My mother always taught me to be polite, but she also told me that once someone said ‘thank you,’ there was no need to take the conversation any further. Oh, you could say, ‘my pleasure,’ or ‘it was nothing,’ but really that was not necessary. And, you certainly did not reply to a Thank You Note with another note. It just wasn’t done.
We used to make fun of the Looney Tune characters Mac and Tosh, two endlessly exuberant, incessantly positive and unfailingly polite gophers. “Thank you. Oh no, Thank you!”
I feel like Twitter has reached the point of 'polite saturation.' The majority of us use bots if we have gained a following beyond 10,000. When you reach 30,000 it is impossible to keep up with the “Thank Yous” you would really like to say individually.
Have you noticed how many people reply to an automated Thank you? I confess I have too. The darn things say via (the name of the program i.e. TweetJukeBox), but we are still polite little gophers and reply. I actually send flowers.
Didn’t we all pick out these programs because we were really busy trying to write, holding relevant conversations or marketing our books? Wasn’t the idea to help alleviate the stress, not create more by thanking a bot?
Let’s get back to conversations with substance and quality. Let’s leave the bots to do their jobs of recognizing the faithful folks who inhabit Twitter and support us. Let’s get down to the business of discussing what is happening in our publishing lives, what we can do to alter the way Twitter looks at us as a group. We are not spammers or nuisances. We are their customers and we keep Twitter alive and running strong. We use Twitter as a business tool - as they continue to ask us to in email after email - yet they penalize us if we appear to be using bots.
I would like to sit them in my chair for a day. Let them keep up with 30,000+ followers in 3 hours a day and be relevant without a bot.
We used to make fun of the Looney Tune characters Mac and Tosh, two endlessly exuberant, incessantly positive and unfailingly polite gophers. “Thank you. Oh no, Thank you!”
I feel like Twitter has reached the point of 'polite saturation.' The majority of us use bots if we have gained a following beyond 10,000. When you reach 30,000 it is impossible to keep up with the “Thank Yous” you would really like to say individually.
Have you noticed how many people reply to an automated Thank you? I confess I have too. The darn things say via (the name of the program i.e. TweetJukeBox), but we are still polite little gophers and reply. I actually send flowers.
Didn’t we all pick out these programs because we were really busy trying to write, holding relevant conversations or marketing our books? Wasn’t the idea to help alleviate the stress, not create more by thanking a bot?
Let’s get back to conversations with substance and quality. Let’s leave the bots to do their jobs of recognizing the faithful folks who inhabit Twitter and support us. Let’s get down to the business of discussing what is happening in our publishing lives, what we can do to alter the way Twitter looks at us as a group. We are not spammers or nuisances. We are their customers and we keep Twitter alive and running strong. We use Twitter as a business tool - as they continue to ask us to in email after email - yet they penalize us if we appear to be using bots.
I would like to sit them in my chair for a day. Let them keep up with 30,000+ followers in 3 hours a day and be relevant without a bot.
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