Time to Take a Stand – Yes, We’re Ending the DMs
I created SocialToo to solve problems. I discover things I can’t find on the Social Networks I belong to, and I create them. I then add them into our service to provide one complete companion to all your Social Network needs. On Facebook, we’re providing an easy-to-remember URL that redirects to your Facebook profile (See mine at http://jessestay.socialtoo.com). We’re also providing unique ways to poll your followers through Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed via our SocialSurveys product. These were to first solve my need to constantly have to look up my Facebook profile URL when giving it out to friends and family, and secondly, I needed a way to learn about my followers in a simple manner, initiating discussion around a particular topic that I could then track solid results around. Our nightly statistics e-mails for Twitter were also built around this premise.
For Twitter, as my followers grew, I wanted to show the gesture of at least following those people back that were showing interest in me. It was the least I could do, even if I could not pay attention to each and every one. (We’re working on that second problem)
I began by manually following those that followed me, and when my numbers were still small I would even message them, some times privately, some times publicly to thank them for their interest in me. This became a repetitive process for me, and therefore I wrote a script, and eventually an entire service which became SocialToo.com, around this.
Evidently, many others of you had the same problem, because we took off, really fast. Within just a few months, of over 13,000 of you, almost 8,000 of you are following those that follow you. At the same time, near 6,000 of you are sending DMs to the new people who follow you. Some of those sending DMs are auto-following, some are not. It is clear that people like to show some token of gratitude and maybe a little bit of information to those people that follow them.
However, it seems many people either have not understood the service, or are simply abusing it, as I believe the spammers have started to take over this system. People are complaining. Here are a few examples, with great reasons:
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/social-media-is-no-place-for-robot-behavior/
http://loiclemeur.com/english/2009/02/twitter-robots-killed-me-and-why-i-apologize-i-may-not-be-following-you-anymore.html
http://www.twitterbusinessbook.com/index.php?p=754
Based on my statistics, while a small percent of you are using auto-DMs for legitimate business reasons (for instance, sending instructions to followers if you are doing an online promotion that includes following the Twitter user as part of the promotion), over one-third of you sending automated DMs have some sort of URL in your message to followers. The remaining majority is just sending simple thank you’s, which while I think are truly genuine, are now being ignored by most people that receive them. Some are even going to the extent of deleting all their followers in order to remove this burden.
We provided a way you can block these, both on messages from our site, and on messages from other sites that do this, and proudly, around 1,500 of you have taken advantage of this (500 of those are still sending out auto-dms despite not wanting them for themselves). This has reduced significantly the number of DMs many of you are receiving, both from us and those other sites that do this.
Starting today, we’re taking this one step further. As of this blog post, we are completely disabling auto-DMs to our users’ followers in order to stop this practice and bring back the usefulness of direct messaging again. This is a tough move for me, as many of you are using this service, and I think many don’t really have an issue with these DMs. However, with entrepreneurship comes leadership. As CEO of SocialToo, I’m taking a stand against automated DMs, and hoping other sites that do this will do the same. With what used to be a useful tool, came too much abuse, and someone needs to put an end to it. Until we can come up with a better solution we’re going to put an end to it.
In addition, starting today, while you will no longer have need for blocking SocialToo users’ automated DMs, we encourage you to invite all your friends to come check the same option you were using to block SocialToo DMs, and we’ll block other sites that do automated-dms. If you provide your Twitter username and password (this is required because other services require it – it will be via OAuth in the near future) and check the box, “Turn off automatic Direct Messages from other services?“, we’ll set you up to block DMs from as many services that do this as we can, automatically.
This is a big move for us, and my hope is that it will cascade and encourage others doing the same to also remove this option. My other hope is that Twitter will also put in limits to discourage this practice (add it to the Terms of Use?). If you would like to show your support, please feel free to donate via the link at the top of SocialToo.com, sign up and check out our many other services, or contribute new ideas for the service on our GetSatisfaction page – perhaps there’s a way around this we’re not thinking of. Here is a list of all the services we still offer (available in more detail on our About page):
- Auto-Follow those who follow you
- Easy-to-remember Facebook profile redirect URL
- Unfollow filters – specify when to unfollow someone who has been following you
- Twitter Blacklisting – we’ll do something really cool with this shortly
- SocialSurveys – poll your followers on the social networks you belong to
- Nightly Stats E-mails – tell who followed you and stopped following you in a day (our most popular feature!)
- Many more to come shortly!
