Biggest Twitter Pet Peeves

I love Twitter. I started using it back 2008 and in my opinion, Twitter is a great source of information about topics that interest me. It also keeps me entertained and up-to-date with what’s going on in my community, country and the world.

However, there are some Twitter pet peeves out there that annoy me and they come mostly from other users rather than Twitter itself.

The egg-head profile pic – when you first sign up for Twitter, you have the option to upload a profile picture from your computer. If you’re shy or have internet privacy issues, use a picture of your dog. Or a sunset. Or a tree. Just pick something; because when I see that I have a new follower who looks like an egg-head, I almost always choose to not follow them back. And if you don’t know how to upload an image, just Google it. There are oodles of how-to websites out there that will give you step-by-step instructions.

No bio information – similar to the egg-head profile pic, not filling out these sections is just plain annoying. Why am I going to follow you if I have no idea what you Tweet about? Sure, I can click and view your most recent Tweets. But that doesn’t always fill me in. So just take a minute out of your day to write something.

Polluting the Twitter feed – it drives me crazy when people or businesses post nothing all day long and then all of a sudden post twenty Tweets in a row. If you only have an hour a day to Tweet, then use a scheduling tool such as HootSuite or TweetDeck to spread your Tweets out over an extended period of time so that your Tweets can be enjoyed by others in moderation.

Continuing to use image tools like Instagram – I know Instagram has awesome image filters that make your photos look funky. I like it too – but I limit my sharing to Facebook. Why? Because when your Instagram Tweets show up in my Twitter feed, I can’t view the images anymore by clicking on the easy little “View photo” button. Instead, I have to click a link that takes me to another website and that’s just plain annoying because, let’s face it, I’m lazy. Yes, your photos still show up in my TweetDeck feed, so I’m not as angry about this one. But when I’m standing in line at the post office browsing through my Twitter feed, I would really like to be able to easily view your wonderful pictures.

Auto-posting your Facebook status updates – when you auto-post your Facebook updates, they are usually way over the 140 Twitter character limit. So they ended up being displayed as a truncated post with a link to the status update on your Facebook page. Firstly, similar to my beef with Instagram, using auto Facebook posts requires me to click a link and go to another website. I’m lazy, remember? Secondly, I’m using Twitter for a reason. So don’t send me to a different social media network – I’ll head over to Facebook when I’m good and ready, thank-you-very-much. And thirdly, why should I bother to follow you on both Twitter and Facebook if you’re just saying the exact same thing on both networks?

Saying the exact same thing over and over – if you post the same message in duplicate, especially if it has a link, you just look spammy. And who actually likes spam? So switch it up: think of different ways to describe your link and sandwich it in between other non-link posts.

So there you have it, my top Twitter pet-peeves.
Do you agree? Have any of your own to share? Let me know in the comments.