It's official. @twitter does think we're lemmings!

I can't believe my eyes.

On the heels of inflicting a "suggestions to you" promotion in the sidebar telling us who we should follow, our friends at Twitter have come up with a new annoyance which is at least as annoying, and even more insulting:

When you visit someone's profile page, Twitter now forces you to see a pop-up list of hyperlinks to other people who follow this person.

I.e., since I am a lemming, it would be of great interest to me to know who else is following this person so that I can:

(a) be "in" with the "in" crowd;
(b) be just like my friends;
(c) "trend";
(d) be a real "follower"; or
(e) all of the above.

Gag me with a spoon.

Fortunately, our ever vigilant, multi-talented, friend Beth Sheresh, known on Twitter as @kitchenmage, has provided us with the means with which to block this abomination, too.

And if you would like to block the "you both follow" popup Twitter has added to the right sidebar, as well, @kitchenmage has an app for that, too.

Who thinks these things up?

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/egybP)

Twitter's tweet button

Twitter has come up with a "tweet button" which it describes here (i.e. a button for blogs and web sites with which to share an article on twitter).

Here's an example:

Tweet
This is about 3 or 4 years late, and in my view not a big deal.

It's much better to use the various multi-site "sharing" buttons, so people can share an article with other social media networks as well; all of them include Twitter. E.g., on my blogs I use a "share" button supplied by "AddThis" (See bottom of this post). It accesses almost 300 different social media networks, including Twitter of course.

I've often used the ShareThis buttons, which seem to work just like AddThis, and give you multiple social networks through which to share the article. Also I've noticed that Google's blogger.com has started offering a sharing bar, with several sharing options, including Twitter.

Twitter's button sends you to Twitter only.

Why bother with it? If you want to have something like that on your blog or web site, why not use, instead, the "share" buttons offered by addthis, ShareThis, or blogger.com, or similar products.

Why did Twitter come up with it? I'm guessing they decided it was a good way to try to steer traffic to Twitter and away from other social networking sites. (Also I have it on good authority from @kitchenmage that twitter is using it as another vehicle to promoting lemming-like behavior by suggesting "who to follow".)

The button offers us nothing, except the opportunity to help Twitter build a monopoly and defeat competition.

PS If you know of other products similar to, and as good as, "addthis" and "sharethis", please let me know in the comments section, so I can add them to this post. Personally, I can't see why anyone wouldn't use "addthis". It works fine. If it gives you access to 286 social networking sites, why use a button that only gives access to 6 or 7, or 4 or 5, or -- as in the case of Twitter's button -- only 1? Thanks.

(Short url for this post: http://is.gd/eeELB)

How to block Twitter's suggested users on home page, thanks to @kitchenmage

Thanks to @jaycbee, @tweetsmarter, and @kim for bringing to my attention this extremely neat article, written by our ever vigilant, multi-talented, friend Beth Sheresh, known on Twitter as @kitchenmage, who apparently -- when she is not blogging -- is coding:

Removing Twitter's Recommended User to Follow "Feature"

Do you hate those recommendations from twitter as much as I do? Rhetorical question, I know. It seems to be the new thing to hate - and with good reason this time. It just recommended I follow someone who blocked me when I wrote Cook's Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knife Roll. Last straw, much?

I decided there must be a way to kill the suckers. You know what? There is a reason they call me Application Goddess. Done in 12 minutes. Take that, twitter.

Complete article

Beth has also devised additional filters to block the (a) 'other people who follow this person' list here and the "you both follow" popup here [although my latter filter has stopped working in Firefox, due to some apparent 'workaround' by Twitter].

(Short url for this post: http://bit.ly/a2hvux)
(Short url for kitchenmage's article: http://j.mp/b5Epdg)