In the meantime, please feel free to discuss this in the comments. I’m still listening, and if your for, or against this, I want your feedback – do you have any ideas on how we can re-enable this in a way that doesn’t offend others? Would it be better we re-enable this in the future, requiring users to pay for it? What other ideas do you have, and is this the right move? I want your suggestions!
(Photo Courtesy Marshall Astor)
Tags: auto-dm, facebook, friendfeed, leadership, taking a stand, the buck stops here, twitter
I don't send auto DMs, but it's a shame when people get upset over someone saying “thank you”.
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.
Comment by Chris — February 28, 2009 @ 11:42 am
Chris, I don't think they're upset over that. 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. 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.
Comment by jessestay — February 28, 2009 @ 11:47 am
You're the best! Love your thinking. I like having the DM's for private messages, but ignore the canned responses. Just got a DM from someone I don't 'know' wanting me to sign up for a $14.95 per month directory. I guess the best I can do in retaliation is unfollow.
Comment by Susie Blackmon — February 28, 2009 @ 12:02 pm
maybe a small % but a large # of the DMs we get are spam. thanks for the change.
Comment by Rob, BtG — February 28, 2009 @ 12:12 pm
i used the auto DM to say “thank you.” i never added a URL, or tried to even hide what it was – simply a “thank you.”
it's a shame abuse by others has eliminated this for the rest of us.
Comment by David — February 28, 2009 @ 12:18 pm
Great Jesse – I agree and appreciate your leadership. Keep it up. Keep innovating!
@BertDecker
Comment by BertDecker — February 28, 2009 @ 1:00 pm
Good move, Jesse. Sorry that the DM concept was abused but I think your leadership on this one is excellent and will be very well received.
Warmly,
Allen
Comment by Allen Mireles — February 28, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you!!!!! And apparently not ashamed to say it. LOL!!!!!
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!!!!
Comment by Kris C — February 28, 2009 @ 1:28 pm
an autoDm that says it is and has no link is fine but it seems as if my DM column was just a list of “hey check out my site” links. good for you for taking the lead in stopping them. a DM means Direct from one to another, not from a script. I doubt many of the people that use autoDm would send the same message in the public timeline for fear of losing followers.
Comment by Andy Bailey — February 28, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
We love you too, Kris
Thanks for staying loyal.
Comment by jessestay — February 28, 2009 @ 1:35 pm
@socialtoo is a good tool, but I will admit I never signed up for the auto DM's when I got new followers. I kind of cringed when adding new followers in fear that my phone would get blown up with auto DM's.
Socialtoo is a great service keep it up @jesse!!!
Comment by h0neyb — February 28, 2009 @ 1:43 pm
[...] @jesse has taken SocialToo to a new level by taking responsibility to not promote the sending of DM Spam. As Twitter grows at the exponential rates it is, vehicles to manage this relationship [...]
Pingback by SocialToo takes Social Responsibility for DM Spam on Twitter | Christopher Kusek, Technology Evangelist — February 28, 2009 @ 1:43 pm
[...] @jesse has taken SocialToo to a new level by taking responsibility to not promote the sending of DM Spam. As Twitter grows at the exponential rates it is, vehicles to manage this relationship [...]
Pingback by SocialToo takes Social Responsibility for DM Spam on Twitter | Who is ... On Twitter? — February 28, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
[...] – check out our services at http://staynalive.com/consulting As of today on my service SocialToo, we’re taking a stand and removing the ability to auto-dm your followers. This service, as it grew, was getting out of [...]
Pingback by — February 28, 2009 @ 1:50 pm
Thanks Melissa! I've got a few more features I'm hoping to launch in the
next few days.
Comment by jessestay — February 28, 2009 @ 2:03 pm
Jesse, On behalf of Twitter lovers everywhere, Thank You, Thank You!
Comment by warrenss — February 28, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
Totally looking forward to the feature you're developing:
” 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
Comment by @CoachDeb — February 28, 2009 @ 2:19 pm
Thanks Deb! I want to continue to be a good Twitter citizen and fight those
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!
Comment by jessestay — February 28, 2009 @ 2:28 pm
ok thank you
goog article
Comment by technolojik — February 28, 2009 @ 2:37 pm
Thank you!! Finally, someone has the sense to start putting an end to this barbaric and unproductive politeness, of DM'ing someone that follows you…
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!
