twitter fail blog

We say it all the time, but does anyone listen? No. Okay maybe a little. Not as much as we’d like, though, because we keep finding helpful people like this:

Isn’t this a great idea? How fun! Make friends by never actually talking to anyone. Granted, there are people we’d hate less if they would just stop talking altogether (Hi Marcia!), but that doesn’t make them our friend. And that’s not what this tweep is talking about.

The beauty in their plan is to get a whole passel of random people to follow you, forcefeed them a bunch of tweets you don’t write (and probably never read before they are posted), and your twitter account will just run itself. Sounds like a party in the making. It’s the social equivalent of feeding the hungry by tossing menus at panhandlers. Or, actually, getting someone else to throw the menus for you.

Don’t do this. We can’t believe we had to tell you that.

The wonderful part of social media is the social part. Interacting with other people. Making connections. All the stuff we harp on and on about. Advertising isn’t social. Using automated systems to flood twitter with a bunch of crap is absolutely anti-social.

We especially hate bots because they are a big reason why twitter gets overloaded. The next time you’re forced to hit “refresh” until twitter comes back up, blame a bot for your feelings of isolation and abandonment.

That’s why we’re amused when a bot goes bad, as many of them do. When they just endlessly loop the same broken link and error message, it’s as if twitter is fighting back.

How do you fight the bots? Don’t follow them back. Pay no attention to what they have to say. Refuse to click their links. When their account doesn’t get any results, the bot-sters will lose interest and jump on the next big thing. If we all ignore them, they may just buzz away.

Send in the Fail Bird! Tell @Persistence42 you saw him on Twitter Fail