I think it’s safe to say that Twitter is becoming more mainstream with each passing day. When I see senators tweeting, I watch CBS Morning News reports about it, and my Mom asks me what it is….we have officially broken the “techy-geek” barrier into the rest of the population.
When I first jumped on Twitter maybe 7 or 8 months ago, many people were new to Twitter and the community was (and still is) finding it’s voice and taking shape.
As I followed other Tweeple who had been in the community for awhile and had a lot of followers, I recognized that some of them would direct message me after I followed them (I must admit that at first I didn’t realize they were automated). At the time I liked the direct messages I received from them. I decided to set myself up with a service that automated sending out a direct message to anyone that followed me. After that everyone received “Thanks for the follow” from me.
Here is where the problem comes in. Lots of other people had the same idea…..most other people had the same idea. Now as the Twitter community grows, it seems as if everyone has an automated direct message to send out to me. Frankly, many of these messages are spammy and I really don’t even look at them anymore.
The automated Twitter direct message tipping point
My feeling is that we hit a tipping point with the automated direct message. It was fine when a portion of people were doing it, it seemed more original and genuine. The problem is when everyone does it, it loses it’s appeal and I know you didn’t send that out to connect with me. You set up an automated service to blast it out.
I have since removed my automated direct messaging. I’m curious to hear what others in the community think about automated direct messages. Do you think it still has value? Do you still have this on your account? Do you find you look at the direct messages you get now and check out the links provided in them? Do you find most of them to be spammy? Let me know.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
AutoDMs are terrible and often lead to an unfollow.
The great thing about Twitter is that it is unobtrusive. I check it out when I have time. An auto DM goes to my email and interrupts my workflow. For a “thank you.” that’s nice, but I already made the decision to follow you. I am looking for something interesting.
I have seen only one useful auto DM. It came from @massAGO “Thank you for following MassAGO! Please take a moment to review our web policies: http://tinyurl.com/clryy4.“
Automatic direct messages dilute real messages that is sent to you. I rarely even look at my direct messages anymore.
I don’t have a problem with it, as long as the person sends me something whorthwhile. Don’t just send out: thanks for following!that’s lame
I have and do use auto replies for a lot of my clients accounts, but they’re not sales-oriented. I use google feeds to provide niche-targeted information within twitter followers, who are part of that niche, so the information is useful to them. I have had successes in getting newsletter signups with auto-responders on Twitter with an incentive offering for the signup. Overall, I think if Twitter DM’s are used for quality info and not sales, they can be very vaulable.
I have to say I really don’t like auto DMs on Twitter. Here are my problems with it:
* they’re not genuine because they have nothing to do with me–they were written before I showed up
* they’re usually of the “hi thanks for following” variety
* worse, they often link me the same website they show in their profile (I don’t need yet another e-mail pointing me to something I can easily find on my own–if I want to look)
* depending how they’re worded I don’t always realize they’re automated so I feel stupid (and kind of like I had my time wasted) when I reply to them and don’t get a response
And the big reason,
* my followers sometimes want to DM me legitimately because they want to say something privately…when I get overwhelmed with auto DMs I don’t always see the real DMs and so don’t respond to them