Twitter sucks worse than a new diver in a current

I used to stand up for Twitter (not that they need it) when people claimed it was stupid and just a bunch of noise. I think many of us can agree, regardless of our presence on Twitter or not, that the SCUBA industry hasn’t been one of the early adopters of Twitter. It seems like being late to the game has allowed many people to bypass the whole CONVERSATION aspect of the tool.

Laziness

We all get lazy at times, but in the SCUBA industry there are a few accounts that are the epitome of lazy. I took a look at the list I created of SCUBA industry professionals for this example.

12 of 20 updates were retweets without any additional content.

At least they weren’t using the new retweet function, but still, no thoughts? No insight? Why are you sharing this? I don’t count retweets using tools like Tweetmeme because that’s a great way to share an article. These 60% were using tools like Hootsuite or TweetDeck.

And seriously, the Academy Awards-length list of thank you’s to those who retweet you or nominate you for Follow Friday are really unneccessary. If I retweet you, it’s because it had value, no thanks is necessary.

Automation

I believe a small degree of automation is okay. I hope my Twitter followers are following me partially because they want to know what’s going on with this site. Even the 3 updates I send out for each article every day aren’t automated, I fit them into my terrible sleep patterns. The only real automation I use is for comments because I want people to join into any lively conversation.

Looking at my list again, another 4 of 20 (20%) were completely automated. I’ve even removed some of the user accounts that are obviously just bots.

The other evil form of automation comes in the form of auto-follow replies. I report all of you as spam and I suggest you do the same.

Two Way Conversation

Twitter was a two way conversation, but not so much lately. I send direct questions to dive shops, SCUBA gear manufacturers, SCUBA certification agencies and independent SCUBA instructors and never get a reply. Then I look through their timeline to see they never respond to people, they are simply broadcasting.

So in my snapshot view of SCUBA professionals, there were 4 updates that were unique.