For the people that do the research themselves and build a personalized welcome message, I’d submit that they’re not valuing their time correctly. You may think your own time is free, but there’s an opportunity cost to everything.

What I find interesting is the strong undercurrent among many on this subject that advertising of any sort on Twitter is a bad thing. What is going to happen to Twitter when they finally get a business model that involves putting commercial messages in front of people? Eventually they’ll have to start making money or it’s gong to shut down. Nothing in life is free.

I would note, though, that there will be lots of asymmetries: your account and mine may both be business-oriented (though yours is tagged with your own name), but your message will go out to anybody, whether they’re business or personal or whatever. If you’re okay with losing some people because of that, so be it. I might draw an analogy to the few people who act offended when they find out that much of our content sits behind a subscription wall . . . and yet we still have to pay the bills.

Maybe the bigger issue we’re running into is the evolution of Twitter into different kinds of channels. Just like some early “purist” bloggers wailed about people getting into blogging for money, there will be those who wail about Twitter being used for commerce — or, rather, used at a commercial scale.

All that said, I still think it’s BETTER to greet people individually. But maybe that’s a matter of taste?

Let’s just summarize the interaction we had. We’re at a business networking party (you’re a business account, I’m a business account, which anyone can see by looking at our profiles). I said “Hi” on Feb 20. I say “Hi” to a lot of people because I’m on Twitter to network. You came back and said “Hi”, so I handed you my business card. I’m not sure I see what the problem is. If you don’t want to be at the same party I’m at, then don’t follow me and we both move on.

While many people may be offended by auto-DMs, many are not. We’ve seen our feedburner stats almost double since adding an auto DM that let’s people know how to subscribe. We’ve also seen a bump in sales. There’s a steady diet of useful information in our tweets, so following us is worth it to 11K+ people right now. And for the people that are super offended, I’m guessing they’re not in our target market anyway.

Now you must admit that it’s just a little bit funny to read an article about not auto-DMing from Hoovers. I’d rather receive an auto-DM than a telemarketing call by a factor of about 1,000.

1. Did I say anything about “a flood of auto-DMs”? My whole post is about the 1-on-1 nature of a Twitter DM. I can affirm that I *haven’t* received a flood of them. It’s just that many of the ones I *do* receive are grating, and I hate to see people undercut themselves like that.

2. We don’t follow people indiscriminately. We decline to follow back plenty of people who follow us. And yeah, we did follow a lot of people early on as we were getting the hang of Twitter, such that last summer we had something like 40% as many following us as we were following. Now that ratio is above 90%, and still rising.

3. Whining? Really? I wrote the post to suggest another — better — way of going about things. If we disagree about my tone, so be it, but I’m not a whiner by nature and I don’t think that’s a fair characterization of what I was doing here.

4. There’s plenty of disagreement about what kind of coctail party Twitter should be, and I’m fine with a broad diversity of opinions about it. But for people who are trying to put the best foot forward, it’s better to undersell than oversell, just as it’s better to keep your business cards in your pocket before you’re *sure* the event you’re attending is a networking mixer. In this vein, it’s worth pointing out again that *most* Twitterites I’ve encountered *don’t* feel the need to lead with the business card.

5. Not that anyone’s on trial here, but as an observation: you followed us first, at least judging by the notice that Twitter sent us on February 20. It just took me a bit to catch up and follow you back.

Listen, I don’t think I’m laying down the law for anybody. But I know I *am* expressing a frustration shared by many users of Twitter who dislike auto-DMs.

Over to you.

I have no problem with following lots of people. However you want to user Twitter is up to you. But if you’re following people to try to get known (such as, like the Hoover’s account, when you’re following +2K people and have fewer followers than friends), then don’t whine about getting a welcoming message.

As for the party analogy, it really depends upon what kind of party you’re at. At business networking functions it’s perfunctory to hand someone your business card as you greet them. Maybe that’s not the party you’re looking for, but remember, you came to my party. You followed me.