Comments on: Is scheduling tweets another form of spam?

By: Live

Live — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:34:46 +0000

well, i have a twitter account mainly for my blog, i made it because it got very popular. although i’m still not using it properly, and sometime i totally forget about it … but i made it because; i feel twitter is one out of three important figures in our cyberspace life, it comes after Blogs & Facebooks for me, although the first two are more friendly i think … i yet didn’t get myself to know more about twitter, and i think it will have more meaning if you are there surrounded by people interested in what you are interested in, right!! but your regular posts about it makes me feel that i have to give Twitter more care than i’m already doing right now.

i think i’m drifted away from your main subject sorry
.-= Live´s last blog ..The Historian =-.

By: Outsourcing Sales Company

Outsourcing Sales Company — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:09:14 +0000

I think if you are providing unique information with each one then no. Otherwise probably it ca be viewed as spamming.

By: aurelien echangiste

aurelien echangiste — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:01:19 +0000

Well interesting point! I think that all kind of excess is always bad. This rule is also to be followed as far as tweets and blog contributions are concerned.
I also do schedule things that need to be scheduled. And just like you, I monitor the reactions of others, answer and retweet when necessary.
Automation for the only sake of it has no point, so does interactivity. I mean those services were also created to made our lives easier, don´t they?

By: Karen Swim

Karen Swim — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:32:24 +0000

Alina, I also manage a few twitter accounts and as Brad mentioned, some are info streams so scheduling is a very helpful tool. There is danger in those who declare there is only one way to utilize social media. The uses will vary from user to user with each finding what works for their goals, resources and market.
.-= Karen Swim´s last blog ..Smacking Down Resistance to Embrace Opportunity =-.

By: Ovidiu

Ovidiu — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:13:51 +0000

@Alina, you are right, but you just broadened the domain of the problem. It’s not just people’s reaction to automated tweets, but also number of, subject, style, length and so on.

Should I care if someone thinks I’m spamming because I use two hashtags (oh, the horrors!) for my messages? Probably not. The same for number of tweets, if they are automated or not…

But yes, I should care if my followers are no longer interested in what I tweet (well, personally, I don’t, but that’s just me ).

Still doesn’t qualify as spam, though. So maybe a better title for this post would be “omg my followers are abandoning me what can I do help plz!1″ And you repost it every 2 hours, of course!

(quoting from memory) “It’s impossible to make everyone unhappy, but you should try your best!”
.-= Ovidiu´s last blog ..Recrutare inteligentă folosind rețelele sociale online =-.

By: Alina Popescu

Alina Popescu — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:46:23 +0000

Ovidiu, you are right, partially But you follow someone based on what they offer at that time. Later, things might change, they might switch from casual conversation to other types of tweets. As it is not what you signed up for, that might be unsolicited. Yes you can unfollow, the point is if a certain practice would or would not make a lot of people unfollow you.

Also, sending out 20 tweets each minute may be spammy if people only expect 20 tweets a day Things change, and people might end up getting something they did not want.

Yes, we have a way of saying everything we don’t want coming our way is spam. It’s not always the right word, but it does generate the same range of feelings as real spam. And the same type of actions – block/unfollow/mark as spammer.

By: Ovidiu

Ovidiu — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:38:36 +0000

I think there’s a contradiction in terms here. What do you mean, twitter and spam?

Spam, by definition, is unsolicited. Like in “you get a message from someone you don’t know, on a subject you’re not interested in”.

Last time I checked, Twitter (and all of the other social networking systems) requires that you “follow” someone in order to read the messages. Like, you are asking the server to give you my messages!

So there’s no “unsolicited” here. I follow you because I want to, because I like what you tweet, because I find value there.

Sure, at some point I might stop being interested or just be pissed off by the fact that you are twitting your latest get followers fast ebook every 5 minutes. Or I might continue to accept it because I really am into get followers ebooks.

The technology is there. I can unfollow you. I removed the uninteresting messages from my stream. The end.

You can also, of course, just visit my public Twitter page and read what I write without subscribing.

So, is there such a thing as Twitter spam? No. Let’s move along.

Getting back to your question: yes, I do schedule tweets – I don’t have the time to tweet constantly, and I have followers who are night owls or early risers, so I need to cover all day.

Only 2 followers ever complained. I explained to them why I do it, they understood. I guess if my style ever upset anybody else, they unfollowed or blocked me. No harm done.
.-= Ovidiu´s last blog ..Recrutare inteligentă folosind rețelele sociale online =-.

By: Alina Popescu

Alina Popescu — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:55:17 +0000

Brad, thank you for your comment and you examples. We sometimes forget Twitter is also a quick tool to send relevant information. News, updates, releases. People want those when it’s convenient for them, not during a company’s working hours. Especially when it comes to huge time differences. And there is a conversation side to twitter, but we also need to keep customers/clients informed throughout a day/week/month.

As for conversations with people who are on different continents, I completely agree with you, scheduled replies that I can see and reply to when I actually am awake would never bother me Yes, it’s way better to have a quick chat at any time, but no one can stay awake forever

I guess when it comes to any means of communication, it can be used to spam. But that does not mean that any scheduled or automatic usage is spam.

By: Brad Shorr

Brad Shorr — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:32:04 +0000

Alina, This is a really good question. I also manage Twitter accounts for clients, and in some cases I am fine with scheduling tweets. These are cases where we’re really trying to push content out – not spam content, but product and service information our followers figure to be interested in. Here were are not trying for conversation as a key objective, at least not real time conversation. And, if we determine that certain times of day are more suitable, I think it helps to send out tweets consistently, at predictable times. For conversational tweeting, I agree with you about the need to be there in real time. However, even for social, conversational tweeting, a complete adherence to the real time principle is self limiting. You and I, for instance, are quite far apart in terms of time. It’s not always possible for us to chat in real time, so it wouldn’t bother me at all if you scheduled certain tweets that I could pick up and respond to much later. I guess like you say – it all depends! Great post!
.-= Brad Shorr´s last blog ..How to Optimize Images for SEO and Readers =-.