
"you should follow me on twitter here" is annoying - silvio
First of all, I apologize for using HN as a venting outlet, but I suspect that other people may be feeling somewhat like me on this topic.<p>Ever since Dustin Curtis produced his article (http://dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html) I've noticed that many people have been taking up his results and using his call to action verbatim. His article is an excellent piece on user behavior research, and his results quite interesting, but it really bugs me that lots of articles now close with the words "you should follow me on twitter here."<p>You may ask why I get upset over this. The reason is that it sheds some light on the intentions of the writers. Seeing the call to action tells me "this person will do anything to get followers." I may be naive, but I would like people to follow me due to my interesting insights, and not because of some cognitive hack.<p>Articles that are otherwise inspiring then come crumbling to pieces once I get to the bottom of the page and see this blatant attempt at getting followers. In fact, it produces the opposite reaction in me, I quickly close the tab and forget the contents of the article or why I thought it was insightful in the first place.<p>I'd much rather see people trying other approaches, or even better, not try to persuade me with anything else than the content they produced. If what they're saying is insightful, I'll crave for more and will bookmark them, follow them, and tell my friends about it.<p>Dustin did a great job at finding this hack, and I expect to see "follow me on twitter here" at the end of his articles. He earned it. Everyone else, please find your own hacks.
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lsternlicht
I disagree. I think hacker news serves as a great platform for the community
to benefit from what other members have found works. There are countless
postings, whether they relate to CSS, analytics tactics, or tips like Dustin's
"follow me on twitter here" that we all benefit from. I recently shared tips
from my personal experience running a small e-commerce, and I hope some
members get actual value and implement some of my findings. I thank and
applaud Dustin for a great article and proudly utilize his findings. Keep
sharing.

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outcyde
Stop taking this so seriously! Its a damn twitter account. Who cares what
people close articles with. The more people that follow them the happier they
are. To each their own.

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axod
IMHO it cheapens the whole article and makes it plainly obvious that the main
intent writing the article wasn't to be interesting, but to gain followers on
twitter.

When someone ends an article with "You should follow me on twitter", they're
being arrogant obnoxious and rude. If their only aim is to get weak minded
sheep to follow them, then fair enough. But put the "You should follow me on
twitter" link at the top so other people can just ignore the article.

~~~
kwamenum86
Does having the Digg voting widget or other similar social bookmarking tools
cheapen the article?

~~~
axod
Sure, just like any website that starts by asking you to invite your friends.

All of these devices are just ways to try and get people to spam for you.
Ooops spam is so 1.0. I mean "go viral".

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mcav
In writing, two forces oppose each other: the desire to be authentic, and the
desire to gain readership so that authenticity can be valued.

It's really hard to achieve both goals. One can be really authentic, writing
what you care about without regard to your readership, but your work may go
unappreciated. Good writing alone doesn't gain followers, unfortunately.

So people try to walk the line (or just cross it) of what tactics can be
considered appropriate. Those who don't employ tactics to gain followers and
readers often go unnoticed. It's unfortunate, and at times frustrating.

HN at least offers an outlet for tech-related posts where it's acceptable to
post your own writing. It lets authors express viewpoints, ideas, and feedback
in a neutral, yet effective way. You don't have to spam posts to every social
news site to get your writing noticed here. The small target audience makes
all the difference.

I don't know what exists for other writing niches. Reddit and Digg don't
really cater to good writing as well as HN does.

But I digress, this was about twitter. It's nice to have followers, but when
all is said and done, twitter messages are short-lived. They will fade into
obscurity soon after they're posted. Blog posts and decent essays, when
written well, can often last for many years without losing their value. So I'd
suggest to authors: Push twitter less, and focus more on your content. If
you're going to advocate anything, advocate that people follow your RSS feed.

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Tichy
"I expect to see "follow me on twitter here" at the end of his articles. He
earned it."

That's a bit over the top. Lot's of people have used that phrase before that
article. What's next, a land grab for variations of "follow me on Twitter"
phrases? Trademarks for article endings?

I like people to read my blog to follow me on Twitter, not because I care for
a high follower count, but because I care for relevant relationships on
Twitter. Someone who reads my blog is much more likely to be relevant than
someone who just searched my Twitter stream for random phrases.

------
beta
Yeah, seeing "follow me on twitter here" has started to get annoying.

Still, I'm pretty dubious of the notion of "finding your own hacks". I mean
just look at written english in most articles, they aren't comprised of just a
list of sanitized opinions and facts. They're full of prestigious jargon,
funny quips to pull the audience to pull the audience to the readers side or
at least entertain (the same goal?), etc, etc; as far as I'm concerned, just
more "cognitive hacks".

Shrugs

~~~
Skeuomorph
More after the break.

------
akkartik
Restated: copy-based hacks have a limited window of effectiveness.

Fortunately for us all.

