just did. How funny.), and I don’t know him personally, I enjoy his messages. @amandapalmer is an Empress of Twitter and although I sometimes feel bombarded by the stream of Tweets around a pirate gig or other event, it’s not without purpose and I think she proves the effectiveness of The Power of Twitter for things besides Disaster Response better than any other individual or business of which I’m aware. I also love the pithy combination of heart and snark reflected by @nhmillgirl . She was recommended to me by @RyanEWolf and I’ve been glad every time she Tweets. Mother Jones magazine, however, got demoted to a List, only.
@Marijean just in general. Just not a big fan of klout overall, and what it stands for. I’m not completely writing it off, but I do see they are trying to improve some things.
wait, is the first thing we’ve ever disagreed on?
@Lisa Gerber I’ll add two more. That makes TWELVE BUCKS! (I’m really not sure how she can say No, now.)
@Lisa Gerber it was tempting to be sure, but I’m not that mean!
The auto-follow or auto-retweet based on keywords! Now, THAT’s a relationship worth building.
Just saw this on a new Follower’s page: “Only confirmed followers have access to @……..s Tweets and complete profile. You need to send a request before you can start following this account.” Really? No wonder the guy has 0 Followers.
1) People with no tweets, no bio, nothin’ (“Please follow me! I promise I’ll be interesting…soon!”).
2) People who claim in their bio that they can get you hundreds or thousands of followers, make you hundreds of dollars a day through tweeting, etc.
3) People whose photos don’t look real (they all look like Paris Hilton or Ashton Kutcher) and are tweeting nothing but ads.
4) Bots
5) People who haven’t tweeted in ages. It’s really frustrating to see a business you frequent or want to patronize, and they haven’t tweeted since their first tweet (“We’re now on Twitter!” – posted 1 year ago).
The tweeters that drive me nuts are the ones who only post their automatic blog posts or businesses that only post about items for sale. Certainly you have SOMETHING else to say? I’d also have to agree about the quotes people, for a similar reason.