Twitter was built, populated, and promoted by the tech community. That just makes it even more ironic that so many of us techies have terrible Twitter manners. We should know better.
Look technology friends, Twitter is a lovely thing, but when we tweet certain things we make our followers cringe and twitch towards the unfollow button. Do whatever you will, but after reading literally millions of tweets I think that if we cut out the following Tweets we would all be better off.
And of course, I am just as guilty as you are.
Tweeting Every Damn Place You Go
You may think that it is interesting that you are at Whole Foods (because you have the spare coin, right?), but we don’t. The annoying thing is that many ‘must follow’ people in tech are some of the worst Foursquare-on-Twitter abusers.
I may have to follow you, but I hate your Foursquare spam. Tell me when you are at the White House, or the Playboy Mansion, not the carwash.
Vague Victory Tweets
Your “Epic win today, really stoked about the next three months” tweet, or your “big things afoot and I am smack dab in the middle of it” tweet add nothing to my day other than the fact that I wonder if you can’t write coherently.
Tell me what happened: “My startup just raised $1 million!” Or don’t: “My startup is drying up and is ready to blow away!”
Whiny Lame Complaints
“OMG they ran out of my favorite white wine on the plane.” Oh, they did? Perhaps they did not forecast your taste buds and alcoholism before you boarded. Here is a little pro-tip, drink something else and hush.
You are allowed to whine if you get legitimately screwed: “Someone just stole my backback that had all my computers in it.” If you are not sure, don’t tweet.
The New Apple Product You Just Purchased
I hate this: “Really happy with my new 35″ MacBook Air with 5500 Terabyte SSD, worth the change.” First of all, screw you for having more money than the rest of us. Two, no one cares.
If you work on an Etch-A-Sketch and get your stuff done, so be it. Also, nearly everyone uses Apple products anyways, so all you are saying is that you are a sheep with no hope of ever thinking independently. Get over it.
Retweeting People We All Follow
This is probably the most annoying thing that you can do. Let’s say person X is a big damn deal in tech and has a pile of followers. This person says something witty, and you retweet it. Guess what, now I have to read it twice.
Even worse, because they are so big, if I don’t follow them, it’s for a reason, so you are injecting crap into my stream that I have already opted out from. No thank you.
That about wraps it up. What are your big pet peeves?
Good artical ans you arr so right. Not going to rrtweet every one follows TNW right ;)
Tech sites that post that Twitter or whatever service is down.
We all f**king know it’s down.
Mind if I retweet this?
That would be fine :)
You tell ‘em AW !!
Vague tweets are the worst… because you know
Yeah, I know right?
I agree with all of these points. I think in addition to vague victory tweets, any vagueness at all should just die. This happens more in facebook, but also sometimes on twitter. Tweets like “Sometimes people make me mad” or “Wow, that makes me sad” are just not needed. If you need to vent vaguely, get a journal.
Add to that list:
Tweeting to tell others how to tweet.
Not limited to techies, but generically asking for DMs is rude – unless they actually do follow everyone.
thank you!
What about use of hashtags? Some people # every other word in their tweet. Other than conferences, is it appropriate?
I know we all like quotes but sometimes people just over-tweet those, in my opinion. Not to mention that most of them are not even very smart.
my pet peeves are articles like this. tweet whatever the crap you want, if people don’t like it, unfollow.. simple… twitter is not some place where people *have* to only say things for the betterment of society, their followers or any other crap like that.
Nail on the head…
AGREED! I see posts like this all the time and it’s just self indulgent. Certain things annoy me (excessive quoting or #nowplaying) but some don’t (I, for one, am INTERESTED in what my friends are doing/thinking! I can read boring links anywhere! I want to hear about people’s lives). Every tweeter could (& seems to) make these lists and they’re all different bc PEOPLE USE TWITTER FOR DIFFERENT THINGS!
/rant
Completely agree! If you don’t like what someone is tweeting about, there’s that little “Unfollow” button you can click.
These types of articles seem unnecessarily judgmental and a tad pompous. Who is the author to say that a “serious” tech person shouldn’t tweet about his dog, the salad bar at Whole Foods, or whether he spilled his Chianti while on a flight. Some of the more brilliant tech folks I follow tweet personal items all the time and I find it refreshing.
Personally, I like hearing some of these tweets that the author probably thinks are banal and inane. It gives me a better overall impression of what the person is like. Yes, I know tweets aren’t totally representative of an individual’s personality but they do help, IMO anyway.
The odd banal tweet is ok but more than 1 a week is just too, well… banal. That’s what blogs are for – tweets are bite size bits of info.
“The New Apple Product You Just Purchased”
As with most of TNW, the point is always the Apple hater comment.
Keep feeding the gamer creeps the hate they come here for.
Gamer creep reporting, sir.
Envy for people who unlike me can afford Apple also applies, not that I will ever admit without turture.
Hmm, how about those 20 tweets a week from you guys to notify me that you have 2 dozen TNW channels and a FB fan page? ;)
But the king of irritating is mashable that is over and over repeating on twitter that they have a new copy-paste/7 lines no-brainer article.
