Being a good Twitterer (on Twitter, of course), I was doing my daily research on new people to follow. As I found new locals and professionals to follow, I kept getting new Direct Messages from my new follows. 

I love direct messages! But something was very fishy about the messages I was getting… 

“Hi. Thanks for the follow. What have you been working on lately?” Then the next message… “Hi. Thanks for the follow. What have you been working on lately?”

Ok… what are the odds that I am going to get the exact same message from several different people? Knowing that these were automatically generated direct messages… what do you think my thought process was?

1. What is the point of twitter if you aren’t going to have personal contact with the people on it? Otherwise it just becomes another tool for spamming or mass messaging… I thought the point was to create relationships? 

2. What will the response be if I send a Direct Message back? Will it be read? Will I be noticed? 

3. Should I start using Automatic Direct Messages (ADMs)? Will it put people off, like I was? Or will people be impressed that I direct messaged them among the crowd? 

Please correct me if I am wrong, but my conclusion is that 1) ADMs eliminate the purpose of Twitter and I don’t want to be just another among a crowd. Yes I want to stand out but 2) I want my DMs to be real and true, so 3) no, ADMs are a bad idea.