I have two twitter accounts. My main one @itamer and another I created for a very specific technical topic that I was working on last year. After the project the account has been all but abandoned. Its only use is in Tweetbot to show me my tweets in isolation. It doesn’t have my real name or anything to identify it as me.
I was amused today to find a client’s client who is actively exploring social media had decided to follow that account?
Why?
Because they’ve been told that if you follow people they will follow you back. And once they’re following you then you may unfollow them and they’ll never know… The unfollow bit comes down to the current thinking on the ratio of follows to followers.
I wonder how 524:260 stacks up?
I wonder how many people will get the notification and wonder why they’re being followed?
I wonder how many idle accounts they are following or if their strategy will actually work.
I won’t name and shame the client’s client because I wish them well. They just surprised me.
Another Twitter Newbie
I’ve just been contacted by another dear soul who’s digitalpoint forum account has been locked out.
After letting him know that he needed to send a tweet to @digitalpoint (no, not a PM, no, not via Skype) he then asked me how to send a tweet.
And this is a guy who sells web hosting! If Twitter is a challenge I hate think how Linux stacks up.
I’ve been using Linux for over a decade. I only started using twitter a couple months ago, and only out of necessity.
A lot of us old time Linux gurus do not have a very high opinion of all this web 2.0 stuff. It is inherently insecure and wastes time, so we don’t bother with it.
That may be why he didn’t know how to tweet, simply because he never had.
And twitter is not a good solution for customer service issues like locked accounts. Twitter is unreliable, often doesn’t work behind proxies, and requires use of additional web sites for anything over 140 characters.
Use a freakin’ e-mail address for support. It works.
I suspect that @digitalpoint gets abusive and/or threatening emails and prefers to keep things out in the open. Its an odd choice to use Twitter for support but I’m sure there’s a good reason for it.
And “Alice”, I’d have so much more respect if you’d used your real identity. So much friendlier.
I liked the part with the guy who wanted help in using twitter… the industry is full with amateurs….