My name is liloo and I am a twitter addict. I love it so much that I did the unthinkable and got rid of facebook. I could try to explain how I love it so much, but could never express it as beautifully @judy_jay did in her fabulous “
year of life as a twit”. When apocalypse happened last August, and my computer died along with a lifetime of unbacked up data, twitter was of the things I was missing the most when I did not have a computer. But there are ‘a couple of’ things I certainly won’t miss about twitter. In fact, these have evolved into some sort of twitter pet peeves.
FormspringI am trying to be all zen and find a mature and articulate way to explain the plague which is formspring automatic feed onto twitter but this is proving a major challenge. The concept is good, but formspring is the kind of leisure activity people would indulge in when they are bored. So the result is a gigantic flood of questions and answers in your beloved twitter timeline. What I am asking myself: when people ask questions on formspring, don’t they get a notification message whenever this person updates their page, or answer one of the questions submitted to them? Imagining this is the case, and that you do indeed get an email whenever this person has answered a question (not necessarily the one you asked), can you imagine waking yourself up to 64 email messages saying ‘makeupgod had answered a question on formspring, would it be yours by any chance, click here to find out?’. You would automatically disable the notification system right? (Chances are also that if you’re really fascinated with that person, you’re going to check their formspring page direct without being prompted to do so) Well, with twitter you can’t. If a person has gone all the way to link their wretched formspring account with their twitter, well there’s nothing you can do, unless unfollowing which is a shame really.
Youtube Activities Automatic FeedThe first people I started to follow were makeup artists on youtube, then I started to follow people who watch all these videos. I have met lots and lots of people through youtube. Also through time, my subscription list has massively expanded and I am subscribed to more than 200 people, that’s a lot of videos to watch, comment on, rate, and favourite. I take my youtube activity very seriously and I have a reputation to comments lots, and a leave a huge splodge of comments. I need to ‘deal’ with my youtube subs box twice a day, otherwise I can’t keep with the new content of all the lovely people I follow on youtube.
Imagine everytime I commented on a youtube video, subbed to someone, rated a video, this would be automatically fed through twitter and you would see this in your timeline:
'I rated this video
http://www/ five stars'
'I have just favorited
http://www/'
'I commented on
http://www/. I particularly liked how you outlin…’
Annoying much?
Why do people feel they need to link their youtube account with their twitter account? Share their tastes? Umm..
I don’t know about you but this typical tweet “I rated this video
http://www/ five stars” does not give me an indication of someone’s taste and is so vague it does not really invite me to click on it. I would need to click on it before knowing what it's even about. For all I know it would be a video about how to lace a shoe, or something which is not my interest.
A more intelligent, interactive, & engaging way to do it would be the traditional way, a tweet like that for example. (Sorry if this sounds a bit patronising, these are just examples):
"Woah, you'll never believe your eyes, check out goldie's red queen mask > "
http://www/ " A smokey eye like you've never seen before. This girl (glitterdollz7) is just purely amazing "
http://www/"
"Not too sure about the lipstick, but wow, everything else is just pure awesomeness
http://www/ "
I know it sounds a bit more commercial but you get the gist…
Click me
"Brilliant, http://www/" >> Who do you think you are? Do you think you’re that important that I am going to click on every link you post? Put some effort into it. At least, tell me what the link is about. Just a few characters would do. We all follow lots of people. People who think that others will just click on their link cos they wrote
http://www/ and nothing else have a very inflated sense of importance. I know what you are going to say, “ it very much depends on who the offender is and if it’s a celebrity then it’s not the same” Well, I am pretty sure when Demi Moore alledgely tweeted about susan boyle, she didn’t just plonk the web address with no explanation.
Abandoned @mentions and @replies
We’re not on twitter 24/7. If someone had the courtesy to reply/react to one of your tweet while you were away mowing the lawn, sleeping or whatever, and have been absent from twitter for a long time, will you please please check they have done so? If your twitter programme is failing you, good old
http://www.twitter.com/replies will give you all the information you need ;P
Drama attention seeking tweets à la Facebook“ I don’t think I can do this anymore”, “That’s it now, I might just as well give up”, ‘I might have to take the most important decision of my life tomorrow”
Give up what? Do what anymore?
I can understand there are only 140 characters to explain but why don’t you try to explain a bit, instead of waiting for people to come to you and ask you what’s wrong?
So if you're emotional like me, you get all worried, (after all if you were not bothered about that person, you would not follow, right?) and go ask ‘aawww, what’s wrong chuckiechuck, are you ok?” And it turns out that ‘ yes, they are ok, yes everything is fine. The ‘giving up thing’ is just trying to peel onions will long nails and that the most important decision of their life is what they are going to have for their tea, :S
Obscure Lyrics Tweets which don’t look obviously like lyrics, therefore leaving the world wondering what you’re on about. We’ve all done it, we have a tune in our head, we want to sing it and share it. Someone writing this ‘summertiiiiiiiiiime, (…) easyyyyyyyy’ would automatically scream to me that the person is singing to me. But if someone quote some lyrics out of a song which I don’t recognise (I mean, it’s a free world, we do what we like but yano) and the lyrics are a tad gloomy, ‘I just want to die right now’, I am going to be thinking ‘ aww no poor little sweetie pie, what trauma is he/she going through. I must tweet back to say something and find out what it is. And it turned out that it was just lyrics of songs, pff
I am not perfect, far from it. I am just human and besides I am French (Oooh I love blaming my Frenchness for lots of things) and I am guilty to commit quite a few sins:
- Over sharing in general and sometimes TMI (too much information) tweets
- Kilometre Long tweets. I’ve developed a mild addiction for
http://www.twitlonger.com/ , oopsie. It’s a genius programme though for long tweets. But I agree, it defeats the purpose of the main attraction twitter, short burst 140 characters tweets.
- Treating twitter as a conversation tool. I follow A. My friend B also follows A. I have a conversation with A, and B has got to endure the whole thing.
- Depressing and mood spoiling tweets. As a half empty glass type of person, this is a sin I’ve committed many times. I’m working on it.
- Over negative and rant moan rant tweets. Umm, I am not proud of that one either. I’ll try to limit them to a maximum. Err, hold on, isn’t this post a massive rant in itself? :P
- Endlessly retweeting contest giveaways (I’ll try to reduce that, and just participate every now and then to stuff I am super excited about and not the first pen which is given away. Umm, this might not be the best time for me to announce I will be doing a giveaway soon J haha
Are there things on twitter which spoil your fun? Let me know. I’d love to hear :)
Happy tweeting x
@tsunimee
P.S Some pretty cartoons to lighten my rant a little ;)
