With so many businesses looking to tap the power of social media — and so many experts interested in selling to them — it’s no wonder that headlines like this one flourish across the web. Promise people bottom-line maximizing, brand-leveraging, social-media-packed goodness, and they will tweet and retweet like little demons. Best of all, they won’t even peek inside: they’ll set up keyword searches that automatically grab and tweet any sexy-sounding headline (like this one) using an automatic RSS-to-Twitter service.
But does automatic tweeting add value, or does it devalue Twitter by delivering automated content instead of personally curated links? I’m of two minds. You could say it’s a victimless crime: auto-tweeting actually helps the SEO of the originating post. But I tend to think it breaks an implicit promise, that I’m tweeting stuff because I found it useful or at least intriguing.
If you’re reading this post, I’m betting it’s because my sexy title has gotten automatically sucked up and tweeted by someone you are currently following. (One clue: the tweet you read was posted via twitterfeed or another RSS-to-Twitter service.) So please tell me what you think:
Do you feel scammed if you were led here by an automatic (twitterfeed) tweet, rather than an actual human recommendation? Or are you still delighted to have found this interesting and provocative post? Please let me know in comments below — you’re helping to make up my mind.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I have an ancillary question to yours: Is hiring ghost writers for your twitter account better or worse than setting up rss-to-tweets?
I was not led here by a twitterfeed tweet; I subscribed to your blog with Google Reader. But – social media to me is an extension of the “real” world in that your virtual relationships should be treated the same way you treat contacts in your offline networks. I’d never call or email my friends with automatic messages, so I don’t believe social media should be automated in that way. I think it violates the basic tenants of the social part of social media. It is more work to send personally vetted recommendations, but I would stop following someone if all they tweeted were useless retweets and auto-generated content.
I also read this post because I subscribe to your blog. I actually had no idea that people feed rss direct into twitter, but I guess it doesn’t really surprise me. It doesn’t really bother me that people do it either, but I personally wouldn’t tweet or re-tweet something that I hadn’t already read. It’s about standing behind your work (whether that work be either writing, researching, and/or reading).
I’m new to the blogging stratosphere and was directed to your site by a link from the Harvard Business School. I’m delighted to be reading this particular blog and being a Newbie, Techno, FB, Twitter, Flickr potential participant, I await the accumulation of more stellar info from you! Many thanks!