Tag Archives: Twitter

Tips on Retweeting from a Seasoned Twitterer

Posted on by
14

Enough is enough already.

I’ve been using Twitter since March 2007. Since then, I’ve tweeted more than 79,000 times, been verified, and accumulated a modest 3000+ followers. I’ve written extensively about Twitter and have even authored video courses for Lynda.com on the topic. So it’s safe to say that I know a little about Twitter.

I don’t follow many accounts. As of today, it’s only 288. I pick accounts to follow based on my interests and what those accounts tweet. Sometimes I’ll add an account and a few weeks later, realize it was a mistake and unfollow it. It’s nothing personal. I just need to focus on the things that matter to me.

Recently, I unfollowed three accounts that were simply retweeting far too many tweets. I realized that their retweets violated a handful of “rules” I’d come up with to manage my own Twitter activity and retweets. This morning, I set them down in a short Twitter thread.

For the record, I pretty much detest Twitter threads — that’s when a twitter user replies to his/her own tweets creating a connected string of them — especially if they’re longer than three or four tweets. So you can imagine how much I hated making one that was seven tweets long. In my opinion, if you can’t say something in 1000 characters, you need a blog. I have a blog so I’m going to lay the contents of my thread down here where it can be easily read and found by others.

Here’s the thread, expanded.

1/7 The Intro

I was trying to be kind with this tweet. I had recently unfollowed someone who would consistently retweet multiple subtweets in a thread, none of which made sense on their own. And the previous week, I’d unfollowed someone who retweeted every single tweet in a lengthy thread, thus repeating the entire thread in my timeline in reverse order. And there were countless other people who seemed to retweet just about everything they saw, no matter where it came from. Enough was enough. I had to speak up.

2/7 Don’t Echo Threads

The other day, someone I followed retweeted the first tweet of a thread I thought might be interesting. I clicked the tweet and read the thread — all 20+ tweets in it. When I was done, I returned to my timeline and continued scrolling up. I saw the second tweet in that thread — which I’d already read. And then the third, and fourth, and fifth. And I’ll be damned if every single tweet in the thread wasn’t retweeted right there in my timeline.

After I’d already read the thread.

Why would someone do that? Don’t they understand the way retweeting works? The way threads work? Maybe not. Hence, this piece of advice: Don’t retweet every single tweet in a thread. Just retweet the first one or the one or two that resonate with you.

Sheesh.

3/7 Don’t Retweet without Context

The other day, I unfollowed someone who retweeted about a dozen subtweets with absolutely no indication of what they were all about.

Imagine this: You read a tweet, then click it to read some of its responses. As often happens, the responses branch off into various threads, some going off into weird and fun tangents. One of these subtweets strikes you as funny or interesting, given the context in which you’re reading it. But the tweet itself doesn’t include any hint of the context.

It’s like the punchline of a joke without hearing the joke.

Yes, it’s hilarious. And yes, you want to share it. But think a moment. If someone didn’t read the tweets leading up to it, would they get the joke? If the answer is no, don’t retweet it.

After all, do you walk around reciting joke punchlines without the joke leading up to it?

4/4 Don’t Hijack Tweets

This is a pet peeve of mine, mostly because of my feelings regarding content creation.

Twitter offers two ways to retweet:

  • Retweet without a comment.
  • Retweet with a comment.

When you retweet with a comment, Twitter lets you enter the full text of a tweet and append the tweet you are repeating to it. The tweet normally appears right below it.

Twitter offers this feature so you can add your own thoughts about the tweet to it while retweeting it in a way that preserves it. But what this also does is basically turn that tweet into a new tweet — your tweet — so when people reply, like, or retweet, they are retweeting your tweet. The interaction does not appear on the original tweet.

Hijacked Tweet
How many times have you seen something like this? A one-word comment or finger arrow pointing at a tweet? A “comment” that adds absolutely nothing to the tweet but effectively hijacks it so the retweeter gets all the likes, retweets, and possible new followers? (For the record, I deleted this example right after I made it.)

And, of course, abusers use this to, in effect, hijack popular tweets.

A very good friend of mine did this very often and it upset me to the point where I unfollowed her.

If you’re going to retweet with a comment, make a real comment. Something that adds to the discussion or points out a fallacy or points followers to more information at another source or tags someone you think should see it.

