-
Website
http://www.loiclemeur.com/ -
Original page
http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2009/02/twitter-robots-killed-me-and-why-i-apologize-i-may-not-be-following-you-anymore.html -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
I'm just waiting for the days where someone uses robots to get thousands of followers and then renames their account and sells it... that day is probably already here. Charting influence on Twitter is a whole different thing now than it was a year ago, follower count is becoming a useless metric and there's ever more noise...
Socialtoo to opt out you have to actually create an account, but it then promises to not only opt you out of their service, but also others including I believe Tweetlater.
Those are the 2 primary services used to auto DM
Good luck!
Maybe we should do some sort of shame inducing viral Anti-Auto-DM campaign.
I like simple, genuine connections that develop over time and after getting the chance to know each other, sometimes technology is used in the wrong way, and it can give it all a bad rep, but I am thankful there are people out there with a bigger voice like you to share the way!!!
kisses
g
Good man. narrow down your list and give a real meaning to the word 'friend list'.
Luic, you made it big by doing what you did and twitter status nor facebook had anything to do with it. they shouldn't now either.
Best,
Faramarz - Toronto
I try to look at everyone who follows me's site link to determine if I want to follow at this time.
P.S. I've also never un-followed someone.
Auto follow/DM changes your online social circle into an ocean with pirates.
I only care to follow those i really plan on reading. I friend only those i already know or can dig their context, see true common interest. Keeping lists small is the only way to maintain quality.
I'm not sure if I would go through the process of unfollowing people on twitter but I completely get that for facebook.
Best of luck to you on the purge and hopefully I will get your follow again. @jensenrf on twitter and most other social networks.
Seriously. I just unfollowed Scoble and it feels great, you know, just like when you've finally done something you've had on your mind for a while but couldn't resolve to do just yet. Like paying a late parking ticket. Unfollow Scoble? Check.
And for all the "regular Twitter/FB folks" like me I suggest the following policy: whenever someone you are following:
- is a yapper,
- did not ever respond ot retweet any of your tweets,
Unfollow. There's enough quality content out there to put up with all the yappin'
Loic, you pass!
I'm sure you'll love basic Twitter again after paring down and growing it back up to who "matters", and will actually be able to use Twhirl again.
But what are you losing by doing this? The answer to that may not be immediately apparent, but I bet it isn't nothing. interesting how this has all turned out. Marketers ruin everything eh?
hmmm loic - few issues - i started sending back dm to people informing them that dm by many is not looked up favorably and is more like an invasion - in response to chris brogan post i thought better to educate people who think this is a way of say something - but an auto responder dm is really way too much - i suggested that twitter put up a notice in the dm to say automatic dm are frowned up ...
on the other side of what could appear as you abandoning all the people who went out of their way to follow you especially since you are a trust agent and builder of community with your sesmic and le web is interesting and maybe a little reaction to something that bothers many of us - i signed up early on twitter but didn't have the bandwidth for all the chatter in the early days until few months ago - i realized that twitter had grown up some and was more about building a community - aside for all the marketing whores out there pimping twitter there is what i call a trust movement to maybe wishful thinking to build a society built on trust as opposed to what we have had for way too long a society built on fear and trust -
so in the end i think there are lots of tradeoffs and unintended consequences - its depends upon how you relate to twitter and how twitter relates to you - and beauty is in the eyes of the beholder - not sure i would agree with your strategy loic -
be well
geo geller
the art of living is making your life an art
some things out of place and couldn't tweak them in the post especially this line
should read a society built on fear and distrust serves it masters/leaders
@sendchocolate
1. Always unfollow robot repliers
2. Don't automatically add anyone
3. Add selectively on the basis of "they might be fun/useful/different"
That's it. Oh, and if the noise level gets too loud - turn it down!
The auto-follow bots should be banned (see how some people now follow loads more than are actually followed, it looks desperate), and those that use them are on some weird ego trip. Many simply add everyone and then delete the followers once they reach a certain status - trying to be some kind of rock star, I remember it took almost 6 months of talking to you on twitter before you added me but that was back in 06 or early 07 before people grew egos!
@kevindixie
And I always clear out people who either are not following back or are auto responders.
I hope this does not have an adverse reaction from those who have invested time in Team Seesmic. They may feel let down that you are unfollowing them :)
answering every single email I get from team seesmic members, trust me it is
my #1 priority these days.
What do you prefer? That I pretend I read 23 000 people on twitter daily or
that I genuinely read every single email going to team seesmic? I do and I
reply, ask anybody who emailed me.
In defence of some DM spam, I'd say that suddenly found after a Tweetlater upgrade I was sending stupid "Thanks for following" messages. I had to apologise for it.
I hold nothing against you for the unfollow!
