There is lots of talk about social media etiquette these days, and the only hard rule I can come up with is there are no hard rules. That doesn’t mean I can’t occasionally rant about things that bug me. Yesterday, I took on the practicing of automatically "direct messaging" people when they follow you. I follow people back in groups, so get a ton of DMs every time I do so. This is extremely disruptive, even though most are from well-meaning folks just trying to say "thanks for following me." I’m not the type to unfollow folks for that reason, but is it unreasonable to frown on this practice? Should those of us who have been on the social networks longer just relax? I tend to say yes, who am I to make rules? But I also reserve the right to crab about stuff that bothers me.
Twitter is very noisy. Automatic DMs just add to the noise.
Your thoughts?
Mobile post sent by DougH using Utterli. 
Replies. mp3
UPDATE 12/29/2008: Chris Brogan has had it with auto-DMs too– nice post, maybe he will get more people to stop doing it.
And friend Laura Fitton has a survey still up about the issue, if you want to share your opinion there.
I think it is up to the individual. However, I think it is also interesting to hear that many people become annoyed by automatic updates. That should make you stop and think if you should be using them, after all isn’t social media about connecting with people rather than turning them off.
One of the commenters on the Utterli version of the post brought up a great point. He called this “an attempt to automate the building of relationships.” Well put.
Trying something new– importing Utterli comments into this comments stream so they can be read/heard/viewed directly. Let’s see how it works out.
This one is from “ResPres”:
and another, from “Brettbum”