[chucker]

Originally Posted by Moogs Moogs' Rule #1 of Twitter Qualification: if you see someone with roughly 3000 followers and are following 3000 people also, none of those people have anything interesting to say most likely. Apparently there are books and seminars out there where basically it's one big twitter circle-jerk. "You follow me and I'll follow you... who cares what it is that you're posting."

They're either A) a worthless douchebag, B) a celebrity (see A) or C) a spammer/marketing campaigner/whatever. You recognize interesting people by their follower:followee ratio.

Originally Posted by Moogs Also love those people with 2 posts and thousands of followers and a picture of a chic in skimpy clothes. Twitter's recommendation and spam killing system is uber-primitive IMO.

True.

Originally Posted by Moogs Doesn't do a good job at all of separating the wheat from the chaff. Going to give this loonatic network another 30 days or so and if things haven't taken off in terms of directing traffic to my blog and other stuff, I'm going to bag it... total waste of time.

Your choice.

[Moogs]

Scates: I'm a glutton for punishment, apparently.

Chuck: Well hey... I'm staying open to the possibilities here. If I'm missing something obvious or there's a logical argument or technique in favor of this thing as a business tool (without turning into a spam-head or circle-jerker), let's hear it.

[dmegatool]

Hey guys ! Total twitter noob here. But I need to use it... Here's the situation :

A friend of mine told me about a job opportunity and sent me the guy's twitter and linkedIn. I thought I could contact him via LinkedIn but it seems you can only send emails with paid account. Anyway, I've found the company email jobs@something.com, sent my portfolio, but I still want to ping the guy about it. So it seems Twitter is my only option.

Can I send him some kind of private message or everybody will be seeing it no matter what I do ? I'll probably need to the the @user but how this will show up ? On is twitter with everybody following him being notified ? What do you guys would do ?

[jdcfsu]

You can send direct messages to people you follow by formatting your tweet as DM username message. However, I can't remember if that other person needs to also be following you in order to be able to receive the direct message.

[Wyatt]

Originally Posted by jdcfsu You can send direct messages to people you follow by formatting your tweet as DM username message. However, I can't remember if that other person needs to also be following you in order to be able to receive the direct message.

You can only send a DM to someone who follows you. However, you don't have to be following them to be able to send it.

[kieran]

That aspect of Twitter has bothered me for a while, but I understand completely. Otherwise, our inboxes would be packed with spam DMs from spammers.

[dmegatool]

That's exactly what I though. Anyway, I've found the guy phone number so it's wayyyyy better

[Moogs]

Can someone please explain the following scenario and what I'm not understanding?

Originally set up my account. Punched in one of my email addresses (which I thought was a point of contact for Twitter). Now, I try to uncheck the "Let people find me by email" because I don't want my email available to anyone or searchable. When I click Save I am asked to punch in my password and then am told "___ is not a valid email address."

a) It is valid (mine, not misspelled, no spaces, etc)

b) I can't find a single direct email form or help address anywhere on Twitter's Help page (which is shit IMO)

c) When I try to punch in a new email... I get this little spinner icon and then a message that says "available!" Again... It's treating the email as if I'm choosing a user name (which I already have). Why is Twitter trying to convince me it has a say in whether my pre-existing emails are "available"?

Is the Email field for some type of Twitter mail? am I supposed to be creating _____@twitter.com? It's stuff like this that is SO basic, that when they ignore it / overlook it in their design, I have to question these people's intelligence a little. This whole email process they have set up is retarded.

[dmegatool]

Totally guessing here but did you confirm your adress when you signed up ? (I don't even know if you have to...)

[Moogs]

As far as I know I did. I just followed whatever instructions they gave. It's been a few months, obviously.

[noleli2]

I just tried unchecking the "Let others find me by my email address" box on one of my accounts. It asked me for my password, I typed it in, and it worked. I had the same thought as dmegatool. The subject line of the confirmation email was "Confirm your Twitter account…", so just search for that.

[Moogs]

So you understand, twitter knows my email address, because when I cleared the field and retyped the email it said off to the side "that's you!". The problem is when I input my password in order to uncheck the "find me" box, it tells me that same email is not valid. Their system is contradicting itself basically, and I can't find a single direct email form or address to report this problem to twitter. Their help page is just FAQ and looping links that bring you back to help. Does anyone have a direct address or URL form for contacting them? BTW thanks again for your assistance.