Keep in mind that all tweets that you retweet with a comment are retweeted to everyone who follows you, including people who already follow the original tweeter. So you’re repeating the tweet. What good is that if your comment doesn’t add to the discussion? It’s just more noise.

5/7 Don’t Retweet Unreliable Sources

This is a tough one. As my friend and fellow author Sandee pointed out, how do you know who is reliable and unreliable these days?

I wish there was an easy answer. I know who I believe — well-known and respected media organizations with good journalism staffs and responsible reporting that are neither far right nor far left. So yeah: I’ll believe (and retweet) the New York Times but not Fox News or Mother Jones. Ditto goes for verified Twitter accounts for employees of these organizations.

And yes, people reading this might not agree that the New York Times is a reliable source. Fine. Just don’t expect me to follow you. I certainly don’t expect you to follow me.

Use your brain, folks. Don’t believe everything put in front of you. Always consider the source. Don’t share something just because you wish it was true. Isn’t there enough misinformation out there?

That’s not to say that I won’t retweet something that’s funny, especially satire that’s obviously fake. We all need a laugh now and then. But if it’s something that people [with a brain] might think is true and it obviously isn’t, I won’t retweet it.

6/7 Don’t Ask for Retweets

There’s nothing that reminds me more of everything I hate about Facebook than including “Retweet if you think…” or “Please retweet” in your tweet. I don’t need you to tell me what to retweet. If something is worth retweeting — in my opinion — I will retweet it. If not, I won’t.

You telling me to retweet something makes it far less likely that I’ll retweet it. Why? Because I don’t want to look like a moron who needs instructions on what to share.

And when you retweet something that includes a retweet request, what do you think I think of you?

7/7 Twitter is an Echo Chamber

I follow only 288 accounts because, unlike so many other Twitter users, I try to read the tweets of all of those accounts. I’m not likely to follow the accounts of people who tweet and retweet a lot of content I don’t find interesting. Don’t take it personally. After all, why should you? Who am I?

I’m just someone who has been using Twitter for a long time to meet a particular need. The advice here is the advice likely already heeded by the people I’ll continue to follow.

Who knows? It might help you get — and keep — followers, too.

One Way to Do Twitter Wrong

Posted on by
14

Some people don’t get it.

Last night, before going to bed, I took a moment to check Twitter notifications. I found two tweets from someone I didn’t know who had mentioned me without actually tweeting to me.

I’m not going to embed them here because I don’t see any reason to give this idiot any additional attention. But he’s a perfect example of someone trying to use Twitter to move markets — when he only has 49 followers.

Here’s the first one:

Idiot Tweet

He was referring to a blog post I wrote years ago about Groupon. I think he’s trying to say, in his semi-literate way, that if I advertised on Groupon, I could fill otherwise empty seats on my aircraft with Groupon customers. Apparently, he thinks these people will appear just when I need them and be willing to sit around and wait until I do.

Of course, his theory doesn’t apply to my business because I only fly by appointment and I don’t have seats that are not paid for. So why would I be willing to discount flights by 75% — which is basically what Groupon requires* — thus taking a deep loss on every Groupon deal flight? That was the point of my blog post.

He then replied to that post to add this:

Idiot tweet 2

Not very bright? Well, at least I can string a sentence together, buddy.

My response was simple: “Fuck off.” I then responded to the first tweet by thanking him for the link and following it up with a simple “LOL.”

And that’s when I discovered just how dim this guy is.

He responded:

Idiot Tweet 4

Not personal? He said I wasn’t very bright. That isn’t personal? And does he honestly think being a Twitter user with 49 followers gives him any clout? Enough clout to get me to delete a 6-year old blog post with dozens of comments?

I responded “Is there something about “fuck off” that you don’t understand?” (Yes, I know. I can be a real bitch. But if you had any idea of the kind of trolling I’ve dealt with over the past few months on Twitter, you’d understand why I now have zero patience for idiots on Twitter.)

But it was his response to my tweet thanking him for the link that proved how really dim he is:

Idiot Tweet 3

He didn’t realize that by including a link to my blog post, he was actually sharing it in his Twitter stream. Giving it more exposure. Best of all, he’d done it with a #GRPN tag, increasing the exposure beyond his 49 followers. Anyone looking for the #GRPN tag — people actually interested in Groupon — could potentially see it.

