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Calling that "spam" completely distorts what "spam" means- YOU chose to follow the person before you got their message. That is NOT spam. Spam would be sending those DMs to random people you had no connection with.
many people are doing this now that this has ended up becoming the only type
of dm people get now. The same repetitive "thank yous" start to lose their
meaning after too many of them. It becomes harder to auto-follow people
because of this.
it's a shame abuse by others has eliminated this for the rest of us.
@BertDecker
Warmly,
Allen
If you want to connect with new people, folks don't have to say thank you when following. Observe their recent tweets and find something funny to say in response, a relevant bit of info to add, or look for a good question to ask to start engaging.
I love you, Jesse, for taking a stand. RIGHT ON!!!!
Socialtoo is a great service keep it up @jesse!!!
next few days.
" Twitter Blacklisting - we’ll do something really cool with this shortly"
YES!!!
Women on the net have kept our private list, but I like some sort of "voting" public feature - the who what and WHY someone's been blacklisted - that way there's no abuse of THAT feature as well
PS: Let's just say NO to Auto-POKES
Eh-HEM Mr. @ResPres Jeff Turner
Aloha!
CoachDeb
apps and Twitter users that aren't. I'm hoping we can build a revenue model
around this soon so I can start hiring people and building these things
faster! Stay tuned - much more to come!
Whilst in the first, cutesy newbie stage it seems nice, and polite, it doesn't scale, and is a complete and utter waste of time..
If you want to show ur appreciation to someone for following you, be creative, or inventive, or take the time to thank the person personally. Whilst it's going to be abused by spammers, you may want to consider having a mass DM feature.. which is only possible after 3 months of the following/follower relationship..
Twitter is still in it's infant stages - but we must all learn to stop doing what doesn't work, sooner rather than later!
like it.
this working and how it would integrate?
ANY ATUO DM with LINK is SPAM period end of story.
Thank you Thank you Thank you, did I say Thank you giggle & Shazam!
Is there anything you would like to include in my review? Email me, please. And thanks for the service. I appreciate it.
http://socialtoo.com/about. If you have any questions don't hesitate to
contact me at jesse@socialtoo.com
One question though....
How many terrible auto DMs would you get if you did not auto follow and auto follow back?
If you used the service "Twitter" as it was meant to be used, I doubt you would even have this problem to deal with!
I doubt that you would manually follow anybody using Twitter for spamming so why allow a script to do it for you?
Anybody auto following back is causing their own problem with regards to auto DMs, why follow everybody that follows you?
If it is as a thank you, surely a @ tweet or DM is far better. If you are hoping your followers will be tricked into thinking you are watching every word they tweet, you are surely presuming your followers to be stupid!
Anybody following more than a couple hundred people are using Twitter clients like tweetdeck and twhirl to only see the tweets of people and subjects they really care about, we all know this, don't we?
Oh, of course, you are are looking for a short cut to increasing your own followers count, just as the spammers are looking for a short cut to put their irrelavent link in front of you!
Here's an idea, stop auto following and auto following back for just one week and see if your DM box becomes usable again.
This is great. Thank you for helping improve the community.
As for the people that said they weren't sending a link and this is hurting it for the people that aren't abusing it. What is the value of a thank you if it is auto generated? Maybe next year for Christmas I will just send preprinted thank you cards to everyone.
The sentiment is totally lost if there is no thought behind it.
@kevinpalmer
understand people were trying to be genuine, but it just couldn't scale as a
service and not have people mad at those people. As an auto-follow service,
auto-dms don't exactly make sense as that service grows.
And how about being courteous by, after following some one, @ replying to some one based on something they said on Twitter? So if you see that I've talked about X-Files, say "@purplepopple I'm more a Mulder fan than Scully." If I'm asking about SEO, say "@purplepopple Feel your pain. Nothing I do improves traffic from Yahoo! :(" That is infinitely more courteous because it shows you're not just following me to improve your metrics, that I should follow you because there is a possibility of developing a relationship online that can help both of us, that we have a shared interest, that you're actually reading tweets of the people you're following and not just filtering your follow list.
Maybe only few people had a problem with it but not me.
to prove to me there is enough interest in receiving those thank you dms. Is
it that difficult to personally send a direct message to your followers? How
many new followers do you get in a day? I think the majority of those that
receive them either ignore them or get offended by them, as you can see from
the comments here and the blog posts we shared.
that might help users filter users that utilize auto-dm. I agree though -
the end solution needs to be on Twitter's end.
