This week our social media agony aunt tackles poor returns on Twitter
Dear Cyber Sorter,
There is one thing that really annoys me: when you address someone on Twitter by using @whoever and they don’t bother to reply. I’m not the first person to notice it. Tweets are ignored nine times out of 10 by some female bloggers (in my experience) and some media personalities. My question is, why have a presence on Twitter if you don’t partake in conversation?
Twitter is a social network designed to aid conversation. In my view, there are no classes on it. Therefore, I wish certain people would learn how to converse with ordinary people who share a common interest in micro blogging.
ME
Dear ME
The problem with getting frustrated with people who don’t respond on Twitter is that they can’t see your frustration and they don’t care. You can’t make someone be your friend just because you follow them, even if they follow you too.
Although the general Twitter community understands and plays by the rules, some users just want to put their messages out without engaging fully.
Unfortunately Twitter is as much about class, cliques and peer groups, if not more so, than real space is.
Most celebrities and high-profile people on Twitter will receive more @ messages daily than they could possibly respond to. It would require yet another personal assistant, but only the odd politician seems to be able to stretch to one of those these days.
Ignoring tweets sent to them and not being polite will impact more negatively on those who are unknown. Bloggers need people to talk about them – positively or negatively – in order to build a reputation and a following that could bounce them into profitability.
If some other Tweeters are just not that into you, don’t waste any more time on them.
Move on and develop your better, more polite, connections.
Send your social media queries to cybersorter@irishtimes.com