I have a message to those who treat their Twitter accounts as a RSS feed:
STOP!
I'm glad I got that out of my system. It's been brewing for quite a while.
I could name a dozen offenders off the top of my head, but one of the worst is Mashable. As a site dedicated to social media, Mashable's Twitter account is pretty bad.
And it's not just because of Pete Cashmore's picture staring daggers at me.
I followed Mashable for about two months until I had enough. Every tweet linked to an article on its site. No retweets. No user interaction. Article links only. The Twitter account basically serves as a way to generate traffic to the web site. Since I already visit the site regularly, the account just clogged my feed.
Now, linking to their site isn't bad at all. In fact, I do it whenever I make a blog post. Moderation is key, though.
How can Mashable call itself a social media news source when it doesn't follow social media best practices? Sure, the account has over two million followers. But I highly doubt any of them are engaged. Web 2.0 and social media are all about interaction and engagement. Tweeting links to your web site over and over again is not engagement. It's simplistic and, quite frankly, annoying.
Why do people follow Mashable? I have no clue. I don't find much value from their Twitter account. While the actual site is great, the Twitter account leaves much to be desired.
Mashable, please stop being a bad social media example.
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