Regarding Facebook offering "top friend" group, they already have massive filtering efforts, based on your click-through, language, membership correlation in groups, etc.; only thing is: when that kind of preference becomes explicit, drama ensues — so you won't see it, but you can tweak it by voting up or down friends, stories or types of actions. Plus: Loïc is interrested in everybody, really — and an intelligent algorithm is a significant improvement over a basic list filter.
For twitter, there is a leading client (I know I shouldn't mention it here ) that offers group filtering, and it is really useful. A combination of group and keyword would be even better.
But, I did send what I thought to be one of the most important emails I have ever sent. Regarding use of Seesmic and Accessibility.. I have had contact from someone who wished to use the service and it is totally unavailable to blind people, just not at all accessible to post back to me.
I did email Loic about this important issue several weeks back and did not actually receive a response. which I was embarrassed about actually as I had totally and confidently proclaimed 'Loic will answer / look into it, he always does'.
Still waiting on it.
Unless I am missing something, how does deleting all the people you already follow, stop you getting auto-follow dm's? You would have been able to achieve the exact same thing, by simply no longer auto-following. no?
Maybe the answer is not un-following but having twitter create a preference of who can DM and who cannot when you follow. One of the great things about following is that you can browse the content of others without having to have the '@" to get your attention. Now instead of a pile of DM 's you are going to have a ton of "@'s" so the problem is not really going to go away if you think about it.
Maybe the system just does not work and the free and accessible utopian social mediasphere is just not manageable once a threshold of popularity is attained.
As far as Facebook is concerned I totally agree and point out that it was never designed to let every Tom Dick and Harry into your friend space. There is more than one reason that they cap it a 5000. You complain that you don't know these people and put them up on your site. Why in heavens name did you agree to friend them up in the first place. I am trying to not be a dick here but a huge reason for you and people like Scroble's success is the fact that you have all of these "Friends" and "Followers" and that's cool but if you drop them all then you must stop discussing the social media as a two way medium. Or maybe it is but now you have introduced a class system into the mix I am not sure. Again I am not trying to attack but bring on some spirited debate in the matter as I do not have the answers and like I said earlier social media may not work as has been touted once you reach a certain level of fame in the space.
I appreciate the sincere politeness in your post and realize it was not an easy choice for you do unfollow all of the folks that you did. I love blogs, twitter and facebook and have had great discussions and met amazing folks. I can manage it as I am happily at less than a thousand hand chosen followees that I had researched prior to following.
I wish you luck in figuring this complex matter out. If you find the conversation interesting you can follow me @jaypiddy Facebook is out as I hardly know ya;)
Loic, here are two reasons why you should unfollow everyone and add back just a select number:
1. None of the 20,000 people you follow feel good about that connection. You are a speck on their radar, and they know it. 20,000 people on Twitter is just unfiltered noise. People can still @ you.
2. If you follow just those you care about, it increases their value. I'd rather know who you really care about. I often look at the little avatars in the sidebar - it can be a window into another community.
I don't auto follow, but I did set up an auto response for follows, thinking this was a good thing to do. NOW, I can't figure out how to delete it. I've tried and tried to figure it out, sent a request to support and a tweet to the Twitterverse.
Are there different programs that have this option? The only options I use are Tweet Deck and Friend or Follow - no robots.
Can you give me a clue?
Being that I have nearly 36,000 followers, and growing quickly, these auto-reply DM's have rendered my DM inbox virtually useless! It is impossible to weed through all of them to get to actual, useful messages that are not scripted bots and spam.
My post is ... here if interested
@TheBusyBrain
Mike Johnson
St. Petersburg, FL - USA
By creating automatic response, you are killing the idea of micro blogging: You are not actually promoting an instant communication medium, but using it as a bad way to spam others. This is the high risk of advertising via Twitter, and the limit of the system.
It's *cool* to claim you auto-follow (ed) everybody, but the real question is do you have any interest in them? It defeats the purpose of social networking, through which you would expect to connect to a valuable (in your own eyes) set of people.
This is true on all networks and you painfully experienced it.
Also, as you mentioned many times, keep bringing value to your content, it's been dramatically lacking in your last messages/tweets... And please, stop about the "this is so 2008" rhetoric, you are free to use those tools the way you want, you took the wrong path, so be wise, only blame yourself and end the jeremiad.
Take care!
Stay proud loser.
but yea. i never actually follow anyone. If someone is interesting enough or has a nice convo with me I follow them back
Even with a much more modest "following", the auto-DM have also become rather annoying.
On my side, I had been using Socialtoo to auto-follow and auto-greet (but with a very short message, and with no links!) new followers for a while, but I have stopped that, "reverting to manual gears", and no more contributing to the "Twit-pollution".
Selecting by ourselves who we follow is indeed the true spirit of Twitter, and sending only "personalized" DMs are the way to go.
Delete social media and MLM-fanatics from Twitter and you're left with brands and moms at the moment, at least in my world.