Happy Birthday, Fail Bird!

The Fail Bird was born one year ago, today. Over this past year, we’ve seen twitter explode as celebrities took notice, watched as the porn, spam and script-kiddies climbed on board, and despite all that, made some friends, learned a few things, and had a jolly good time reporting on all of it.

To celebrate this rotation around the sun, we’re going to share some of our more memorable moments of the past year.

March 2009 brought us @iamryaann, who revealed a bit more in his avatar that we would have liked. It didn’t take long for twitter to take notice and kick him out of the pool, but just like Ethel, we’d already been incensed.

In April, we sighted the first twitter account for sale on Amazon. Ah, those were the good old days, when 1000 followers meant something.

@aplusk reached one million followers that month, which started the tidal wave of celebrities on twitter. @Oprah jumped in, got a zillion followers in a couple of days, and left them hanging.

We can’t leave April without mentioning we did our part for National Cleavage Day. Any reason to party is good enough for us.

May brought Tweeple magazine which promised to bring news of celebrities on twitter. Naturally, the big guys don’t like it when someone else has a good idea, and it was squashed like a bug by Time Warner. So, people continued to be ignored by the celebrities they talked to on twitter. Also in May: one of our most popular posts, ever, featuring a fat, naked jew.

We begged Steven Seagal to not kick our ass in June. So far, he’s left us alone. We’ve seen his tv show; we could probably outrun him, but we’re not taking chances. We’re actually pretty good at hurting ourselves, so maybe he just thought we were too pathetic to kill.

Affiliate marketers joined twitter in droves, so it was only natural when the clones followed. That was about the time FollowFriday went down the tubes.

We decided to mix things up in July with a little Flash word game based on hashtags, and discovered nobody cared because they were too busy playing 140 Mafia. Speaking of word games, we found someone passing secret codes on twitter. Also in July: @trent_reznor admitted he doesn’t care what you have to say.

Our friend, @Bytor, coined a trashy new twitter term in August, and we jumped on board. And, the trash built up on twitter as quizzes about anything and everything became the new topic for people with plenty of free time and an inability to create independent thought. We rounded out the month by making fun of short people.

Wow. Half a year down, and still plenty to say. We’ll finish the year in the next post.

What was your most memorable twitter fail moment of the past year? Share it with us in the comments.

Long before @The_Real_Shaq pointed out @Oprah’s sticky capslock, people were shouting on twitter. That hasn’t changed, and we’re happy to report that someone is finally doing something about it.

@capscop has taken upon him/her/itself to watch twitter for signs of shift-key impairment, and call those people out. Before any of you point out that @capscop is a bot, we know. We are making an exception to the “we hate bots because they waste bandwidth and ruin twitter” rule for this one, because we think it’s funny.

The tweets themselves are pretty tame, so that’s not what makes us such a huge fan. The pure genius behind @capscop is the phone number in their bio. Yes, people call. Some of them are pretty funny as they defend their use of caps, or unleash voicemail venom because they were told to stop. @capscop shares these gems on their website.

What do you think of @capscop? Whether you love it, hate it or have no opinion whatsoever, go ahead and call 716-299-8487, and then tell us about it in the Comments.

We’re going to ask when this holiday is coming around again, and if there will be cake.

Send in the Fail Bird! Tell @capscop you saw them on Twitter Fail

Our player, @boydazz steps up to the plate, and takes a pitch.

Strike One!


Is @smashlee227 following @boydazz?

 
Undaunted, he chokes up on the bat and swings again.
 
Strike Two!


Does @ChristinaLJ follow @boydazz?

 
No way is he going to walk away from the plate now.
 
Strike Three!


Does @mollycool follow @boydazz?

 
No matter how well he spins it, @boydazz isn’t going to make it to first base.
 

 
Perhaps you can give him some advice in the comments.

 
Thanks to Honorary Fail Bird Handler @mollycool for inadvertently bringing this fail to our attention.

Send in the Twitter Fail Bird! Tell them you saw them on Twitter Fail

In the endless commentary on followers, following, and following back, @itsLydz tells it like it is.

Exactly.

Forget the numbers. Connecting on twitter isn’t about how many people follow you, but how many listen to what you have to say.

As @jackassletters said, having fewer followers who pay attention can be much better than a bunch of people who are following you in the hopes you’ll follow back, just because they think having a huge number means they’re popular.

Before you beg for a follow, think. Would you want to be friends with someone who begs you to be their friend, when you know they only want to use you? (Hi Marcia!) You wouldn’t do it IRL. Don’t do it on twitter. What you’ll find, when you follow only those people you find interesting, who also only follow people they find interesting, is that good things will happen.  The wasted time chasing followers will turn into quality time filled with interesting conversations. You’ll connect with strangers. Meet some people you otherwise would never have found. Maybe make a friend or two.

When people complain that you didn’t follow them back, let @lanajolove have the final word.

Send in the Fail Bird! Tell @itsLydz and @lanajolove you saw them on Twitter Fail

We say it all the time, but does anyone listen? No. Okay maybe a little. Not as much as we’d like, though, because we keep finding helpful people like this:

Isn’t this a great idea? How fun! Make friends by never actually talking to anyone. Granted, there are people we’d hate less if they would just stop talking altogether (Hi Marcia!), but that doesn’t make them our friend. And that’s not what this tweep is talking about.

The beauty in their plan is to get a whole passel of random people to follow you, forcefeed them a bunch of tweets you don’t write (and probably never read before they are posted), and your twitter account will just run itself. Sounds like a party in the making. It’s the social equivalent of feeding the hungry by tossing menus at panhandlers. Or, actually, getting someone else to throw the menus for you.

Don’t do this. We can’t believe we had to tell you that.

The wonderful part of social media is the social part. Interacting with other people. Making connections. All the stuff we harp on and on about. Advertising isn’t social. Using automated systems to flood twitter with a bunch of crap is absolutely anti-social.

We especially hate bots because they are a big reason why twitter gets overloaded. The next time you’re forced to hit “refresh” until twitter comes back up, blame a bot for your feelings of isolation and abandonment.

That’s why we’re amused when a bot goes bad, as many of them do. When they just endlessly loop the same broken link and error message, it’s as if twitter is fighting back.

How do you fight the bots? Don’t follow them back. Pay no attention to what they have to say. Refuse to click their links. When their account doesn’t get any results, the bot-sters will lose interest and jump on the next big thing. If we all ignore them, they may just buzz away.

Send in the Fail Bird! Tell @Persistence42 you saw him on Twitter Fail