I thoroughly enjoy seeing different perspectives and ideas represented in tweets from the people that I follow. If I am following you, chances are you post great content that I actually care about the majority of the time. I don’t follow people with no personality or wit. That being said I’ve noticed a lot of people doing what I suppose would be called “tweetblasts”.

A tweetblast is when someone posts on the same subject in more than one twitter post. The person cannot get all the info out in 140 chars. or less, so they use 3 or 5 or 10 twitter posts in a row to state their case. Twitter is a great way to share these ideas and start a conversation about them, but I feel like this type of activity is not only going to hurt twitter, but it’s going to hurt your credibility with some of your followers too. If I start seeing 10 posts in a row from you and they’re taking up my entire twitter stream I’m going to start noticing your icon and scrolling past them because you’ve “cried wolf” too many times. You want your followers to see your icon and pay attention to your tweet because you only post when you have something relevant or interesting that you eloquently fit into 140 characters or less. To post several tweets in a row is cheating; you didn’t use the system right and you’re part of the reason twitter is known for having downtime all too often. You’re overusing it for something it wasn’t meant for.

The moral of the story is: If you can’t fit it into 140 characters then twitter isn’t the medium you’re looking for. Write a post on tumblr, typepad, moveable type, wordpress or ANYTHING and then post a URL in a tweet with the subject of the blog post. Hell, tumblr will even tweet a custom message with a link to your post automagically if you want! That way you aren’t cluttering people’s twitter streams and your followers have the ability to choose whether or not they want to read into what you’re saying.

Just to repeat and make sure I’m clear here: It’s not that I don’t care what you’re saying, or that I don’t agree with what it is you’re saying. The problem is that you’re bogging twitter down by using it wrong. Even if you don’t mean to, you’re forcing your followers to read what they might not be interested in and that’s going to hurt your credibility.

I hope I don’t come off the wrong way here. I just needed to address something I’ve been seeing more and more often.

What do you think? Do you think tweetblasts are an example of using twitter wrong? Do you think it’s ok in some cases? Tell me what’s up in the comments…