What's the deal with so many people hating DMs on Twitter? We provide the option...

Tichy · on Oct 2, 2009

I think in most cases I would consider it an abuse of my trust if a company I followed would send me marketing related DMs. Following on Twitter is NOT an invitation to send me DMs. It means - "ok, I am reasonably interested to let your blurts flickr across my screen, and perhaps by chance I'll catch something interesting now or then". If I want more, I can subscribe to a newlsetter or something.

DMs are extremely intrusive, as they also trigger a notification email. They should be reserved for stuff that needs to be private, or is urgent. Both doesn't apply to marketing blurps.

Why the hate - because DMs multiply the cost of following somebody by a lot. Whereas initially it is just one click "oh heck, why not", it ends up being a hassle of a LOT more clicks and wasted brain cycles.

Edit: why I said "don't advise your clients to do that" - my most likely reaction would be to unfollow that user, and I think many feel the same. Of course perhaps marketing will find that it is still worth it (just as newsletters work, even though everybody hates them).

jmathai · on Oct 2, 2009

Valid points. One of our main goals is to curb spam usage. Just to let you know some of the ways we plan on doing that.

1) We'll be introducing a pay model which should weed out the majority of spammers (CTR won't be high enough).

2) A free version will be limiting enough that it won't be worthwhile for spammers.

3) We have an artificial limit placed on "groups" so you can only DM N (500 atm) followers at a time.

If you have other ideas we'd love to hear them. We wouldn't post a site intended for spam on HN :).

In addition to that, I think Twitter should employ more robust emails (or just buy out Topify) that let's you easily block or unfollow users directly from the DM email.

Thanks for clarifying your original post.

avinashv · on Oct 2, 2009

> What's the deal with so many people hating DMs on Twitter?

How many people do you follow on Twitter? I manage an account that follows a few thousand (I use DMs for content submission), and I have to wade through so many useless DMs.

I agree with Tichy, reading this unfortunately made me disinterested.

I will say though, the design of the site is nice. I especially liked the footer graphic, which was a cute touch to the Twitter bird, if a bit cliched.

jmathai · on Oct 2, 2009

I follow about 63 people on Twitter. Don't really find the majority of users that interesting. But you follow several thousand so it doesn't really matter that I only follow 63 people.

That being said, we're definitely interested and proactively working on ways to provide value for users of our service and those that receive messages. I would say about 50% of the campaigns are sent via DM and the rest just to the public timeline. Our most valuable clients tend to use the one which makes the most sense to them.

We do have a few users that just spam their followers (per our definition of spam) and the updates listed in the other post will hopefully curb them off the site. Additional ideas would be great too.

I'd love to see Twitter provide more granular control over direct messaging and allowing you to follow a user but not accept DMs from them.

Thanks for the constructive criticism!

dc2k08 · on Oct 2, 2009

I don't have a problem with offering DMs. The recipient has the option to opt-out as a protest if they don't like it. Your stats will also show users if it is more bad than good presumably. You could also let users send an initial DM requesting whether or not the recipient would like to get further DMs. The main reason why you cannot afford to not offer DMs is another service will, and they then could scoop your customers.