Twitter Big Whales #Fail

I like social networking sites very much.  I like Facebook , I like Linkedin, I like twitter and I like the next big one.   I find twitter the most exciting at the moment and I spent most of my social media time on twitter.  Believe me that comes with burden of observing so many things, some great, some wonderful and some horrible or simply #Fails.  Here are the list of the #BigFails which have haunted me on twitter for the last few months.  Let me declare first that I am not an actual expert on this one but just an observer.

1. Follow #Fail

Everyone on twitter would like to have as many followers as possible.  So how do you go about getting the followers if you are not a prominent person in the society or a celeb?  The best way would to follow people and this is where the problem starts from. When you follow people some will follow you back immediately while others will not follow back for sometimes and others not forever. The thing is everyone has his/her  on own interests on twitter and twitting styles are also different from one tweep to another.   So if you follow someone and he/she does not follow you back, what do you do?  I see some people picking a “gun” and aiming literally on the other tweeps heads for not following them back.  FOLLOW ME BACK OR I UNFOLLOW YOU. Really? That sounds like blackmail there .#BigFail. Let go back from the beginning, not everyone would like to follow everyone. As I have noted everyone has his or her own interests on twitter, when you follow me, that does not mean I see the same thing in you and I should follow you automatically. Some people actually choose carefully who they follow.  Don’t get mad that someone has not followed you back.  In the contrary make people follow you through your actions on twitter. You can be actual expert on something, you can give people what is new, you can be a comedian, you can be conversationist ,  you can be  retweeter. People will notice any of the above and depending on their interests start following you.  For the sanity sake, if you do follow people, do it for a given reason regardless of whether they will follow you  back or not. And also give them time to decide, some people take quite a bit of time judging whether to follow you or not. Na hiyo si kwa ubaya…

2. Unfollow #Fail

So you wake up and find out that 10 people have unfollowed you…big deal. One thing you already know is that none of your followers will ever tell you the reason(s) why they are following you. Well, apart from the old friends who do it out of sympathy let just say you have no idea why most of them are following you. .  The thing is, before someone follows you, some people check your profile. The problem with that, is that sometime they can’t check everything apart from recent tweets.   So let say @crackhead checked  your profile during the period they were trying to uninstall that Mubarak guy from Egypt.  During that time, your timeline is full of some great stuffs .  Like solidarity with Egytians, news about Egypt, what the economist guys in Kenya are saying about the effects of the uprising locally. Impressed, the @crackhead guy decided to follow you. Then the people’s power carried the day and there is nothing that exciting to talk about in Egypt. You have to go back to your old self.   That is the time when new followers get a taste of what you are made of. Frankly speaking some may get bored and in that case Unfollow is the way out.

3. Retweeting all mentions #Fail

I am mad at this coz it  killed the great  Follow Friday. Forgive me for thinking of #FF in past tense. It used to help new people and established twitter users to gain some new followers through recommendations. Also if you are new you could get idea of who to follow. Then people started retweeting all the follow Friday mentions. Seriously it is like telling a prospective employer that you know what, I have two referees, one is here and the other one is me..I recommend myself …mmmh…. how cool is that?

In real life people mention your name, give compliments and praises. But do you go around telling everyone how you were praised by Wanjiku, by Onyango, by Kalonzo, by Nekessa .  I guess not. Now that is what some people do on twitter.   Retweeting all the tweets praising you or mentioning you is a #BigFail

4 . War zone #Fail

May be we are surrounded by war torn places that we always think we are at war too.  It is normal for people to differ, very healthy indeed. But I find it strange that if you disagree with someone you start abusing them.  Full online combat, almost ninja style. I mean who said that we all must have the same opinions? Can people  just disagree without calling each other names?

Then there are the fanatics…yes I get it, you are very religious person but why fight someone else online if he or she does not subscribes to what you believe in? Yes you are the number one supporter of a certain politician; does that give you the right to abuse anyone else who does not agree with your opinion?  #BigFail

5.  Autotweet #Fail

Ok, it is cool that you manage your blog or another site. We all want our blogs , sites to gain traffic, and there is no better place for  doing that than twitter.  Let me start with random autotweet roboot.  The function is to autotweet randomly from the blog posts or site articles. For once twitter is an interactive place and people are almost there every day. That means if you tweet something today, they see it today. If you try to tweet the same thing ten days later the same people will see it again. When most people see something twitted three times by the same person, they start to think you are trying too hard. If you are using random autotweet, you better set it to tweet each article once.

Tweet them all at once autotweet  roboot. Affect mostly those managing news media accounts. When I look at my timeline and all I see are tweets from one account, I feel something is wrong . Seriously you are killing the excitement.  Accumulating all the articles and then passing them around at once is for the morning papers and not twitter.

Autotweet  the Nation’s articles. This is the most annoying of them all. I follow nation media twitter account  and I also follow you. When nation tweet their article, you also autotweet  the same thing with the exact writings.  Really! I follow both the accounts for heaven sake.  In guess the best way forward here is for the followers to merge the two accounts by unfollowing one of them.  And you can guess which one will be unfollowed! #BigFail

6. MKZ #Fail

I don’t get it, how do you constantly criticize something and still use it daily. Kenyans on twitter criticizing Facebook almost in a daily basis and still using it are like Kenyan politicians. The classic examples at the moment are the ODM rebels. They have made careers in bashing ODM and Raila  but they remain in ODM. For them I understand they want to retain their Parliamentary seats.  But for tweeps, why can’t you quit Facebook if it is that bad and full of ushamba? Some people criticize Facebook in one line of their tweet and in the next line they update their status with a line borrowed from Facebook…#fb..mmmh.  Very clever.

7. Following zero people #Fail.

Zero people are not the right words but the point is, these are the people being followed by multitude and they don’t care to follow back at least some of them. For example if you are being followed by 5k people, following only 50 people is not making sense  Do you mean that out of that big number , you can’t find even 300 more people worth following back?  #BigFail. Yes we get it, you are a celeb or the famous type but really?

8. Protected tweets #Fail

If you really really want people to follow you don’t protect your tweets.  That is all.

9. Mafia Family #Fail

Yes , some of these games are addictive, but you have to remember that not all people are addicted to them. Play your mafia games anytime, anywhere you want but ensure that you are not sending all your followers DMs about it.

10. Check your DM #Fail

When you login on twitter what do you look at first. I guess  DMs, mentions , number of followers and then start reading other things. People have mental notes on their twitter stats, be it followers, Dms , Lists. If there changes on any of the stat, they will realize instantly.   So when you Dmed someone why do you again tweet him/her to check the DM?  If it is some platform outside twitter like email then I would understand. . #BigFail

11. Trending topics #Fail

Too controversial to touch at the moment…….#BigFail

Kennedy Kachwanya1087 Posts

--- Kennedy Kachwanya is a technology blogger interested in mobile phones both smart and dumb, mobile apps, mobile money, social media, startups ecosystem and digital Savannah. New media must not forget the strength of old tech.

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