Comment by magitam — February 28, 2009 @ 3:14 pm
Would you consider working with http://retaggr.com @retaggr to integrate the http://ClickToAdd.Me – it is a listing of more profiles than just Facebook. I use a welcome DM to show my connections where else we can connect. I'd like to include more options than Facebook with SocialToo.
Comment by courane01 — February 28, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
Thank you Thank You Thank You, been trying to teach everyone how fricking annoying that was and that no one on twitter liked it , but they still did it!!!!!!!!!!!
ANY ATUO DM with LINK is SPAM period end of story.
Thank you Thank you Thank you, did I say Thank you giggle & Shazam!
Comment by Michele Price — February 28, 2009 @ 3:59 pm
This report clears up much confusion as to why I should not sign up with an autoreply program. Sounds like this program will block the people who use programs like TweetLater and welcome the people who are actually making an effort to get to know you. Brilliant Concept!
Comment by whoischristine — February 28, 2009 @ 4:10 pm
Great ideas – possibly some ways to combat issues like mass dm and spam. I
like it.
Comment by jessestay — February 28, 2009 @ 4:29 pm
I'd love to hear more – can you elaborate on how and where you would see
this working and how it would integrate?
Comment by jessestay — February 28, 2009 @ 4:31 pm
I want to write a review about Social Too, you and the service it provides on one of my domain blogs. I received dozens of questions about Social Too because of the automatic DM”s sent to my new twitter followers. I thought each one deserved an answer, but now it is just too much for me to handle individually. I believe a blog post or two will be an easier way to provide feedback to those who took the time to follow me, then DM re: Social Too.
Is there anything you would like to include in my review? Email me, please. And thanks for the service. I appreciate it.
Comment by The Midnight Writer — February 28, 2009 @ 4:49 pm
A very noble stand, maybe.
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.
Comment by Twittergator — February 28, 2009 @ 4:53 pm
This is the best news I have heard since…. well since I found that extra five dollars in my laundry this morning.
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
Comment by Kevin — February 28, 2009 @ 4:55 pm
I think everything about our service is covered on our about page:
http://socialtoo.com/about. If you have any questions don't hesitate to
contact me at jesse@socialtoo.com
Comment by jessestay — February 28, 2009 @ 5:01 pm
Thanks Kevin. They were getting just as annoying to me as anyone else. I
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.
Comment by jessestay — February 28, 2009 @ 5:04 pm
I send an auto dm to thank those that follow me and give them a link to my facebook. This just seems like common courtesy to me. If there is another, preferred method to do the same thing, I would be happy to change. I really don't see how this could be considered spam though.
Comment by Ken L Terry — February 28, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
Thanks man. I choose to have a text message alert when I get a DM and I didn't want to have to turn it off.
Comment by ricci — February 28, 2009 @ 5:52 pm
I liked the auto DM's very much. I appreciated the thank you's I learned a bit about the person. I've found almost no one “spamming” me with it, as I followed them. I really believe this to be a mistake. IMHO
Maybe only few people had a problem with it but not me.
Comment by KathyHadley — February 28, 2009 @ 6:23 pm
Kathy, I'm open to the possibility of an opt-in solution, but you would have
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.
Comment by jessestay — February 28, 2009 @ 7:08 pm
THANK YOU!!! Now I am not sure it will be enough unfortunately, other services still do the same and others will be built, I think Twitter should find a way.
Comment by loicdirect@gmail.com — February 28, 2009 @ 9:26 pm
If you use an automated system to say “thank you,” then are you really saying “thank you”?
Comment by mfrisk — February 28, 2009 @ 10:00 pm
[...] on their service. But despite their best efforts, it was abused. SocialToo made the move today to end their auto-DM service. For all you anti-auto-DM fanatics, read Jesse’s post closely. It’s clear he’s [...]
Pingback by Thinking Systemically About the Impending Death of Twitter Auto-DMs | The Virtual Handshake: Sell, Raise Capital, Invest, Recruit with Web 2.0 — February 28, 2009 @ 10:01 pm
You're welcome Loic. And as I mentioned on Twitter, I've got a few ideas
that might help users filter users that utilize auto-dm. I agree though -
the end solution needs to be on Twitter's end.
Comment by jessestay — February 28, 2009 @ 10:20 pm
Jesse, thank you for disabling this feature.
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
Comment by @davideckoff — February 28, 2009 @ 10:39 pm
Very courageous move. I'm very impressed…. getting rid of something that your program formed around. Great leadership in Twittersville!
