Rational Survivability

My buddy Bill Brenner (@billbrenner70) blogged a question that stemmed from a “discussion” I seem to have initiated yesterday: “Do People In Security Blog Too Much?”

He was kind enough to accommodate a clarification from me in which I reiterated that my chief complaint regarding excessive self-promotion by individuals  was “not about volume, but variety.”

To be clear, RT’ing a link (however modified) that is clearly designed to self-promote onesself is, in my opinion, bordering on SPAM-like behavior when one does it 10+ times in a 24 hour period.

I don’t mind a lot of tweets.  I mind a lot of the same tweets.

…The same way people get annoyed with folks who live tweet conferences, I suppose.

Now, people have the right to tweet whatever they like, as often as they like, but the reason I brought this up was because I was truly interested in whether or not the individual in question understood the impact/annoyance it caused.

Based on his reply, the “data he had to suggest ‘increased engagement,’ and what was clearly a strategy behind this activity, it became apparent he didn’t.

So I did what anyone in my position has the option to do: I unfollowed.  This was followed by an additional comment from the author that only “…~0.1% of followers had a negative response” to his RT’ing [approximately 5/4200 people.]

I found that odd, since I had at least 10 DM’s in my mailbox from followers who reacted to my tweets surrounding this issue.

5 or so others then piped up suggesting they were also annoyed but, like me, had not said anything.

As I mentioned, I wasn’t looking for anything like an apology — it’s not my place to, nor am I arrogant enough to suggest I’m owed one — but I did want him to understand that there were ramifications that either he was unaware of or simply ignoring.  Again, his choice.

I probably *do* tweet too much for many people’s likes — and they unfollow accordingly.  However, I operate under the “code” that I try very hard to not RT anything self-promotional more than TWICE in a 24 hour period.  I figure that with timezone deltas, but with RSS feeds and other RT’s from interested parties, that’s sufficient.

Am I potentially missing people?  Sure.  But the way I look at it is that if it’s interesting enough, people will find it.

I’m not in the “business” of “SEO for Twitter” (h/t to @SecureTom for the phrase,) but that’s a personal choice.

I will suggest, however, that people are smarter than many give them credit for — you can get cute and change the preamble, but if you deluge their timeline with self-promotion, expect them to one day get grumpy enough to find the unfollow button…and use it.

/Hoff