Mar 27, 2009
Tweeves: Facebook links & #followfriday
Note: Actually, starting everything Twitter-related word with “tw” is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, as well. The things I’ll do for a clever blog post title.
Facebook Links
This pet peeve isn’t limited to Facebook, actually. Links to iTunes (the worse – it attempts to launch a program!), LinkedIn, newspapers, or any service requiring a login/membership creates the same problem. But due to its popularity and/or culture, Facebook gets the most abuse on Twitter. Newsflash: I’m not on Facebook. And I shouldn’t have to be to view information that has nothing to do with Facebook (general pictures, local events, etc.)
Yet people freely throw up shortened links (that obscure the destination) without annoucing they lead to Facebook, Imeem or whatever walled service of their choice. Annoying. Give a heads-up; announce the service or make the Facebook event public.
#followfriday
I first noticed the #followfriday Twitter meme two months ago. The idea is to suggest Twitter accounts for others to follow. Great idea. However, most people end up using the #followfriday hashtag and then listing as many Twitter accounts that will fit in the 140 character message. No content or explanation. Let’s stop that please.
Davidé and I are among a growing number of users who have tweeted our frustration over this. And this morning, @Ohdoctah tweeted:
If you really want to suggest a Twitter account to follow, please give me some context. Like so:
Oh, and if the person already has thousands of followers, do you really need to keep suggesting them?
I love you and your pet peeves. I agree wholeheartedly, but I’m curious, how do you feel about the “followfriday” idea in general?
As I was admitting earlier, I sometimes feel like its the playground all over again. Shouting out who is “too cool for school” versus…well…everyone else. I’ve hesitated in participating in it because I’m still not sure I feel all the way great about it.
Heh. I’m totally with you on the blind links. I always make sure to warn ppl if my link goes to a site that’s not easily accessible to just anyone!
…but, I am guilty of the listing a bunch of Twitter accounts. Not for Follow Friday, but for Women2Follow Wednesday. I have to look back at my tweet, tho, bc I think I did provide *some* context – or at least words other than the hashtag and the @’s!
@RPM Good question. Overall, I’m pretty “meh” on anything related to “how to gain more Twitter followers”. I haven’t participated in #followfriday or followed anyone as a result of the meme yet. I liked the way @karsh handled #followfriday, today. Maybe I’ll give it a try next week. Maybe.
This is an interesting question though as well in context of public and private twitter accounts. Do private twitterers want people advertising their accounts? That seems counter-intuitive. I think I’ve stuck to public accounts on the times I’ve participated and tried to stay with people who would welcome/appreciate the nod.
I’ll have to go back and look.
My initial reaction was that it was another lame meme but Lynne goes at it with such fervor each Friday that I thought it had some value. There are so many accounts out there that it’s hard to know who is worth following and valuable to the conversation and who is lamers.
My old strategy was to just recommend people I’d favorited in the previous week but today I went with a women and technology theme. Made it more of a true micro-content moment (meaning I had to do some thinking/planning/research) rather than just a random list of @’s.
Twitter makes me rethink the ways I interact with the internet a lot.
@Jason That’s the unfortunate disconnect with protected/private social media accounts. It’s not clear why a person is private.
While many users don’t want (certain) people to know they are using a service, some may have other reasons. Frankly, I don’t care that people know I’m on Twitter (as clearly, I blog enough about it). But as I mentioned on Tiffany’s privacy post, I dislike how Google/search engines cache my 140-character snippets.
But how would anyone know that? Oh yeah, I wrote a post about it.