Don’t Auto DM Me …. PLEASE!
July 30, 2009
I’m a twitter fiend. I have gained more from twitter, personally and professionally, than I have from any other social media platform. I love twitter and I “get” twitter. As an info hound, twitter is beyond the most stimulating machine I could ever imagine.
I digress…
I absolutely LOATHE and hate auto DMs when I follow someone on twitter. I don’t automatically un-follow someone because they have an auto DM, but many people on twitter do. I usually go and look at the persons twitter stream to see what type of communication they have. I like to see that they will interact with me and lend some value to any discussion I may choose to participate in.
Tonight, I received an auto DM from someone who I had been following on another ID for quite some time. They followed me on @banteringblonde (my personal-ish ID) and once I followed back I got their auto DM. It felt oddly wacky, sorta insulting. I’d been communicating with this person for months on another ID related to a partnership I have. Obviously, this person decided to follow my personal, and most active, ID @banteringblonde because she felt I had some value as a tweeter…. or maybe not. Who knows why she chose to follow, but the fact that I already had a connection with this person and then received a totally impersonal DM from her was weird. And honestly, I KNOW for sure that this person knows exactly who I am and she most likely would have known she was following ME on a different ID. I have nothing against this person and nothing against people who auto DM the people who start following them. What does concern me is that, for some folks, an auto DM suffices as the start to a conversation on twitter. In my opinion it DOES NOT suffice. If you truly want to reach out to each and every person who follows you … Good for you. Do it. Knock yourself out. For me, I follow and wait for the opportunity to connect. I watch my stream with interest. It should not surprise @banteringblonde followers to know that I am highly interested in any conversation that involves social media marketing and marketing in general. My @banteringblonde “name” is not one of high intelligence, but if you follow me or read BanteringBlonde at all, you know that I’m a blonde with a brain. A brain I like to use, and a mouth that just does not stop.
Here, the mouth asks you this, if you auto DM, why do you do it? What are your goals with that auto DM? Do you have the twitter stream and the profile to make it past my (or anyone else’s) perusal or will I automatically un-follow you? Do you care? If not, I’m sorry. You have missed out, because there are plenty of us out here that have much to share. I, for one, am here to learn and share. Let’s get this dialogue going, quit DM’ing me and @ me so we can get the freakin’ conversation headed in the right direction.
Much LOVE to ya,
Fiona (aka: banteringblonde)
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July 30, 2009 at 5:46 am
I think this article precisely touches upon the problem with social networking: it is impersonal by its very nature. As close together as we all feel now because we’re Twittering or FaceBooking, most people see these sites as a way of fanning the flames of vanity than anything else. It’s no wonder people are ‘auto DMing’. Everyone is growing tired of having to pay such close attention to the hundreds of people that are tagging along in an often vain attempt to keep up with our lives.
I could personally care less what most people are thinking or doing at any given moment. I simply don’t have time. To me, that is the least interesting part of social networking, but it is the foundation of Twitter and there in lies the problem. I go days, even weeks, without updating my status on FaceBook. Who am I to think that anyone cares what I’m eating for breakfast or that I just got my luggage at the airport? I am more interested in posting items and articles and reading the ones my friends post about life, politics, music, technology, etc. The thing about the status concept that is most disturbing is that we have all taken to divulging our most intimate and personal thoughts without so much as a second glance. I often see my friends updates and cringe with embarrassment for them. Why people divulge the things that they do about themselves, their kids or their significant other is mind-blowing to me. It’s not only unnecessary, it can be dangerous. Perhaps I am starting to getting off topic here, but things have gone way too far and I think we need to rethink what we’re using these mediums for.
I, too, have gained a great deal from my association with social networking sites, FaceBook in particular. I have gotten in touch with people I haven’t heard from in years (you included, Fiona
. It’s wonderful. I also get the chance to share ideas in a way that I never dreamed possible just five years ago. All of this being said though, I just went through and deleted more than 100 “friends” because they were people that I either didn’t really know or didn’t appear to use the site. This left me with more than 400! I know all of them, but I’ll probably go through again and pare down even further very soon. Where does one draw the line? I can’t keep up. I chose to delete. If the concept translated to FaceBook, perhaps I would have set up an ‘auto DM’ instead.