I prefer facebook because people tend not to spam you as much on there, repeating the same things all the time.
facebook offers the joy of reading ‘____ likes your post’ or ____ commented on your status. And that’s before i start reading who’s the latest zombie or scrabulous participant.
And these are the people I chose to be my friends!
Dude look at your own stream:
- Enjoying a delicious burrito
- High stakes
- Lunch -peace out ya’ll
- Drinking Johnny walker black on the train headed to antonios nut house.
- I am at the nut house in palo alto
This is just a small grab from 5 days of your own Twitter stream…. so who is blaming who?
From the post: “And of course, I am just as guilty as you are.”
This is exactly why I do not follow most “techies” on Twitter. Pretty much everything you mentioned annoys me. I don’t want to know where you are unless it’s cool or interesting. I don’t care that you’re having a beer with Bob from (company). Contrary to your belief, we are not all now sitting on the edge of our chairs bouncing and begging to know what your vague update was about.
If you follow the “techies” you will never need to subscribe to Mashable, TechCrunch or The Next Web – and you certainly won’t need to follow them either. Why? Because every single new article will be re-tweeted about 10 times in 2 minutes.
In other words /signed !
I totally agree with you, and another thing which is really annoying , that being an entrepreneur is like saying that you play ball these days, not something special anymore , i have like 150 entrepreneurs on my twitter account.
No offense Alex :) , i enjoy your writing and articles, am just saying.
Writing posts about what other people should or should not do is worse than any of the 5 above. Just press the unfollow button that is what it is for.
Exactly!!
My pet peeve is those who complain about how other people should tweet. Heh.
Live-tweeting from events. Drives me nuts. Pretty please write a short summary for your blog or Facebook page, but spare me the flood of pretend-meaningful quotes.
Andrea – you hit my biggest one. Half of the time I don’t even know what event it is, what the topic is or what the tweet they’re talking about. They usually fall into the vague category because half of the time they’re tweeting what the speaker just said. It’s like being on the wrong side of an inside joke.
No one mentioned air travel tweets. Sorry that your plane got delayed but hey, you are traveling on your company’s dime, something we underlings never get to do. Stop tweeting and get a drink at the bar.
You look kind of effeminate, not sure what else to say, cry more maybe?
But, you know everybody has right to type anything into his space of his account:)
That about sums it up.
Also I don’t care much for those who RT their own other ‘business’ accounts. I don’t mind people having personal and (multiple) business accounts – just know that chances are I don’t follow your business account(s) for a reason
I hate it when some people retweet mentions that is mentioning them! I won’t mind if he/she is mentioned by aplusk!
Chacun a son goût. Different strokes for different folks. Follow those who’s tweets interest you. Unfollow those who don’t.
‘Nuff said.
I just unfollow people that waste my time … and I only check my social networks once in a while anyway.
This is hilarious Alex. But, with all due respect, you committed the worst offense last night IMO “holy crap, I just passed 20k tweets.” No one gives a crap dude;) A close second is “Help me get to 2k followers! I need 2 more!”. God I hate that.
I find it quite annoying when people tweet a question but then don’t reply to anyone on it. Why ask? Sure, you may think you are being rhetorical, but it usually comes off as arrogant. Maybe we need a Retorical Question hashtag #RQ or Don’t Actually Care about your answer hashtag #DAC
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If you think that people should tweet whatever the crap they want, than by definition people are allowed to tweet (or write for that matter) about whatever the crap they think shouldn’t be tweeted. You’re effectively tweeting that people shouldn’t tweet about what shouldn’t be tweeted about, therefor making yourself guilty of the same sin.
It’s some sort of liar’s paradox, it’s all very meta.
- People sending me automatic direct messages after I start following them
- People saying; ‘good morning’, ‘coffee’ or ‘I had a x night of sleep’.
- People posting links to ‘news’ which is really old. Like; Oh I just read Google Wave is suspended. Well; don’t bother us with your lack of attention
- People who mix their English tweets with [any other] languages I do not understand.
I don’t agree on the retweeting people we all follow. Because we all don’t follow the same people. But, excessive retweeting is a nightmare.
Any Tweet that purports to be the demise of one mega-corp at the hands of another mega-corp, that will result in the ONE MEGA CORP TO RULE THEM ALL… (Facebook will eat Google today; iPhones take over new Universe while Android barely beats out RIM; Microsoft will die if it doesn’t buy MySpace, etc.).
It’s like each and every day, there are a hundred thousand Techie Tweets that are wholly crisis driven – Like listening to Pollsters during the 2 year lead up to a National Election.
It’s grown tiresome and results in more Unfollows than anything else.
That said, based on the List in the Post, I do have about 30 Techoise-hipsters to go Unfollow (I’ve been meaning to for awhile).
Also, Unfollow anyone and everyone who has put their Twitter Feed into LinkedIN, creating even more redundant noise.
On thing serious tech bloggers should stop doing: Telling other people what they can or can’t publish as content.
Very true! I especially despise the Foursquare tweets and the folks who retweet people like Kanye West all over my timeline
You are so right! love your article!!! :)
Useful stuff…