Are You Guilty of Annoying Others via Social Networks?

The saga of my recent Facebook ousting continues. Not only have I not been able to get back on FB, I still have no idea as to why I got “excommunicated” in the first place. However, I have found the experience to be one of introspection. As a matter of fact, many people, myself included, are evaluating our past, current and future involvement on social networks in general. Take Twitter. With the ability to automate the Direct Message feature, the number of emails clogging inboxes everywhere with useless messages has gotten way out of control. For those who don’t know about this feature, basically you set it up so when someone follows you an automatic welcome message goes to the person who just requested the follow. Although this may seem like a great idea in theory, in reality it is a pain in the backside for most of us. Here’s my experience; daily I was getting lots of auto DMs from folks I don’t know who immediately tried to sell me something, encourage me to look at a site with useless information, or what not. Admittedly, I had my Twitter account set up so the minute you followed me, you automatically got a DM with something like, “Thanks for the follow. I do all I can to tweet useful information.” Although a nice welcome, how many people actually read the message compared to how many get very annoyed with yet another blanket message arriving in their inbox? Think about how many of these messages you get from your Twitter connections. How many of the automated ones do you actually read? Initially it may be something you get excited about, but in short order it gets to be very annoying and a huge timewaster; especially if you try to read every single message. Once you realize that it is automated, the frustration mounts. After realizing how annoyed I was with all the junk mail (and knowing I was likely annoying others), I disengaged the DM feature. Now when someone gets a DM from me it is manually done which means I really wanted to send you a message of value. I also disengaged the automatic DMs I got from others. Daily I was getting dozens, even hundreds of useless messages that I never read anyway. Now I know that when I get a DM it is the real deal and the sender actually wanted to send me a message of value. Yes, dear readers, many folks are taking a good look at the process and becoming more selective about who we follow, befriend, tweet, twoot, hoot, capture or whatever the latest and greatest term happens to be for any specific social network communication we are involved in. The whole idea of social networks is to create value in the relationships we develop. At least that’s what we would love to think. Although automation is great on the one hand, on the other hand it is something that has impersonalized how we communicate and has become a huge annoyance more times than not. Let’s bring back the days we actually welcome messages and announcements rather than cringing when we see our inbox cluttered with useless garbage.