You should not follow me on Twitter | Hacker News Reader

You should not follow me on Twitter

visualwebsiteoptimizer.com

57 pointspaulgb20 comments

I've really come to hate the phrase "you should follow me on Twitter". It might have been effective when Dustin started using it in 2009, but I see it everywhere now. I wrote about my feelings on it yesterday for my personal blog:

http://kylecronin.me/blog/2012/5/26/i-hate-you-should-follow...

My post is a bit less diplomatic and a bit more of a rant than the post from visualwebsiteoptimizer.com, but I attribute that to how much the increased proliferation of the phrase grated on me since that article was published in 2010.

I wrote about it on my blog a couple years ago too. I'm just glad some voice of reason finally surfaced on here.

Besides the cargo-cult idiocy of it, the other thing I don't like is the idea that Twitter's goal is maximizing follower count in the first place. I often block followers from communicating with me because what they have to say is inane or negative. If you're going to count any number, I think it should be the number of worthwhile conversations.

Product people should keep in mind that any time you show your users a number, you're turning your site into a video game. There's a lot of accidental gamification out there.

"You should follow me on Twitter" has bugged me for months now, I didn't realize it started with Dustin Curtis as an "effective" phrase.

It mainly bugged me for sounding incredibly presumptuous - as it usually does when you tell someone they should do something that increases your own ego.

I find it incredibly annoying how every talk and article on the web these days seems to be mostly an ad for the author's twitter page.

It's basically equivalent to "you should sign up for my email newsletter" but without the classical email problems of being unable to unsubscribe from the list, or your address potentially being sold to third-parties. (Also without a permanent "inbox", so people will miss what you say if they don't check right at the time--but that also means that you'll never end up buried under all the other stuff people haven't checked, so I imagine that evens out.)

     how he increased his twitter followers by 173%

He increased the clickthrough rate by 173%, not his number of followers.

I didn't know that Dustin Curtis was the first one that started it but every time I come across it, it slightly invalidates the authenticity of the post itself. It's like saying, "If you liked this post you should buy our product". It makes people feel that the post was solely written to convert you.

You really need a large existing online presence to make Twitter work effectively. We have found Twitter extremely difficult to create any real traffic or interest [1].

We have tried all the usual tips: follower those with similar interests, interact with others, ask people to follow etc etc It just doesn't work. Even when you gain followers (many are spam) they don't click through on links.

Add in all the noise on Twitter we struggle to know the true purpose of twitter.

http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/project-trout-s...

I've never heard of Dustin Curtis, and I've said "you should follow me on Twitter" before. It's a pretty basic phrase, and I'd bet 99% of the people who use it haven't heard of him either.

I think you are right - 99% of people who use it haven't heard of him. However, they probably copied the idea after seeing it on someone else's blog. Apparently Curtis is the one we have to blame/thank for initially popularising this particular phrasing. I seem to recall he blogged about it being effective for him, and it quickly became the de facto postscript for bloggers wanting more Twitter followers.

"You should follow me on twitter" send the same message about the author's tech-savvy as "Email me at Rabbit47@aol.com"

I think you're saying that you shouldn't just blindly copy "best practices" or the results of someone else's split testing.

With that I agree. Yes, you should test yourself.

However, most people are not split testing their "follow me" button -- and since most people aren't going to/dont care to, it's absolutely sensible to follow best practices or copy Dustin.

I'd have preferred to read a post that discussed why it's silly to measure your own self-worth by the number of Twitter followers you have and how quickly you can amass them.

If you liked this comment, you should follow me on... oh never mind.

Here's what I think when I read it:

Maybe I should follow you on Twitter, maybe I will, but I don't think I wanna ever meet you in real life. You sound like you're a lot smarter than everybody else, and I'm not smart enough for you.

So, is this the issue with the way the request is phrased? Or with the principle of trying to increase your Twitter followers?

The issue is that people are not measuring the effect of changes. The issue is assuming that what works for one person will work for all.

Your design just looks like http://puppetlabs.com !!!

done.

I find that phrase so terribly impolite that I tend to blacklist all blogs that use it.

no worries, i'd never follow you on twitter

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