Is auto re-tweeting a bad thing? Yes, says me
Mashable posted this morning about YoTwits (another way of automating your Twitter feed) and asking whether automated tweets are necessarily a bad thing.
Because if Twitter needs something desperately, it’s more automated bollocksology. Personally, I think automating your tweets is douchey. The post poses the question, what if you’re not a big link sharer or don’t have the time to share the things that interest you?
Answer: Then please stop putting information out onto the interwebs. Think about it- you don’t have the time to read it or the interest in reading it. Why the hell would your followers? While the obnoxiousness of automated info-spamming isn’t exclusive to Twitter, Twitter is one of the places the practice is glaringly unwanted and disruptive. Anyone who uses Twitter regularly probably already has excessive unwanted crap in their feed, so please don’t even think about using a service like YoTwits.
Mind, I’m not calling Mashable out here- for their part, this was part of the post that sparked mine:
The most innovative concept is the Retweet Anyone feature, but it too falls victim to the same problem: you aren’t reading anything you’re retweeting. People trust your judgement when they see links retweeted by you – if they realize you aren’t reading any of them, that trust may be gone.
There may be a legitimate, non-douchey use for something like this (as I’m sure I’ll hear in the comments) but I can’t get past the utter rudeness of expecting your follwers to read something you couldn’t be bothered to even glance at.
Not to mention the fact that malware can and does sneak into your tweets more easily if you’re not watching, and even the most prominent users aren’t immune.
