If there is one thing that is annoying about Twitter, it is the fact that people sign up for automatic messages that post on other peoples profiles once they are added as a follower. For instance, the other day, I saw a couple of profiles that I wanted to follow, so I did. A few minutes later, I received what I thought was a direct message (or 'DM' as it is known on Twitter) from the specific person that I had followed. However, once I read the message, I very quickly realized that it was not a personal message sent by the person but, rather it was an automated message that the person had set up when they signed up for Twitter. I later wound up deleting this person.

The whole point of Twitter and/or any other social networking site is so that people can interact with one another and start conversations, engage in conversation, etc. How are you supposed to talk to someone if he or she isn't even there though? There is no staying power in a “conversation” in which the other person is never around or simply cannot afford the time it takes to send you a personal, non-automated message.

Most of the time, you can find people to talk with or argue with on Twitter. The best way to do this is to use the search function to find topics that you are the most interested. So, for instance, if you are an athlete who likes to play soccer, you might type in the term “soccer” and see what comes up. The search results will typically produce a list of Twitter profiles along with the pertinent text to which the item you just searched for is mentioned. From there, you can click through any of the profiles (unless the profiles are set to private) to get a better idea of who that particular person is. By looking at someone's tweets, you can not only see how often they log into Twitter, but you can also see what kinds of things interest them based on the various conversations that they are having. Additionally, nine times out of ten, you can almost immediately tell if the person has a hidden agenda.

From my experience, the twitter users who tend to gravitate towards automatic messages are those who are on Twitter to promote their businesses and/or those twitter people who have so many followers that they simply cannot keep up with all of the personal messages to each and every person. While the topic is up for debate, it seems as if automatic direct messaging (DM'ing) on Twitter not only looks and feels impersonal, but it gives off the impression that you really don't care enough to send someone a message. If that's the case and you simply cannot keep up with your twitterers, there is no rule saying that you have to have automated direct messaging in place. In fact, I think most Twitter users would prefer no message to one that came from a computer.