And bash him? Why would I want to do that? If I wanted to bash him, I could do it here by simply embedding his tweets without redacting his identity. But I’m not. Instead, I’m ridiculing him while keeping his identity anonymous. Truth is, I feel sorry for him. He’s so amazingly clueless.

So, to sum up, this clown unwittingly shares my blog post about Groupon with a #GRPN stock tag, says I’m not very bright, and then offers to delete his tweet if I delete the post.

I went to his profile to take a look. It was full of Groupon company and stock related tweets. They guy is an investor — that’s clear. For some reason, he thinks he can use Twitter to influence the price of Groupon stock or get more people to sign on for their “deals.” He’s big on tags like #ecommerce, #investing, #socialmediamarketing, #stocktips, and, of course, #groupon. He could be a bot, but even bots aren’t that dumb.

So I blocked him. He’s still probably trying to figure that out.

—
* Do the math: Groupon wants a 50% discount “deal” and then keeps 50% of the discounted price. That leaves me with a total of 25% of the original price.

My Facebook “Boycott”

Posted on by
2

I might actually mean it this time.

How many times have I threatened to leave Facebook? How many times have I caved in and gone back? This time might stick.

Facebook LogoFor the record, I have never liked Facebook. Search this blog and you’ll find more than a few posts where I’ve bashed Facebook in one way or another. (Here’s an example from January.) While I will admit that it is a great place to reconnect with people from your past and keep in touch with people you know and like who might not live nearby, it has recently become a tool for the spread of misinformation, helping to divide our country — as if it needed any help. Even after unfollowing or unfriending or even blocking the folks with crazy ideas, there seems to be more arguments on update comments than anything else. It’s also depressing when you realize just how crazy some of your friends or even family members can be.

But what became the last straw back in February was when Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and the guy who gets a healthy chunk of Facebook’s revenue, donated $120,000 to CPAC. CPAC, if you don’t know, is the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual event where right-wing blowhards bash progressives and liberals for being…well, progressive and liberal. Normally I wouldn’t care much about this event, but this year it had made the news by proudly inviting Milo Yiannopoulos, a person who makes his living by publicly trolling people he doesn’t like on Twitter (until he was banned, anyway), Breitbart News (where he was a staff member), and elsewhere. Apparently there’s a lot of money in the trolling and hate speech business because an imprint of Simon & Schuster had signed a book deal with him for an advance of $250,000. I guess the folks at CPAC like the crap Milo was selling because they were welcoming him as a speaker, despite the fact that he’s gay (which I always thought conservatives had a problem with). I have no patience for trolls of any sort and I think that giving credibility to someone like Milo will only further the divide that is destroying our country.

The way I saw it, my participation on Facebook was generating the content and activity that Facebook uses to sell ads. In a way, part of that $120,000 donation made by Zuckerberg to CPAC was coming out of my pocket. I didn’t like that. So I posted a link to the Media Matters article I linked to above on my Timeline, informing my friends and followers that I was out of there. Then I logged off from everywhere I was logged in — there’s actually a link buried in Facebook settings to do that — deleted all the cookies in my browser so Facebook couldn’t follow me around anymore, and deleted the Facebook app from my mobile devices.

I suffered from withdrawal for about two days. Then I pretty much forgot about it. I did step up my Twitter use a bit. I’m enjoying the political activism there. One of my recent tweets to [so-called] President Trump went viral and was mentioned in a magazine article. That was kind of fun.

I’m in California now, helping out a friend with a few spray jobs he has and doing some recreational flying now that my helicopter is out of overhaul. (I’m going to Lake Berryessa today, hopefully to see its “Glory Hole.”) I’m also trying to set up a lunch date with my friend Shirley, who lives in the Sacramento area. She and I usually get in touch on Facebook — frankly, she’s one of the people I miss from Facebook — and I wanted to see if I’d missed a message from her. (I never used Facebook Messenger on don’t plan on starting.) So I logged in today.

No message from Shirley, but two messages from friends. One was a link to a neat airport home in Bisbee, where I’d recently visited with friends. The other was spam from a new “friend” who I’m starting to think is an idiot who needs to be unfriended. There were also 57 notifications that I looked at. I started to follow up on them, but grew bored and discouraged after just a few. Same old shit. Seriously. This person liked this. That person commented on that. These people liked that page. I realized, with a start, that I really didn’t care about the notifications. And when I found myself reading an update written by one of my friends, I realized that I could easily get sucked back in anyway. So I logged out.