At first, it seemed like a polite concept when someone sent a simple thank you.
But more and more, people were using this to send auto DM's that came across as spammy. It's bad enough to get spam in email, and it was getting irritating to receive them in Twitter.
People who want to send a polite (and hopefully personal!) DM still can. So that is a good thing, I think. What is stopped now (at least from your service, is people sending automated DM's - robots - to do spammy work.
My standard Tweet about this, with apologies to Dr. Seuss:
"I do not like robots. Not on a train! Not in a tree! Not in a car! Sam! Let me be!"
THANK YOU for taking a stand and putting an end to this.
@davideckoff
Indeed, I will support this, and tell others.
I've been reading your articles on louis gray's blog, but now I'll finally try socialtoo!
If they have decided to follow me, it's usually because they want to follow ME and what better way is there for me to leave them a message saying "Im not on Twitter" than with an "answering machine" that sends an automatic DM?
When you call someone on the phone and get an answering machine or voicemail recording, do you cry that the person you are calling is spamming you? What about if the outgoing message tells you where they are and even (gasp!) gives you another number to call that they will answer? Do you call that spamming, too?
When you move, do you leave a forwarding address so you can get your mail? Or do you just let it pile up at the old address for it to eventually get sent back to the sender stamped with "address unknown"?
Now I'll have to go back to manually messaging everyone with the same message over & over, since I can't even switch to another automatic DM service, now that your master plan is to stamp out all automatic DM's originating from ANY service.
That is very unfair to me...and those other services. I think I am even more upset over the fact that you have taken away ALL of my automatic DM options, not just the one you once provided.
While I feel your efforts to eradicate DM spam are noble, they hurt the innocent.
Imagine if some site decided to stamp out email spam by running a service that would block anyone from sending you an auto-generated email. 90% of all legitimate email would be eliminated in the process. ...not just spam.
I specifically signed up for your service to be able to send these automatic DM's. Now there is very little reason for me to keep my SocialToo account, or to recommend your service to anyone that is on the verge of abandoning their twitter account.
It's very likely that because of your decision, I too may end up abandoning my Twitter account...or leave new followers completely in the dark as to where I really am.
Thanks a lot.
I'll vote with my feet.
Good Bye Social Too
auto-dms do nothing for your followership, and are mostly ignored. In fact,
they will get you unfollowed. I know many people that stop following the
people that send auto-dms to their followers, and that will increase as the
problem gets worse. The step we're taking is an effort to lead our users to
do the right thing, which will give them the most opportunity for increased
followership and best results on the Social Networks they belong to.
auto-dming will get you unfollowed, plain and simple - I strongly recommend
against it.
I was dismayed to find this out, with the auto-DM being disabled. I SOOO agree that this should have, in the name of good business practice, been announced to "the group." So I email SocialToo and get a nice email sometime last night, come up here to read the Reezins Why.
You know? As with anything "written" on the Internet, even our short 140 char. bursts need to be written WELL. I initially was thrilled with SocialToo, for this very ability. Now that it's gone, I, too, wonder about the necessity of keeping the tool. I do like the daily update, to see mostly my unfollows. Very few frankly. Mostly the accounts that Twitter has zapped.
As an organizational tool, the auto DM allowed me to keep up, somewhat, with the Twitter avalanche. And in fact, the way I handled it, it allowed me an instant rapport with a lot of my new follows. Why? Because I CARE. I detest spam and would never use any of this type of tool to spam anybody.
I had several of my new follows go... Is that YOU? What, did you just write me? Wow, cool! ...... and further..... they would ask me what the tool was. INSTANT RAPPORT. It opened the door to real communication instantly. Not ALL of them, mind you.... but I quickly could see who it was that was open to real communication.
This was my DM:
Thanks for your follow, TWITTERNAME. I am real, not a Bot. This is the only 'auto' you'll receive. I care!
===> And it was the only DM. It was experimental, as I've not played with any of the other tools that offer things like this. I've only been twittering for just over 3 months. And it leaped into a monster! Now I too am asking: Is there another service that allows this, along with auto follow? This truly is the ONE tool I discovered that I could really use.
As for DM in general. On a VM, you hit DELETE. In the Inbox, you hit DELETE. Why is Twitter DM any different? Hit DELETE.
Other than that, I quite frankly also appreciate the DMs. It has allowed an instant view of that follower. Either they are in to spamming in general.... or it was a simple thank you that I appreciated.... or it offered a short insight into that follower that made me click over to see more.
I care.
