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Making Auto-Follow a Little Easier by Removing the DMs

by Jesse Stay — published on February 28th, 2009
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SocialToo.com - Your Companion to the Social WebAs of today on my service SocialToo, we’re taking a stand and removing the ability to auto-dm your followers. This service, as it grew, was getting out of hand, very impersonable, and people were just ignoring them. It was a tough decision due to the number of users using the service, but I think making this decision is the right thing to do. In the end this makes the other services we provide, such as auto-follow, more productive. I’m trying to think of other less-spammy and more personal alternatives down the road, however.

To replace auto-DMs, we’re now blocking DMs from any service we’re able to that do provide the auto-DM service. In addition, I’ll be working on some new features in the near future to auto-unfollow users we detect auto-DM-like behavior from for you. Let’s end this robot-like practice once and for all. I’m taking the reigns on this one.

Posted on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 1:50 pm. Filed under SocialToo.com, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Great post and sound tips to finally bring an end to the monotonous robot like practice. Thanks for easing my mind on this one.
  • I have to agree. I'd rather not deal with Auto-DMs. I don't much like or pay attention to them (even in the relative isolation of the virtual world, I'm a people person).

    From a PR standpoint, the majority of auto-DMs that I've seen neither build relationships nor establish trust, which is what I believe social networking is all about - and what people who work hard at it hope to achieve from it. So. To recap -- if your social networking goals or strategies don't help you:
    * Build relationships;
    * Establish trust;
    * Better understand your audiences (or target markets);
    * Improve the good-will value of your brand; or
    * Strengthen your good name
    ...then why do it?

    You can shoot a shotgun of words at a flock of Tweeters -- and you might bag a click-through or even a sale -- but mostly you're just wasting ammo (social capital, reputation, time, etc.). It's unwise to go crashing through people-driven communities hunting for quick sales or meaningless attention with the expectation that it's going to work out in your favor. If you don't bother to stop, look, and listen in this habitat, then you (and those around you) might want to don a reflective vest, because sooner or later, somebody's bound to get hurt.
  • jon
    Thanks!!!!!!!!

    Good decision.

    jon
  • Thank you Jesse stay for this great initiative. Hope twitter also takes this seriously and find out a way to filter out auto dms.
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