I’ve noticed that more and more bloggers are getting their posts fired out at random times. I do know it helps people see your writing, especially on Twitter, when a lot of people won’t see a post because Twitter is so instant. I think the service I used the most is ‘Networked Blogs’, randomly a blogger friend will have that throwing out one or more posts from their archives as Tweets. The thing is about Twitter, as it IS so instant, is if you’re chucking stuff out automatically, then it can make you look a bit of a prick.
Why?
Well…
My case was illustrated beautifully (or not) on Saturday morning, at 1am, when the news broke that the body of little Mikaeel Kular had been found.
Twitter was awash with shock, grief and sadness (punctuated by a few transatlantic people I follow tweeting as normal).. BUT. In amongst the sad tweets, were a few ‘timed tweets’ from bloggers with reviews of crap they’d been sent, or archive posts. It’s not the first time I’ve seen this, I understand that scheduling posts to go live, and them then being Tweeted is a bit of a ‘must’ – heck this is being written on Sunday night and I’ve posted it NOW. But, I dunno, randomly chucking out stuff at any time doesn’t really ‘feel’ like what Twitter is about.
Twitter is instant, and in the moment, watching any live event unfold via it is fantastic, and having ‘droid like’ tweets being sent into it just ‘feels’ a bit against the ‘ethos’. Of course it’s good to share posts, but perhaps manually? You don’t want to be the one tweeting about the review of the washing powder from 6 months ago when the Queen dies, do you?
Very good point. I was thinking about switching from manual to automatic, but am now having second thoughts.
Whilst I agree with the ethos of this post, I think timed tweets are great. Even if a timed tweet goes out at a time when something bad happens, it doesnt mean that Twitter shouldn’t be discussing anything other than the bad news. In fact, I don’t even need timed tweets to upset people. I lost a follower (with a snotty comment aimed my way!) for tweeting about our friend MLK when everyone else was talking about Nelson Mandela dying, and that was me livetweeting lol
Yes!! This this this!! Quite a few people I follow now have archive auto tweets. They are every hour or so and as my TL moves really quickly I don’t see them all, however I never click on the ones I do see. I like I talk to people, get responses be social. These auto ones make it look like you’re there when you’re not. Weird innit.