Jesse. Old saying. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Oh, and the other one... "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." by Abraham Lincoln.
Insert the word "please" for "fool" ... ya just cannot please everyone all of the time. Although in the case of the autoDM, just leave the word "fool" in there. If you are SINCERE with your DM, most folks will see your sincerity and that you're not trying to fool anyone. Some people are just Eb Scrooge, and some are Daffy Duck, and some are Darth Vader.
The auto DM, for me, helped filter out the cartoon characters and in many instances, started an instant relationship.
Sorry, I think it's a mistake to eliminate this feature.
Leanne
rid of auto-dm, not keep it. We did studies on this, and have proven stats
that support this. I would not be making this decision if that weren't the
case. The system was broken, and we're fixing it. For any service to offer
auto-follow and also auto-dm is contradictory. Enabling auto-follow so
others can communicate with you, then auto-dm to clutter up that
conversation doesn't make sense. You will see negative impact by continuing
this process, and we're going to be taking steps at SocialToo to make it
harder to follow people that do utilize this practice. I strongly recommend
against using the practice of auto-dms. It will be at the detriment to your
brand image.
Auto follow = APPLE
Meanwhile, per your "old services" - Even if I forgot to follow, SocialToo already followed them back, and sent out a nice little note saying HELLO, I'm real, You will never get another DM because I care!
Auto-DM = ORANGE
I don't see where the two are related like you indicate. For those that are spamming the Auto-DM, I agree that it is not received well, and LIKE ALL SPAMMING, will negatively affect them.
As I indicated, I personally found that, with the DM that I chose, the way I worded it........ I had very positive feedback.
Like any tool, it is the intention and the implementation that impacts people. When the message is: I care ... how is that a negative thing? Overall, I've had a quick rise to almost 1700 followers in a truly short time. And it has been over one month that I actively went and sought out people to follow. All of this has been organic, for "half the life" of my Twitter experience. Some days it grows by 20-30 peeps. And that tickles me.
The unfollows, per your own tool, are FEW for "real" followers... sometimes a language thing (I don't do Portuguese and they don't do English) ... but most of them are the zapped accounts per Twitter. And some are ones I zapped because they unfollowed right after following.
Why has all of this become so obtuse? This almost feels like irate discussions over book banning/censorship.
What remains, for me: I like the daily stats.
I'm not using the auto-unfollow. I do that manually. Always have.
As for the auto-DM issue. I'm not looking, at this point, to replace it. Manual means will have to suffice. But don't take that wrongly. I really feel others here in this forum have hit the reality nail on the head :: auto-DM is no different than Voice Mail. What would your business be like without VM?
yikes.
way that works for all. The previous solution just wasn't working, and too
prone to abuse. If others want to provide this, that's fine - we'll
continue to allow our users to block those services though. Right now it's
not an area I want to compete in, nor one I encourage others to.
When mine, and others' DM boxes are being cluttered from distractions other
than actual communication, it goes against what I built Socialtoo for.
SocialToo is intended to enhance communication, compliment the experience,
not make it more difficult. If we can figure out a way to do that and still
provide auto-responses, I may reconsider.
I actually like some auto-dms, when they've told me a bit about who I'm following. That's a small minority though. It aggravates me that most auto-dms are either:
* spam
* a request to follow a link to a blog that may be the most fascinating thing I've ever seen, or more likely spam. I have another 20 emails to read, so get to the point, please.
* an uninformative "thank you." Sorry, who are you again? Tell me, I do want to know! Our organization gets 10 or so new followers a day, and we auto-follow most (excepting spammers filtered out by socialtoo) so i may not recognize you by name alone.
I used to use auto-dms myself, making them as informative and useful as I could. With the backlash they're getting (though only two people have directly said I shouldn't use them) I've turned them off, and rely on our account's bio and tweets to tell our story.
Auto-Dms can be an effective marketing and communication tool that enables strangers to take a *shallow* online relationship to the next level. Like a business card. Would u have us all burn our business cards too? Did u throw away your business cards when u wrote this blog? No? Why not?
I'm upset. If you want to build trust and a following, U don't just shut things down. Sucky business skills 101. U should have announced (high and low) a change to service... weeks ahead of the service change so users have time to consider their options. This change was done with a fruity note of facism... <g>
So it was for free. So it sucks to be me. Me helping U understand your own mistakes by coming at U with an honest, upfront comment- brings a small satisfaction. Hopefully, U don't repeat the same kind of mistakes in the future. And then U can thank me. :P
Obviously, there's technical reasons for your change of service. Of course, U won't discuss this publicly as this could undermine value U are trying to build for investors, angels and fans. I just thought to mention it so U know where I'm coming from, but I'll leave the technicals alone because I've been there and done that.