[Wyatt]

Originally Posted by Moogs So you understand, twitter knows my email address, because when I cleared the field and retyped the email it said off to the side "that's you!". The problem is when I input my password in order to uncheck the "find me" box, it tells me that same email is not valid. Their system is contradicting itself basically, and I can't find a single direct email form or address to report this problem to twitter. Their help page is just FAQ and looping links that bring you back to help. Does anyone have a direct address or URL form for contacting them? BTW thanks again for your assistance.

You can DM or mention @support to get help. You could also mention @ev or @biz (Evan Williams and Biz Stone, co-founders of Twitter) or @twitter, but those may not be as helpful.

[Moogs]

Thanks Wyatt. Pardon my ignorance but what is DM?

As far as @support, what do you do, just type in something like
"@support Having trouble with settings error, please contact."

Why the hell don't these people have a simple contact form or email so you can send private messages? Insanity.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Moogs Thanks Wyatt. Pardon my ignorance but what is DM?

Direct message. If a message starts with 'd ' and a name, it gets privately messaged to that person.

E.g.

d chucker OMG U SO AWSUM LOL

[Moogs]

Ah so I should follow Support or something like that and send a direct message, or are you saying even if someone isn't on my follow list I can just go

d Support Hey you bitches fix the settings bug!

(like that? )

[chucker]

I believe normally, you can only send direct messages if they follow you (so a random stranger can't bug you). Maybe support is a special case.

[Robo]

Question: Does it make any sense whatsoever to include a hashtag in front of a single word?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Roboman Question: Does it make any sense whatsoever to include a hashtag in front of a single word?

If you want to bring emphasis to it and/or, in many clients, allow people to search for other tweets with that same hashtag, yes.

[kieran]

I do it all the time for sports related things. Helps to be able to put it into a common search for the word.

[Wyatt]

Originally Posted by kieran I do it all the time for sports related things. Helps to be able to put it into a common search for the word.

But what makes it better to search for #Phillies instead of just Phillies? It seems to me like searching for a single-word hashtag would be less useful.

[kieran]

Not necessarily searching, but putting a hashtag in front makes it a hyperlink.

Think of it as the lazy man's search.

[evan]

got one! @evan_wingfield so that's me if I end up following some of your guys

[chucker]

Originally Posted by CoachKrzyzewski got one! @evan_wingfield so that's me if I end up following some of your guys

I was wondering who that is.

[Moogs]

So... I made my first Twitter Tactical error last night. There's a guy in my industry I've been following for a while because he was following me and posting some OK stuff. But in recent months it's like constant self-praise and advertising from this guy. He Tweets about his product like 8x a day, and once or twice even putting down competing products (that are well rated). So I had enough and after he said "I've got 2000 followers now", I figure no way he's going ot notice it's me who unsubcribes. I'm way back on his list, right?

So I unsubscribed, and deleted some random DM we sent, and this morning he's not following me. Did I screw up by deleting the DM? IOW did I delete them on his page too? Wouldn't he have his own copies, like email? THe whole thing is just weird (the way Twitter works). How else might he have figured it out short of going back through x100 followers and not seeing me?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Moogs How else might he have figured it out short of going back through x100 followers and not seeing me?

Qwitter.

[Moogs]

Pwned. Heh. Oh well. I still think he's arrogant so hopefully no great loss (though he does give "twitter marketing" seminars too... hopefully he doesn't say "Then this idiot over here ____, actually UNfollowed me. Can you imagine! Common people it's all about networking; you never unfollow!"

The knocking of someone else's competing (and good) product was the last straw for me. I don't even own the product but I felt it was pretty uncool.

[kieran]

Qwitter never really worked that well for me, so I switched to Nutshell Mail. Sens me an email every day telling me my new followers and who unfollowed. Pretty cool.

I used to put up with people a lot longer than I have been recently. I've unfollowed a bunch of people lately that I'd been following for a while. Their tweets just didn't interest me anymore, or they were being annoying with certain things.

Either way, you gain & lose followers every day, no sense worrying about it, even if they are in your field.

[Moogs]

Originally Posted by kieran Qwitter never really worked that well for me, so I switched to Nutshell Mail. Sens me an email every day telling me my new followers and who unfollowed. Pretty cool. I used to put up with people a lot longer than I have been recently. I've unfollowed a bunch of people lately that I'd been following for a while. Their tweets just didn't interest me anymore, or they were being annoying with certain things. Either way, you gain & lose followers every day, no sense worrying about it, even if they are in your field.

Thanks for the link and some good advice too. Not really worried about it; just trying to understand the system. Is Nutshell always free or just free initially?

[kieran]

I've had it for a year at least and never paid a dime. It looks like they have a Pro version, but I don't see the need for it. The regular version works just fine.