As in life, as in Twitter etc

I had a long chat with a friend the other day about Twitter. I have decided to post and get these thoughts out in the open. I am no expert in the field of social media and personally I would be suspicious of anyone who says they are.

So here we go…three things that annoy me about Twitter.

1. Followers. I couldn’t give a monkeys if I have 12 followers or 12,000. Makes no odds to me. What matters, as in life, is not the number of ‘friends’ I have but what those ‘friends’ are saying…or things we can do to help each other. I choose my friends in the real world because they are engaging and interesting. And as with ‘real word’ friendships, it has to be a two way communication thing. In the main I do the same on Twitter. Plus having thousands of people that you follow only congests your timeline which could mean that you miss something that would have been useful and/or interesting.
2. #FF is a real bug bear of mine. On the one hand it is lovely to be socially validated by someone, (although slightly diminished when you are one of say 20 in a #FF tweet). So I am recommended by someone I sort of know to a load of people I don’t know who then probably follow me but never engage with me? What’s that all about?
3. RT or the re tweet. I am not against re tweeting per se…hell I even do it myself from time to time. But people who spend 90% of their time just re-tweeting other people’s stuff are not very engaging to me.

My absolute favourite moments on Twitter are when people I don’t know Tweet me and say “hi, could you help me or explain x” or I Tweet the same to someone and they help me back. Or people do normal people stuff like share a joke, a bit of self deprecation or a dash of sarcasm. People who 10 seconds earlier I never knew.

Viva (proper) conversation! Viva (beautiful) language! Down with endless, pointless noise.