I’m not going to try to convince anyone to stop using Facebook. I know it’s a waste of my time but it’s apparently not a waste of other people’s time. Besides: who am I to tell people how to spend their time, which is the most valuable thing they have?

But I’m so glad to be off Facebook and I really hope I can stay that way.

Oh, and in case you missed the news, Milo lost that CPAC speaking gig, book deal, and Breibart job.

Karma, baby. It rocks.

On Being Elite

Posted on by
11

A few thoughts about the use of “elite” as some sort of slur.

The other day, I was accused by a troll on Twitter of being part of the “rich elite” because I owned a helicopter and went south for the winter.

I think I was supposed to be insulted. I wasn’t. You see, I’m not ashamed of what I am or what I do with my time and money. I earned all of my possessions and my lifestyle.

Don’t believe me? Read on.

The only things I had going for me at birth was that I was born in the United States, I was white, and I had a good brain.

My parents were not rich. In fact, when my father left us when I was about 13, my mother very nearly applied for welfare. Our financial situation qualified me for free lunch at school; every day, I’d go to the school office and retrieve a small kraft envelope with 65¢ in it — government money to pay for my cafeteria lunch. I’d spend as little as possible and save the rest. When I got home from school, I babysat my younger sister and baby brother while my mother worked as a waitress to put food — mostly hot dogs and pasta — on the table. My grandmother would bring us groceries once in a while and slip my mother a $20 bill to help out.

I started working at age 13 when I got a paper route. I delivered the Bergen Evening Record after school on weekdays and the Sunday Record before 7 AM on Sundays. There were 54 homes on my route, which I had to walk, and I netted 20¢ plus tips per week per house. In those days — the mid 1970s — 10¢ was considered a generous tip; many of the homes did not tip at all. Collection day — Wednesday — was unusually long since I had to stop at every single house to try to get paid. One Wednesday in September, which coincided with the first day of school, my mother used my collection money to pay for our school supplies because she wouldn’t have money until payday.

Our financial situation qualified me for a summer job working at the high school. With three other girls, all a year or two older than me, I scraped rust off an old chain link fence that ran between the school property and the railroad tracks. The wire brushes we used had to be replaced every few days because the bristles would fall out. The gloves they gave us did little to prevent huge blisters on our hands. When it rained, they let us into the school where we went from classroom to classroom, washing the venetian blinds. The wash water had to be changed every 30 minutes or so because the blinds had likely never been cleaned before.

My mother remarried and I won’t deny that my blue collar stepfather brought us quite a few steps up from our dismal financial situation. I got a chance to see some of the better things in life. He took us to museums and restaurants with real cloth napkins. I stayed in a hotel for the first time in my life at age 15. I was even able to accompany my grandparents on a trip to visit family in Germany. And, for the first time, I started thinking about college.

College was possible with two academic achievement scholarships, financial contributions from my parents (they each paid 1/3 of the net after scholarships were deducted from tuition), and a school loan. And work. At one point I held down three part-time jobs while handling a 15 or 18 credit load. I worked hard to maintain good grades and got a BBA with highest honors in Accounting in four years. I was the first person in my family to attend and graduate from college.

Within two weeks of graduation, I got my own apartment. I paid rent and utilities and furnished it with my own money. It was in a rough neighborhood and a few of my friends didn’t like to come visit. My mother bought me a sewing machine as a graduation gift and I used it to make about half the clothes that I wore to work, so I could look nice without spending a fortune.

I started my first job right away: an auditor with the New York City Comptrollers Office. In just two years, at the age of 22, I became the youngest person promoted to Field Audit Supervisor.  After five years with the city, I started a new job with ADP in New Jersey.  I did my time in the Audit Department before becoming a Senior Financial Analyst working on special projects directly for the CFO.

