Do Tell

Posted by Gabe on January 12, 2010 under Social Media, Twitter | 5 Comments to Read

I spotted a tweet in my Twitter stream that caught my attention today:

@so-and-so Love some feedback on my blog:) http://unshortenedspammylink/wordpress:) Leave Comments!!!!

I know that Twitter is a service we can all use as we wish, but this tweet violated so many of my own private rules I had to look further.  Looking at this person’s profile there was sadly (and predictably) a long list of the same requests to other “so and so’s”.  The proximity of the smiley face to the link broke the link itself, so I never got to see what was so great that everyone should want to go and leave comments on this person’s blog.  The person has been tweeting since June of 2009 and despite this long list of tweets the other interactions he/she has had seem to be genuine and quality interactions, at least as far as I looked back. 

Rather that dissect what is wrong (if anything) with what this person is doing I would like to pose a question.  Assuming you truly believe that “this person just doesn’t know any better”, is it appropriate to leave a gentle DM telling her that what he/she is doing might be a bit spammy?  I’m not going to try to taint anyone’s opinion one way or the other by giving mine, but on other occasions I have been tempted to do just that, even if I didn’t know the person.

So what do you think?  Is it appropriate to nicely tell someone about something like this, as a friendly gesture, if you have never had interactions with them? Or do you simply unfollow and move on?