It's a pity that all your so-called entrepreneurial spirit didn't get you to see the obvious... innovations that would serve U, Twitter, and Twitter users. Allow me to spell it out for U:
1. Auto-DM as a paid Service. $100/annual subscription to keep out the riff raff and reduce the so-called spam. Again, if this is spam, I guess your mother calling u to say happy birthday is spam too.
2. Message folders in Social Too for organizing all the DMs: inbox and as many new, nameable folders as they like. Monthly email report on all folders, unread DMs, etc. Also part of the paid professional service.
Now U can make your millions and U can stop looking for a job... buy if you do make a million, all your base are belong to me. And your soul! :P
@hannibal666
The next thing that will be thrown out is your answering machine and you better X the Voice Message system ESPECIALLY if you invite someone to visit your website while they wait for you return call because that is SPAM.
Or better yet the elevator music and the little ads you hear while you are on hold are actually SPAM messages so you better cancel your service AND GOD FORBID that they have an AUTOMATED operator system that asks you to press 4 for this or that because that is so INSINCERE.
WTH while you are at it you might as well through out your TV because you didn’t opt in to commercials from the station when you bought it from Best Buy.
And just to make sure you send a message you better not visit any websites that sell advertising because you will be SPAMMED to death with banner ads.
What a supcalifragilisticinsecuresimpltonwayofthinking.
Hello - You have reached the offices of Social Media Experts Anonymous. Please leave a detailed message and we will return your call promptly. For more info about our services please visit us the web @ www. I can't tell you the address because it would be considered SPAM .com Thanks again for calling.
Twitter as great as it is only allows 160 characters to say something about yourself.
Who would have thought all the Social Media "Experts” would be “so long sighted” as to say HEY don’t use a Twitter Answering Service because it is to Insincere.
Oh what sure genius - I definitely want to buy your book now.
I wasn’t spamming anyone but I received a lot of meaningful extra traffic from AUTOMATED DM’s because it was a easy and convenient way for people to find more about me and my services and when I had time it was great way to quickly go back and find out more about people without having to visit every single because all the links where in one place.
I am with hanibal Jesse.
Taking a stand is one thing but IMNSHO the problem that people have with automated DM’s should have been taking up with twitter not your service.
It is literally impossible to reach out personally, to every single one you cybernetically bump into in a sincere amount of time, and anyone who suggests that you should or even could obviously doesn’t do realtime business and is spending why to much time socializing and way to little time net – “working.”
Anybody in here actually try to hold a meaningful business based chat with 160 characters? You end up telling someone to IM or email or call or something ANYWAY
You people sound like you have been brainwashed by the corporate geniuses at Linked In who thinks networking means you should only connect to people you KNOW or better yet who think self promotion is shameless.
LOL
WARNING
People who thought this great service was SPAM – do not read any further.
My name is Ryan E. Poole - I approve this message.
You can auto follow me @ http://www.twitter.com/powerpoole
If you dare ;)
P.S.
Anyone know of another service that still allows Auto DM's
Please DM me
ROTFLMBO
1. SPAM is defined as an un-solicited message. While Twitter seems to produce more of a grey area on the act of "opting in", we can probably assume for now that a "follow" fulfills that role. When someone opts to follow you, they have given you the right to send them a message (organic or automated).
2. Email auto-responders send a series of syndicated messages to thousands of people who have specifically given permission to receive said messages. The only catch is there has to be an easy way to unsubscribe with no questions asked. Twitter allows this function with the "unfollow" feature.
3. Shunning Auto-DMs while champion-ing Auto-Follows is contradictory. It gives an unfair advantage to one party over another. If I can automatically follow someone but they can't automatically respond to me, how is it fair?
4. This has been stated before, but I feel it worth clarifying. Sending Auto-DMs can never be completely eradicated. The internet provides way too many other options and it is a need that most certainly exists, much like those of us who use Aweber or GetResponse for non-SPAM purposes.
I have read the comments on this blog and I agree with a lot of you....on both sides. Here are my thoughts, in case they are helpful.
I personally came to Social Too because I liked the auto-response system for auto-follows. I really dug how there was a script that entered the follower's name. Haven't found that anywhere else. However, this function disappeared with no warning whatsoever within a couple of days after I signed up. I spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out where the heck it was. I finally gave up and went back to "TweetLater".
