Twitternoyances
So like an increasing number of righteous hep cats on the intertubes, I joined Twitter not too long ago for an obscure reason related to my site design. Now that I’ve used it for several months, I feel obliged to point out two recurring behaviors that bother me whenever I’m scouring my updates.
- Retweets — The concept of retweeting does not bring me joy but unfortunately seems to be an accepted practice. It occurs when people post another individual’s Twitter message verbatim, typically adding the letters “RT” to the front, which at least alerts me to the distinct probability that I have read this before. You see, the likelihood is all too high that the “retweeter” and I both follow the same person, rendering the repetition pointless. Plus I have a long-held belief that the world needs more original thought, and retweeting obviously flies in the face of that. I want to read YOUR thoughts, Twitter friends, not rehashes of someone else. If you would like me to follow someone whose tweets you think I’d enjoy, feel free to suggest. But please stop liberally borrowing their work for your own entries! And lest I forget, retweeting has an even more gruesome manifestation where people actually repeat themselves, typically within a day of the original tweet. This, ladies and gentleducks, is unacceptable.
- Syncing Twitter with Facebook — Folks, folks, folks… This one falls directly under the category of “Cool! This can be done, so I’ll do it!” We human beings are prone to engaging in numerous activities solely because they are technically possible, regardless of how pointless they may be. Proofs of this theorem are readily available. In all likelihood the amount of overlap between your Twitter friends and your Facebook friends is inordinately high, meaning most of us are getting a double-barrel blast of your latest thoughts. Now I know this repetition could prove valuable if I’m ever tested on my memory of transient thought-nuggets generated by all my comrades, but really, people. Unless an online version of Don’t Forget the Lyrics: Social Network Status Edition happens to sprout from the ether, all of this doubly generated text will probably serve no ultimate purpose. (Note to self: create Don’t Forget the Lyrics: Social Network Status Edition to profit from this annoyance if it continues…)
Anyway, these are my two cents on the matter, and I do realize that these oddities happen primarily because they are allowed to happen. The situation reminds me of the ferocious Worms 2 matches of a bygone era—one day I realized that it was possible to kill an opponent’s worm in one move merely by the skillful placement of a common red grenade. This wrought much consternation from my ill-fated adversaries, and they pleaded with me not to resort to such “cheap” tactics. “But the game allows it, and you can do likewise,” I retorted. Granted, I still feel this way, but I exhort you, Twitter user, not to follow in these ill-begotten footsteps. I encourage you to do what is right and rise above the game.
Many people have 2 distinct groups of contacts (eg. work and school). Assuming said groups are mutually exclusive, “retweeting” between them would be acceptable.
I like this post. I agree that RT is horrible. For the most part if I see RT I just skip over, but there have been a few times that I feel compelled to RT.
On the syncing I would say not to direct sync. I see @soandso on a facebook status and I think to myself what a waste. And the people on fb have to wonder what is up with all of this @this or #event. But I have to say that my fb and twitter friends actually don’t overlap that much. So if there is something that I want both ends to know than I manually update both. In general twitter gets more love because of convenience sake, but I do often type essentially the same status in both places because of the lack of overlap, but I don’t automatically sync them.
I agree that Retweets can be annoying and verge on forwarded e-mails. However my Twitter and Facebook friends don’t overlap that much. That’s why I do it and I really don’t want to have to log into Facebook to post a separate status message. I would however love a twitter function that would prevent certain tweets from posting to Facebook per post basis because I know some would be kinda confusing at Facebook but not the majority.
Good feedback so far—I agree that syncing with facebook might not be as bad for posts that don’t have twitter symbols in them. Still, there’s not much incentive for me to follow someone on twitter if their facebook status is always the same. Yet unfollowing someone makes me feel guilty for some odd reason…
Perhaps the best solution for syncing would be if the program ignored any comment with @ particularly if it started with that.
Remember the time you used the fat bomb and it promptly sailed right through the entire blown out section of the ground into the water? Ahahhah, good times! I miss me some worms.
I had to disable my Twitter/Fbk Sync the day I went to BarcampMiami. I knew there was a glitch in the practice when my mom sent me a message from Dominican Republic asking me if anyone would understand what I was saying or if it was some special code. All the hashtags & @ symbols kind of threw her off. Good bye cool function that is great in theory but not in practice. Good bye!