Comment by Rachel Levy — February 28, 2009 @ 10:59 pm
Excellent choice, I commend you for staying true to your beliefs. So rare we see people do that in lieu of 'following everyone else' in this business model.
Indeed, I will support this, and tell others.
Comment by Richard Taylor@Outlaw_Marketer — February 28, 2009 @ 11:15 pm
[...] aquello de que las cosas no son buenas o malas, sino que depende del uso que se les de parece que los creadores de SocialToo han recibido el mensaje de los muchos usuarios que han expuesto sus quejas (ver resultados de una encuesta realizada por [...]
Pingback by Demasiado ruido para mantener una conversación | Ideágora — March 1, 2009 @ 1:35 am
nice feature. I can't say I'm overspammed by automated reply, and I think that those who do didn't really want to follow the 'spamming' person in the first place.
I've been reading your articles on louis gray's blog, but now I'll finally try socialtoo!
Comment by xavierv — March 1, 2009 @ 2:26 am
I have used the automatic DM's to inform new followers that they have just decided to follow someone that doesn't pay much attention to their twitter account. It includes a link to where I do pay attention: Friendfeed.
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.
Comment by app — March 1, 2009 @ 12:51 pm
Well life may go slower, and most twitter folks could deal with that. I do look forward to your working solution. As total manual also is so slow. Glad you took your stand. Mary MacIntyre ala Makkinart
Comment by Mary MacIntyre — March 2, 2009 @ 12:59 am
On behalf of the thousands, if not millions, of Twitter users annoyed and infuriated by AutoDM's, THANK YOU, AND THANK YOU AGAIN.
Comment by Bob — March 2, 2009 @ 1:38 am
jesse, if you don't offer this users will migrate to a service that does or create it. it's not rocket science and clearly had a benefit. i've been watching auto-follow responses on one twitter account we created for a client and agree many aren't well thought out, but it's early days. there are limitless opportunities for another level of connection and creativity in the auto-dm gesture of gratitude for following. happy to share more on the back-channel. cheers! @marksilva
Comment by marksilva — March 2, 2009 @ 2:23 am
Thanks Mark. Before we even reconsider I've got to take time to figure out a
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.
Comment by jessestay — March 2, 2009 @ 3:38 am
Those *baka* who insincerely *fallow* as many as they can in order to get follow-back don't like auto-DMs. Thanx for supporting their insincerity and thinly masked ambitions for the spotlight and/or the pot of gold they mistakenly believe is at the end of the Twitter rainbow. Doh!
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.
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!
@hannibal666
Comment by hannibal666 — March 2, 2009 @ 9:59 am
And if you follow some one who autofollows back, is that really meaningful in terms of the thanking? I've an account which autofollows people who follow me back and then I get “Thank you for the follow!” I'm guessing that they follow gaming is what they were trying for to begin with. There isn't an sincerity there and the Thank yous become even more annoying in those cases.
Comment by LauraHale — March 2, 2009 @ 11:16 am
For me, it amounts to spam when you follow some one in an effort to try to get autofollowers and then send them a message back thanking them for the follow when you have a turnaround of less than 5 minutes.
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.
Comment by LauraHale — March 2, 2009 @ 11:24 am
[...] has made an important announcement: They are no turning off their feature which allows users to send auto-DMs. This makes me extremely happy. On my primary Twitter account, I’m extremely picky about who [...]
Pingback by Fan History’s Blog » SocialToo is shutting down their auto-DM feature and yay! Happiness! — March 2, 2009 @ 12:44 pm
Man app and hanibal I thought I was the only one.
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
Comment by RP — March 2, 2009 @ 1:18 pm
I find them impersonal and pretty pointless, if i feel the need to thank someone then i will do it myself, not rely on an automated semi-thanks.
Comment by Shepy — March 2, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
Bettter throw away your answering service and cancel your VM then
Comment by RP — March 2, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
I echo your thoughts App. I was invited to SocialToo because of it's ability to help me automate my responses to people that have followed me. This was a great feature and the only reason SocialToo was relevant for.
I'll vote with my feet.
Good Bye Social Too
Comment by Don — March 3, 2009 @ 11:12 am
Similar to the redirect to our Facebook profiles would be good. I give out my ClickToAdd link when actual conversation begins to happen – when we want to move beyond 140 characters to some other system, or if we share so many similar interests that we should be friends on other sites(flickr, digg, etc.) Being able to direct people at that page furthers connection on other platforms. not sure what else SocialToo has in the works, but it could be a good resource.
