As Twitter continues to grow and I continue to use it and follow new people, I have come across a few things that kind of bug me. I am sure others have things that bug them too (and I’m sure some of my followers have things they don’t like about me). Here are the three main things that bug me on twitter. I would love to see your pet peeves in the comments section.
1) Continual Sales Posts: There are a few people that I follow on my business Twitter that some days I wonder why. They really don’t seem to bring anything to the table as far as information; it is basically one ad for their company after another. On top of it some of them seem to also have a huge ego with posts like “we are the best screen printer.” To me Twitter is a community where people can find like minded folks and connect. Yes it can and should be used to promote your products and services, but it also should be used to share ideas, discuss hot topics and just to plain get to know someone.
2) Non-Re-tweetable Posts: OK, So re-tweetable might not be a word, but one thing is for sure, re-tweeting is becoming a large part of the Twitter world. To re-tweet is to take someone’s post and resend it to all of your followers. It normally starts with RT @{User Name of Person who posted original item}. This is normally used for reposting someone’s announcement or information that you found useful that you think your followers also might want to know about. I typically re-tweet post about coupon codes or sales etc. It is the nice thing to do and it also allows you to be the connector between people that might no necessarily be connected already.
The problem occurs when someone posts something that is too long to re-tweet. When you post something that you want someone to RT (re-tweet), remember that you must be far enough under the 140 character limit to then include RT_@{your user name}. So for example if I post a coupon code for a sale, I would make sure that my post is no longer than 125 characters long because RT @GDSProducts is 15 characters long. With most of the Twitter programs that I use re-tweeting is very easy. Just a touch of a button, but if your post is too long, then I have to manually edit it. I have started to just pass on those, especially if it is just a sales/advertisement post. Am I being too anal?
3) Copy Cat User Names: In all of the people that I am now following (598 as of the writing of this blog) I have run across some that either just repost the same thing as another user name or don’t actually share any information other than re-tweets of the parent user name. I wake up in morning to about 200 to 300 tweets on a normal day and duplicate posts just annoy me.
I really hate un-following people as I know it is depressing when people un-follow me (Can you tell I am a little too wrapped up in Twitter?). Does anyone follow me? If so what do I do that annoys you? What are some things that annoy you about your Twitter experience?