I can appreciate how you want to clean things up, but there are many services out there which offer auto-follow, auto-DM and several more options than SocialToo. While your cause is noble, your service is no longer competitive. What reason would I have to stay? Not trying to be nasty about it, but what would compel me to use Social Too over TweetLater aside from principle?
On the other side of the coin, I can relate to most Auto-DM's being pointless. I always look at them with a quick glance. They are all relatively the same. Kind of annoying, but I can't really complain too much because I did Auto-Follow them.
There is a script that can block Auto-Dms. Now that it exists, it always will, no matter how many people complain. If you stop offering it, people that need it will seek it out elsewhere. The same goes for Auto-DMs. Until they get added to the CAN-SPAM Act, people will seek out and use them for both good purposes and bad.
Many people above have alluded the auto messages to voicemail, answering machines, etc. I think it's broader than that. From a corporate perspective, and Jesse you mentioned being the CEO, you provide two very popular products and have a LARGE competition base consisting mainly of startups jockeying for position. All of a sudden, you drop one of your two main products for the sake of posterity....but no one else does. If this were any other business setting, what would be the most likely result?
Now, I have NO IDEA why I just sat here and wrote a novel on this subject, so I apologize for digressing.
I agree that Auto-DM's suck sometimes. They're stupid and pointless.
But I also agree that they have a proper use and ARE permission-based, thus not SPAM. Adding a link does NOT make it SPAM.
Not providing this option will eventually force people to find it elsewhere.
Honestly, I could take it or leave it, I really see it both ways. But I have the option everywhere else and don't believe taking a stand is the right action at this point.
Hopefully, you all will take these comments in the spirit of hearty discussion.
Marketers are mislead to love them, at the detriment of negative brand image
that far outweighs the benefits. Our stats and studies show that the strong
majority hate auto-dms, while the very small minority mislead marketers love
them, and just sending them more hurts each individual's brand image. I
built SocialToo to enhance communication and strengthen the social networks
you belong to. Auto-DMs just make communication harder and less-authentic.
Search around for "opt-out", or "dm", or "endautodm" and you'll see what I
mean. They're hated by most, with the exception of those that want to make
money off them, and even then I have yet to see a proven statistic that they
are actually effective.
You can keep sending auto-DMs through other services, but from here on out,
the users that utilize them will be negatively impacted. SocialToo's new
focus is on preventing spam, not encouraging it. We will be doing all we
can to do that.
way. Have you tried contacting Twitter support? Just FYI, we still offer
auto-follow - we won't get rid of that. We're just against the practice of
sending automatic direct messages to people on Twitter after follow.
That's like kiling the baby because the water is muddy. Why is it that legitimate users always end up loosing because of a few abusers? If you can create and #endautdms user, can't you use that to SELECTIVELY withdraw autoDM priviledge to those "blacklisted" abusive users (after verification that they are indeed abusing, of course)?
And like another commenter said: It's a real shame when people get punished for saying "Thank you" and it's takes a lot of nerve to decide that "people don't pay attention" to those thank you messages. What is it? You are in people's minds? Or you think everyone thinks like you?
You say: "I think the issue is that so many people are doing this now that this has ended up becoming the only type of dm people get now." I say: you've got a lot of nerve! Did you go & check everyone? No, I don't think so.
See, I happen to WANT to thank those who follow me with an AutoDM that also tells them a bit about me (and no, I never put a URL into it, but what if I did? 140 caracters is hardly enough for an introduction!)
I also happen to READ all the AutoDM I receive, and what is (was) best is that it allowed me to decide whether I should block someone or not. THAT LEFT THE DECISION TO ME because you see, I'm not 5 y.o. to have someone else make decisions for me.
I'm SORRY you made that decision and I can't help but think that the only ones who could really complain about this were those with many thousands of followers. Now aren't those the exception on Twitter? And have you not transformed yourself into a police force for the mighty? hmmm Sure looks like it.
Too bad.
sudden". Auto-DMs are simply not where we want to compete, and I'm
perfectly fine if other sites want to enter that arena and compete as such.
We won't be supporting nor condoning it though. We're an analytics and
anti-spam company - that's our main focus. Everything else revolves around
that.
I wrote this because a direct reply it`s more easy to verify for an entire day or more, even some don`t use other helpful tools for their Twitter account. In each profile you can click on your username and it`s simple to verify all replies, RT`s or mentions.
Each of us has his own opinion about DM, some people would like this option, but I think here are many other useful services to use. All the best for you!