The Anti-Social Media

Twitter made a big stink last year by creating their own photo service.

Here’s something you probably didn’t notice though (unless you’re a dirty pervert), Twitter allows people to post porn.

Finally, you can share all your nasty, 140 character fantasies with all of your followers. Want to show your crappy cell phone pic of wang all over town? Twitter’s got you covered. Want the world to see your ta-tas? Tweet them out.

This is different from other image services, which had policies in place so we didn’t have to see your nasty junk.  They would take down your photos because they knew no one wanted to see that. Twitter, on the other hand, only has policies about child pornography.

Everything else is a fair, naked game.

Twitter can’t monitor every body part that gets posted on there. Porn stars have been tweeting their private parts for years now. And now the unwashed masses can join them in the orgy of fleshy images.

No longer do we need to worry if we can share our junk next to our resume and a link to a cute cat. We can. But the burden is entirely on us to behave like rational human beings. Isn’t that terrifying?

Just because you can keep your porn on Twitter, you probably shouldn’t. People look at that stuff, and we don’t need to know how kinky you really are. Really, we don’t.

Don’t the trending topics provide enough horror?

I recently started paying more attention to the trending topics section on Twitter. Somehow, I forgot how awful the trending topics are.

Trending topics have all the benefits of giving yourself a lobotomy. However, they come without the high price or inherent danger of performing a clumsy self-surgery on your brain. They somehow manage to combine the absolute worst in ideas, writing, and respect for other human beings in less than 140 characters.

It takes serious effort to be that consistently bad.

Let’s take a trend from last week and use it as an example: #iusetothink

This trend would be fine if people used it correctly. We would see a bunch of people saying “A good workout #iusetothink” or “A walk with the dog #iusetothink.” But no, that would be too obvious and would assume that people understood basic tense agreement.

Instead, we have a bunch of people saying things that they USED to think. This trend has caught on so much that even brands, whose community managers should know better, used the hashtag in a desperate attempt to stay out of touch and in front of an audience. It makes brands look dumb.

Marketers - based on this example, we can assume that the audience for promoted trends doesn’t even understand the basics of grammar. Do you honestly believe that the people who share trending topics will grasp your weird promoted trend and be able to help you accomplish your business goals?

This is why Twitter’s trending topics fail so miserably. Putting some funky hashtagged term in the face of hundreds of millions of Twitter users does not mean an instant success. You can’t target if you’re getting the brightest people, or those who need to go back to grammar school. And both of those groups will find a way to twist your message around in ways you never expected.

So avoid giving yourself the stress and brain damage and just avoid trending topics. Your brain cells will thank me later.

Could Twitter have done a worse job of corrupting the fundamentals of their service in the name of selling more crappy 140 character ads?

There’s a myth that all it takes to get a social media job is an overinflated Klout score and the ability to use “the Twitter.”

Sigh.

The ancient order of rockstar social media ninja gurus will probably never let us live that down. Jerks.

Maybe that worked in 2008 when people we’re easily distracted by all the shiny widgets, but these days a robust social media presence doesn’t demonstrate much if you’re not able to tie that social media presence into a business goal. The CEOs and business leaders I know look at social media as a strategic tool to effectively communicate and advance their business goals.

In other words, they look at social media and they suck the fun out of it.

They don’t care that it’s fun. They don’t  care about #tigerblood. They care about making more money and growing their business. It’s that simple.

Sure, you can use Twitter to build your thought leadership, but rarely do you get by on thought leadership alone. At the end of the day, you need to have the connections, talent, and skills to make a noticeable positive difference in the business.

So stop tweeting for the fun of it. Make connections with the people who can get your lazy tweeting butt a job.  Work with a local volunteer organization or non-profit to enhance their goals through social media.

And for the love of all that’s holy: nobody cares about your lame Klout score. Get over your dumb, meaningless number.

Does anyone still care about Follow Friday?

When I joined Twitter is 2007, it was cool to be mentioned and featured. Now it’s crap lost in the stream.

So, if you’re going to do a Follow Friday, don’t post a list of seemingly random user names. No one cares about that now and no one cared about it before. Instead, give people a legitimate reason to follow that person. For example:

Follow @JayDolan because he is the best writer and cartoonist on the internet and always makes me laugh. #FF

That’s much more useful information to someone than:

Follow Friday! #FF @JayDolan @TheAntiMedia @TheOatmeal @alliebrosh LOLz

See the difference? Good. Let’s make Follow Friday somewhat useful for those 15 people who still care.

Do you still care about follow Friday? Does anyone? And why haven’t you given me a Follow Friday shout out?