~~~
lsternlicht
“The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal.”

Picasso/Banksy

~~~
paulgerhardt
"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take,
and good poets make it into something better, or at least something
different." -T.S. Eliot
[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Wood/Philip_Massing...](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Wood/Philip_Massinger)

------
ziadbc
There is no real principle you are basing this on. It is your own assumption
that "this person will do anything to get followers." All web content that is
popular in some part by UX practices that were invented by someone else.

There is no coercion, and many of the most successful websites do this kind of
testing constantly.

Furthermore, the author published the blog to share the technique making it
even less justified to "find your own hacks."

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DanielBMarkham
I don't know. I found Dustin's original article pretty much to be a hack for
trying to get twitter followers. He just dressed it up in UI-optimization
garb.It was nicely done, no doubt. But the purpose was twitter followers,
which I'm sure he got.

As for the point you make "I may be naive, but I would like people to follow
me due to my interesting insights, and not because of some cognitive hack."

This is exactly what I commented on at the time of Dustin's article -- show
the reader what's in it for them. Why should they become a follower?
Concentrate on the value proposition instead of the gimmick.

My comment didn't receive that many upvotes as I remember. Sad fact is, a lot
of people would rather focus on techniques than value. After all, you can
simply copy a technique. Adding value -- saying something interesting and
worthwhile to the reader -- is a lot more work.

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kingkawn
Yeah, this is starting to get old, but thats just a sign that he succeeded at
doing something interesting enough that it is now a standard.

Btw; you can follow me on...nvm.

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philfreo
The only thing I really dislike about it is having more "here" hyperlinks.
Even if conversion rates are slightly better, where would the web be if the
majority of anchor texts were "click here"?

~~~
jbenz
Yeah, I agree the web would not be a better place. There's just something to
be said for having that clear call to action. It's hard to resist.

~~~
philfreo
Yeah, I know. I would much prefer the call to action be more clear in the
link:

    
    
        You should <a href="...">follow me on Twitter</a>.

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dpcan
I think the author of the original article was trying to gauge the
effectiveness of a call to action over an assumption to action.

No, we don't want to put the "click here" links at the end of everything, but
that MAY just be what people need when it comes to Twitter.

"Click here" is familiar, it means there's more to see and do, and something
isn't just going to start happening magically.

Saying "follow my twitter" to a general audience sounds absolutely creepy.
What the hell does that even mean? I had a lady once ask what "following my
twitter" meant, because she wasn't sure what my "twitter" was. Seriously, 10
years ago, had you asked a random woman to follow your Twitter around, you'd
get slapped first, and there would be no asking questions later.

NOTE: I ALWAYS say "follow me on twitter" or "follow me on twitter.com" now -
geezers like it when you add .com because it reminds them of the only 3 years
of their life they actually made money in the stock market.

Long story short, don't get bent over backwards because you think this person
is a follower-whore. This is Hacker News, and the author of the original post
was hacking his twitter tag-line to see what pulled in the most subscribers
through that single medium.

It's all for science my friend.

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jacquesm
No reason to get your panties in a twist, it was 'linked-in', then 'xing', now
it's twitter. Given the balloon like nature of these fads I give it another
year or so and it will be gone again, or at least greatly reduced.

Every product - twitter too - has a lifecycle, there are 'boom' periods and
there is an inevitable bust. See the hula-hoop, click-clack, tamagochi and a
whole bunch of other items for real world analogies.

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mykphyre
I feel much the same way. I don't use that awful program at all and I'm just
waiting for the fad to pass. I would feel the same way if the author plugged
some supermarket chain at the end of their article, or there was some "This
article brought to you by such-and-such company". I am sick to DEATH of
advertising and twitter is basically advertising your mundane life.

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pedalpete
I hadn't seen the original article, and maybe I just block out all the 'follow
me on twitter here' links, because that is barely recognizable to me as being
everywhere.

At the same time it is an interesting practice in call to actions. Though i
really wish we could see a comparison of a button vs. text. Are people more
likely to recognize a button as clickable vs. just text? and how would that
compare? Does text on the button have similar effects? etc.etc.

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watt
"In fact [...], I quickly close the tab and forget the contents of the article
or why I thought it was insightful in the first place"

Do you think the problem is "follow me" or "on twitter"? If the second, in my
opinion you have a deeper problem than just hating a certain kind of messaging
service. If the problem is "follow me", then why even mention twitter?

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pmichaud
You might be surprised to know that most everything we do is caused by some
cognitive hack or another. It's better to just accept it. Or you could try
overcomingbias and lesswrong.

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biophelia
-Fact. It's just polemics. It needed to be said.

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pageman
you should follow me on Plurk then (is that better?) hehehe (hey it's a new
cognitive hack!)

