Top Social Media Usage Peeves
I am really lucky to be living in a time where it is possible to have a real time pulse of events around the world, easily keep tabs on with my favorite people, and share my thoughts on a public forum. I believe that social media has become one of the greatest by products of the Internet. With that said, I have noticed some things that ruin the social experience for me while on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. On this post, I will highlight my top social media (mainly twitter) usage peeves. The underlying theme you will notice is that all the highlighted peeves have to do with noise in my feed.
First, let me acknowledge that I do sometimes partake in these practices and that I am sometimes part of the problem.
- Oversharing
Twitter and Facebook updates are a fantastic medium to spread our thoughts, messages, and agendas. In fact, Twitter started by asking the question - what are you doing right now? However, that does not mean that you need to share this every minute of everyday. I do not need to know that you are eating a tuna sandwich and enjoying it or that you are standing in line waiting for your venti latte. Far as I can tell, there is no prize for sending the most amount of tweets in a day. - Social games
FarmVille - Need I say more? Play your social games but please stop sending milestone posts to all your followers. - “Follow Friday”
Ah yes, the #FF tradition where a twitter user suggests other twitter users to follow. While this is a valuable tradition that will highlight interesting twitter users, I have a problem with twitter users who create umteen posts trying to #FF EVERY user on their following list EVERY Friday. Doing so not only creates noise on your followers’ feeds but it also does not add any value to anybody. Its just a list of twitter use ids that mean nothing to anybody. If you must #FF a twitter user, simply send the #FF tweet of the user and maybe why this person should be followed by your followers. - Public conversations
Sticking with the noise theme of this post - another peeve that I have is twitter users having otherwise private conversation in public over Twitter. There is no reason why two users should make day plans over public replies. That is what Direct Messages (and email) are for. Keep these conversations out of the public feed.