Comment by courane01 — March 3, 2009 @ 11:23 am
Don, I wish you'd reconsider. As I pointed out above, my studies show that
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.
Comment by jessestay — March 3, 2009 @ 12:51 pm
Good move. Thanks.
Comment by Ryo — March 4, 2009 @ 9:29 am
I added auto dm to my twitter and now that you guys are not doing that anymore, for some reason, I am not able to click on hte follow others button and follow others. It is giving me an error message in some kind of symbol format I cannot read. Anyone know how to fix this. I need to be able to follow others asap. HELP!!
Comment by Amy — March 4, 2009 @ 12:49 pm
Amy, us disabling the auto-DM should not have affected Twitter.com in any
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.
Comment by jessestay — March 4, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
I am actually confused about twitter in general. I thought I added auto follow, but I don't think it is working. When I go to my twitter requests and try to click follow, it will not allow me to. I figured it would do it automatically, but I can't tell if it is. I got that tweeter deck and that is just more confusing. HELP!
Comment by Amy — March 4, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
It seems that this is an issue which is deeply divided on both sides. For sure, there seem to be more people in support of eradicating auto-DMs on this blog post, but I'm not entirely sure this is the right or best answer. Here are a few things to consider.
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.
Comment by Josh T. — March 5, 2009 @ 5:09 am
RP, Hannibal, App … “If you dare,” LOL! Just followed all 3 of you on Twitter!
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
Comment by LeanneBoyd — March 5, 2009 @ 9:35 am
Josh, the thing is it's not deeply divided. These are the popups of our day.
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.
Comment by jessestay — March 5, 2009 @ 12:31 pm
Leanne, I'm sorry, but the majority of our users were asking for us to get
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.
Comment by jessestay — March 5, 2009 @ 12:35 pm
Perhaps I am missing something. Auto following someone who follows you – for me, this amounts to not missing a follow. There have been times when I get the notice that someone has followed me… I go to their web site, I maybe follow a link… am thrilled to meet them…. and FORGET to go back and actually follow. So SocialToo solved that issue for me.
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.
Comment by LeanneBoyd — March 5, 2009 @ 1:01 pm
[...] The SocialToo Blog SocialToo – Your Companion to the Social Web « Time to Take a Stand – Yes, We’re Ending the DMs [...]
Pingback by Stop the Robots With @endautodms | The SocialToo Blog — March 5, 2009 @ 4:32 pm
[...] 8th March 2009 I DO NOT disagree with SocialToo’s decision to stop automated DMs on their site but I disagree with their decision to block users who send automated DMs from other [...]
Pingback by SocialToo Puts a Stop to Automated DMs in Twitter | Internet Marketing Blog — March 7, 2009 @ 10:16 am
I will make sure this is also referenced in our show on Tuesday night Jesse. I hope everyone will come and enjoy our “Gaming of Twitter” show.
Comment by Jim — March 7, 2009 @ 3:04 pm
if you use automated bill pay, are you really paying your bill?
Comment by David — March 8, 2009 @ 7:31 pm
I am surprised by all the DM hostility. Although is is just further proof that technology is ever changing. It used to be considered efficient to auto-follow (for me it still is, as I don't have time, or attention span, to absorb 10-20 new followers at a time.) I enjoy meeting people as I tweet. The auto DM's don't bother me at all.
Comment by tkoss — March 9, 2009 @ 10:46 am
You say: “As CEO of SocialToo, I’m taking a stand against automated DMs, and hoping other sites that do this will do the same. With what used to be a useful tool, came too much abuse, and someone needs to put an end to it. Until we can come up with a better solution we’re going to put an end to it.”
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.
Comment by MarieAndree — March 13, 2009 @ 5:03 pm
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
Comment by sikis — July 9, 2009 @ 7:19 pm
Tim, this post was 4 months ago. Our drop of this feature was not “all of a
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.
Comment by jessestay — July 10, 2009 @ 12:03 am
I really appreciate you operating out of principle here.
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! I get 10 or so new followers a day, and I auto-follow most (excepting spammers filtered out by socialtoo) so i may not recognize you by name alone.
Comment by Chriswaterguy — July 28, 2009 @ 12:59 pm
Many thanks for this detailed presentation and for this opportunity offered. I saw here few complaints about DM`s, but I can`t see what someone might expect from this place flooded by spam and not so easy to monitorize after a large number of followers.
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!
Comment by doruman — September 4, 2009 @ 4:07 pm