By the age of 29, I was earning more money per year than my father ever had. But that didn’t stop me from leaving my job to pursue an uncertain career that was more in line with what I wanted to do for a living: write. I built a career as a tech writer and computer trainer from the ground up. I was completely self-taught and worked without an agent. I wrote books and led hands-on computer training classes all over the country. I quickly learned that I needed to write a lot of books to make a living so that’s what I did. When I was on a book project, I’d work 10-12 hour days, 7 days a week. I wrote books and articles and eventually authored video training courses. I was very good at what I did and it paid off: within 10 years, I had two bestsellers; their periodic revisions were bestsellers, too.

By the age of 40, I was earning more money than I’d ever thought possible, but instead of pissing it away on a bigger house or fancier car, I socked money away for retirement and invested in rental properties: a condo, a house, a small apartment building. And between book projects, I learned how to fly helicopters.

And yes, I did buy a helicopter. Why not? It was my money that I had earned through my efforts. I had covered all my other financial responsibilities and set aside enough money for my future. Why shouldn’t I invest in something that would make me happy?

I flew as often as I could and started a helicopter business to help bring in some extra revenue to cover costs. I managed the fuel concession at the local airport. I became an aeronautical chart dealer and ran a small pilot shop. I worked for a season as a pilot for a Grand Canyon tour operator. I sold that first helicopter and bought a slightly larger one. I jumped through hoops with the FAA to get required certifications for charter work. I created advertising material, maintained a website, handled social networking needs, did all the accounting, met with clients, did local and long distance flights. I networked with other pilots about other flying jobs.

All while still writing up to 10 books and dozens of articles a year for my publishers.

When tech publishing went into decline, I ramped up my flying work. I got contracts to do agricultural work in Washington state during the summer. I’d live in a trailer, working on various book projects, waiting for a call to fly, for two to three months every summer. Over the years, I built up the number of contracts I had until I couldn’t handle them all alone; then I brought in other pilots with helicopters to help me, managing work and billing for as many as four subcontactors every season.

I was 52 when the man I’d spent more than half my life with decided he needed a mommy to hold his hand while he watched TV every night more than a life partner to actually enjoy life with. He tried to take half of everything I owned in our divorce, but I fought back to keep what was rightfully mine, what I’d earned through my own efforts while he floundered, failing at one job after another. I went into the fight with a war chest of cash I’d saved while he was pissing his money away on a plane he never flew, a Mercedes he didn’t need, and a condo that was sucking him dry financially. His greed, harassment, and courtroom lies didn’t score many points with the judge and he wound up paying me and his lawyers far more than he could have spent if he’d settled for my offer. His downfall is a great example of someone getting what he deserves.

I’ve spent the last four and a half years rebuilding my life in a new place, working hard to build my flying business, expanding into other work in California and now possibly Arizona. I don’t write much anymore, but I make a good living with the helicopter the Twitter troll I mentioned at the top of this piece criticized. I’ve learned how to take my skills and assets and turn them into money. And unlike so many other people, I live within my means. Yes, I go south for the winter, but it’s not as if I’m living it up in some fancy condo or hotel. I’m roughing it in an RV often parked out in the desert. 

It's Mine
Just about everything I own was bought and paid for with money that I earned through my efforts. Why shouldn’t I be proud of that?

I worked hard and smart and I succeeded. Is there any reason I should be ashamed of that?

So yeah, if making a good living and owning a helicopter and wintering in the south makes me part of the “rich elite,” I’m okay with that. I earned it.

And to the people who troll me with their jealousy-driven comments: What’s your excuse for being a loser?

Why I Prefer Twitter over Facebook

Posted on by
2

A few thoughts.

In recent months, I’ve found Twitter a lot more pleasant than Facebook for social networking. When I mention this to friends, they tell me that they don’t understand why. They say that they just don’t “get” Twitter.

I’ve given this a lot of thought, trying to understand why so I can explain it to others. This is what I’ve come up with.

Facebook

The people I’m friends with on Facebook are, for the most part, real friends — people I know in real (vs virtual) life. They’re people I like and want to respect. When I see them posting idiotic, shortsighted, uninformed, or just plain stupid things, it hurts and confuses me. I like these people and I want to think they’re relatively smart or can listen to reason or aren’t the hateful, brainwashed idiots they seem to be. But over and over again, they share thoughtless, tasteless crap and downright lies, much of it parroted from a dubious “news” sources. I hate to think that the people I really like subscribe to such bullshit.

Obviously, this isn’t all of my Facebook friends. But it is a lot of them. More than I care to admit.

