twitter fail blog
sharing the good, and exposing the best of the worst on twitter
Nice try
On twitter, you can be anyone you want, as long as you’re not somebody else.
Twitter introduced “verified accounts” in 2009, in response to the hordes of celebrities flooding the service in search of even more attention. Okay, officially, they said, “Verification is currently used to establish authenticity of identities on Twitter. The goal of this program is to limit user confusion by making it easier to identify authentic accounts on Twitter.” In other words, there were a lot of losers pretending to be celebrities, and the celebrities didn’t like it. So, twitter gave them what every celeb pines for: Another award, in the form of a little blue check mark next to their name. Like this:
To get a verified account, you just had to fill out a form, proving your worthiness. We’re guessing twitter discontinued that process because they were overrun with applications from complete unknowns who needed someone to prove they exist. They are still verifying accounts, but you have to be famous or otherwise important enough to show up on their radar. Begging won’t work.
Not to fret, all you pathetic non-celebrities! Just like the ladies who carry counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags, pretending to be dripping in cash, there are plenty of “verified by twitter” knockoffs you can get, when you’re not famous enough for the real thing.
Take your choice:
The big and the bold. A check mark that won’t go unnoticed
Small, and understated. Or pathetic and whiny. Your call.
Department of Redundancy Department checkmark
Checkmark? I don’t need no stinking checkmark! I’M VERIFIED!
Of all the fake-verified accounts, this is our favorite:
I verify I’m verified
The persona you create on twitter can be as real or fake as you like. If you want to be original, unique, or special, the best persona you can create is the one you wear in real life. If you’re real, and fun, and interesting, you’ll be rewarded with interaction, and friendships of the sort that live in the short attention span theater of the timeline. The connections you make by being you will be worth much more than a silly little icon.
God must not be a football fan
The Buffalo Bills were down 13 points at the half, and made up those points in the second half, with 2 seconds left in regulation when Rian Lindell hit a 49-yard field goal, forcing the game into overtime. Wide receiver Stevie Johnson headed into the end zone to catch a 40 yard pass for a big win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, and then dropped the ball. The Steelers got a field goal in the final minutes of the game, and secured the win.
Stevie Johnson was inconsolable over being at fault for the loss to the Steelers. Fortunately for him, he has a big scapegoat. While everyone was pointing the finger at Stevie, he blamed a higher power:
Way to go, Stevie. What can you learn from this?
1. You need better hands for catching the ball. Practice, practice, practice.
2. Nobody wants to be a Bills fan. Not even God.
Can’t Hear You
We don’t want to get all philosophical on you, but we’re reminded of the age old question, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” This will make sense in a minute.
Twitter has this really handy @reply/mentions feature built in, so you can see anytime someone talks to you, or mentions your name by clicking the Mentions link (@yourname) on your twitter page. Or in TweetDeck, Seesmic, PocketTwit, or Twikini, or any of the hundreds (?) of other apps you can use to access twitter. All someone has to do to make sure you see it is precede your username with the @ symbol.
This is twitter 101, people.
There’s still a bunch of people who just don’t get it. They think they are talking to their friends, and wonder why they never get an answer.
It’s because their friends, unless they are complete self-important blowhard egotists who have a permanent search set up to notify them every time anyone mentions their name anywhere (Hi Marcia!), or socially inept losers who set up the same search and check it constantly in the hopes someone will please oh please talk to them, they will never see the tweet because the rocket scientists couldn’t be bothered to put the @ symbol in front of their name.
Of course, @Oprah won’t hear you, whether you include the @ or not. In the 9 months she’s been tweeting, she has never tweeted a real person. Never retweeted anything from anyone who wasn’t in her inner circle. Every day, thousands of people call out to her on twitter, and she’s never responded to a single one.
It’s because she’s too busy telling people to tune in (What? Her minions don’t already have her on Tivo?)
…and #FF herself.
That kind of behavior is one reason why we don’t follow her, or any celebrities. We don’t need them to ignore us. We get ignored by plenty of regular people every day.
Not Here
We have our own little passive-aggressive way of responding to spammers. Maybe not too effective, but we’re taking a stand. We’ve created our own “Page Not Found” in response to all the Hummingbirds, EasyTweets, and other creepazoids on twitter who encourage people to “monetize their tweets,” which is code for “spam your followers.” The next time someone spams us a crummy affiliate link, we’re going to respond with this: http://is.gd/5Ga7w. This is what they’ll see:
It won’t change anything, but we’ll get a chuckle out of it, so we win. And block.
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