Twitter Practices That Drive Me Crazy – Auto Tweets

We all know what Twitter (should we be capitalizing it?) is and what it does.  Some people I follow test my patience with them.  Even those that I don’t follow, find ways to annoy me.  Here is a quick rundown of things people should never do on Twitter.

*Keep in mind, I am writing this out of rage.

Automated Tweets

Yes, I’m following you.  Yes, twitter is meant for the mundane, “What are you doing right now?” question.  However, you don’t need to sign up for a service that tells me everything you do.  Mainly because I don’t care that much about you.

If you use a service that automatically tweets…

• When you sign on to Xbox LIVE, or change the game you are playing
• When you have sex using pressure sensors on your bed
• When you weigh yourself in the bathroom
• When you go to Starbucks, and then again when you walk to the park minutes later (foursquare)
• When you are on a plane that tweets your location every 30 minutes

Or anything similar where you yourself don’t actually interface with twitter in anyway (foursquare being the exception), that’s not you tweeting.  That is just you using other services to tweet incredibly boring events in your life because you have nothing better to say on your own.  I immediately unfollow people that use services like Raptr.

Foursquare is a bit of the exception to my reasoning, but it still doesn’t belong on twitter.  You do intentionally have to check-in for it to make a tweet, but Foursqure status updates do not belong on a twitter timeline.  Why?  There is nothing anyone could possibly say as a response to, “Checked-in at Starbucks.”  You are a waste of those 100 some pixels on my timeline.

As far as automated tweets go, I’m perfectly fine with things that populate the tweet for you.  Such as sharing a video on Youtube, or sharing a bookmark from delicious.  Things like that don’t require you to do anything on twitter, but those tweets are you, not a service.

Tags: twitter