Yes, it’s easy enough to get the stuff I don’t want to see off my timeline: 

  • If they’re real friends I can simply unfollow their updates. Then we can remain Facebook (and real) friends but I don’t have to be reminded periodically about their political or intellectual shortcomings. They probably don’t even realize that I’ve unfollowed them! (No harm, no foul.) And it’s easy enough to start following them again hen they’ve stopped posting the kind of crap that I don’t want to see.
  • If they’re not real life friends, I can unfriend them. They’ll continue to see and respond to my public updates, but nothing else. I won’t see anything they post unless it’s a response to me or someone I follow. In November and December, I unfriended about 100 people I really didn’t know or care about. I also turn down almost every single new friend request.
  • If they’re people who I don’t even know who insist on posting crap on the updates of my other friends or even my own public updates, I can block them. I have blocked dozens of people on Facebook, including more than a few people who were once “friends” and even at least one family member. 

But what I’m left with on Facebook is very little of interest to keep me there and the feeling that I have to walk on eggshells with every single thing I post. 

Now combine that with Facebook’s algorithms that determine what I see and the order in which I see it and and the endless regurgitated posts about what happened a year ago or two years ago or five years ago and the reminders of birthdays and holidays and the suggestions about what I should share based on what’s in my clipboard and the tracking of my activity all over the web so it can display ads that I might click on — well, does any of that would like something I might like?

Is visiting Facebook a pleasant experience? Not usually. It’s mostly a frustrating waste of time.

Twitter

Twitter isn’t like this at all. 

Most of the accounts I follow on Twitter are people and organizations I don’t know in real life. The real friends I have there are people I’ve met on Twitter and have formed connections with based on real social networking interactions there. They are, for the most part, thinkers and doers — people and organizations I like and can respect based on the things they say and share in their tweets. 

What do they tweet? Comments, news stories, images, jokes, and videos, all of which interest me in one way or another. They are tech people and artists, journalists and programmers, writers and photographers. They are publications and broadcasters and government agencies. There are only 206 of them (today) and it isn’t likely that there will be many more. I prune the list of accounts I follow on a regular basis, weeding out the ones that tweet things I don’t want to see and adding ones I think I might enjoy. 

 I read the tweets in my newsfeed regularly to keep up with them. I often read or at least glance at the articles they link to. These things help me learn more about what’s going on in the world. They help inform my opinions. They help me understand what’s important.

And I tweet what’s on my mind. I link to articles and videos. I share (or retweet) some of the tweets the people I follow have shared. 

And I respond to some of the tweets I read. I agree or disagree. I compliment or criticize. I interact with more effort than simply clicking a “Like” button. I expand my world, form new relationships, share viewpoints.

If another person I don’t know or care about rudely or crudely attacks me in response to something I’ve tweeted or shared, I block him or her. It’s as simple as that. I’m not going to waste my time dealing with small minded, petty people. Life’s too short to deal with trolls and cyber bullies. It’s no secret that Internet trolls engage in such behavior because they have little else in their lives to keep them busy.

And Twitter doesn’t play games with me. It displays every single tweet by every single person I follow in the order in which it was tweeted. There are no algorithms determining what I see on Twitter, no suggestions on what to tweet, and no reminders of what I or the people I followed tweeted in the past. 

Twitter treats me like an adult and gives me instant access to the things that interesting people and organizations are sharing right now. There’s always something new to see and learn on Twitter. There’s always someone interacting with me and my tweets. There’s always something interesting for me to read or watch or learn or share.

The Bubble

I hear it already: naysayers telling me that I’m in a bubble.

Okay. So what? Don’t I have a right to filter out bullshit and focus on the things that can entertain me or make me smarter? News stories or opinions based in truth that aren’t full of hateful rhetoric?

Just as my Facebook friends have the right to share what Alex Jones or Mother Jones says, I have the right to ignore them and focus on the work of investigative journalists reporting for reliable news sources. I have the right to ignore Fox News or MSNBC pundits in favor of fact-based opinion pieces that appeal to my mind instead of my emotions. Information sources that make me want to act because I want to do the right thing instead of because I’m spurred to hate someone or something for no good reason.

Anyway, that’s my reasoning. 

You can find me on Twitter at @mlanger. Over 2,000 other people already have.