Agreed! This is awesome. Especially on HTML enabled BlacKBerrys.
@evcon
· 7 months ago
This is awesome. I used to use Twimailer to do this, and then it stopped working for me. The only thing it did that this doesn't was include their most recent tweets. Still good to see though.
James Williams
· 7 months ago
If only it showed the last five tweets of that person, it would be doubly awesome.
Jennifer Van Grove
· 7 months ago
James...baby steps :)
FadiPick
· 7 months ago
at least it is walking forward :P
Susanne
· 7 months ago
I noticed the changes today and was wondering when Mashable would comment. Thanks for the post!
Susanne @susqhb
Scot Hacker
· 7 months ago
Seeing the follower/following count of people who have followed me is completely irrelevant to whether I might follow them back. The only - ONLY - criteria for that is whether that person is interesting. And the only way to determine that is to read their last 10-20 tweets. I'd much rather these new notices would dump the follower count (which Twitter really should be hiding from everyone but yourself) and instead include that person's last 10 tweets.
It would also be nice if they'd ditch the HTML and return to plain text, but whatever...
FadiPick
· 7 months ago
HTML gives more options to make your text more readable. Maybe now we can embed hyperlinks. That would be cool.
Scot Hacker
· 7 months ago
For those of you saying you like this new feature... a question: In what way is this better/more useful to you than the old plain text emails? What exactly is that you like about it? How will it help you decide whether to follow someone back or not, since it tells you nothing about what kind of writer that person is? I'm not getting it...
Aaaaaaachuu
· 7 months ago
Agreed Scot. This is just the twitter fanboys celebrating basically nothing
jonknight
· 7 months ago
At different times you may want to follow specific trends or industries more than any other, and knowing in advance even how many followers, followed, and tweets may indicate that a particular person is not in that group. They may be interesting to you at some time in the future, or in the past, they may be great and prolific writers, but at the time, those things may not be relevant.
Of course, if the goal is to follow and be followed by as many folks as possible, then the above would not apply. Different folks fly in different patterns.
(edit) I agree with some other commenters here that the last few tweets would be really appreciated.
virtuallyready
· 7 months ago
Love it! We're getting there, people! :)
AlexisCeule
· 7 months ago
I like it! I thought it was a very pleasant surprise. :) Kudos Twitter.
jonknight
· 7 months ago
w00t?
freaked me out completely. i had just finished emails and grabbed the next batch and p00f! they were different. i thought i'd been had or something. guess i wasn't keeping up as well as i should have been...
for someone like me who's building followers lately (somehow?), this is going to save lots of time.
Nancy
· 7 months ago
Gotta have more cowbell!
Scott Prock
· 7 months ago
That is indeed a welcome addition to the alert emails, I'm still wishing they would display several tweets from the new follower and their bio. Knowing what they tweet about and they're interests are better at determining if they're of interest to follow.
I know there are third party services that have this functionality, but after trying them I didn't like the constant down times.
One thing I do see that is a plus over the previous text only version is being able to see the avatars. Before you think I'm shallow, let me explain ...
I used to follow everyone who followed me, until I saw several porn related people start to follow me (not what I want on my personal brand) so I pay close attention to the pics and if they have any hint of risk, I will look at their Twitter page first.
Great step forward, but not enough to get me to turn notifications back on.
John Moore
· 7 months ago
Great additions, especially if they successfully fall back to text-based for e-mail clients that are still text-only (like my mobile phone).
I currently use Topify for processing follows and DMs because of the fact that Twitter has been so poor in terms of the information provided. Now, if they can add the wishlist items I have for Topify:
The mail is in mime-multipart. If clients want to process the html, they can. If they want to use the text version (attached to the same mail) they can.
digideth
· 7 months ago
NOT A GAME CHANGER!!!
You all need to check out http://Topify.com they have had a better solution in place for months now. Just ask @topify for a invite an they will point you in the right direction.
Once again you have failed to bring all the information to the table...
Both services do not have the million dollar funding behind them and they both do a better job then the ones with the bankroll. Funding does not = a better service.
Jennifer Van Grove
· 7 months ago
We have nothing against the little guys and we know it's not a game changer. The tone of post was meant to be sardonic...as in we're finally glad to see Twitter making improvements to email notifications.
nice article! how weird, everybody is excited about the new feature and here i am turning my follower notification off because it became distracting... next i wish they would use their capital to make their search engine better. now THAT would be a game changer.
Ashley Bolivar
· 7 months ago
Personally I think this is a great addition to Twitter. Hey now I can tell if the person is actually worth my time... wait that sounds a bit superficial... maybe more like someone I may better connect with.
They are also tracking click-through's on these emails. That + bit.ly, means they are checking conversion... I think ads are imminent.
maruxz
· 7 months ago
There is another service called "Twimailer" which also sends the Image and followers + last 10 updates, so you can actually see what are the followers interests before going to his profile and following back. Sometimes it crashes, but which service doesn't? ;)
Miri
· 7 months ago
Like it, nice improvement... :)
jhoysi
· 7 months ago
Excellent! I can now turn those notifications back on, as they will give me information instead of just alert me to a new follower.
jimgray69
· 7 months ago
that's a good point.
Rahna Barthelmess
· 7 months ago
I would also like to see the short "bio" of the person to help me discern whether to follow back or not. Unless I have met the person in real life, I sitll need to click through to see who the person is....
All Comments
Susanne @susqhb
It would also be nice if they'd ditch the HTML and return to plain text, but whatever...
Of course, if the goal is to follow and be followed by as many folks as possible, then the above would not apply. Different folks fly in different patterns.
(edit) I agree with some other commenters here that the last few tweets would be really appreciated.
freaked me out completely. i had just finished emails and grabbed the next batch and p00f! they were different. i thought i'd been had or something. guess i wasn't keeping up as well as i should have been...
for someone like me who's building followers lately (somehow?), this is going to save lots of time.
I know there are third party services that have this functionality, but after trying them I didn't like the constant down times.
One thing I do see that is a plus over the previous text only version is being able to see the avatars. Before you think I'm shallow, let me explain ...
I used to follow everyone who followed me, until I saw several porn related people start to follow me (not what I want on my personal brand) so I pay close attention to the pics and if they have any hint of risk, I will look at their Twitter page first.
Great step forward, but not enough to get me to turn notifications back on.
I currently use Topify for processing follows and DMs because of the fact that Twitter has been so poor in terms of the information provided. Now, if they can add the wishlist items I have for Topify:
http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/if-y...
then you'll soon see me move away from Topify and back to just core Twitter functionality.
John Moore
http://twitter.com/JohnFMoore
You all need to check out http://Topify.com they have had a better solution in place for months now. Just ask @topify for a invite an they will point you in the right direction.
Once again you have failed to bring all the information to the table...
I am getting the feeling that Mashable does not like the little guy. You failed to mention http://topify.com just like you failed to mention http://DestroyTwitter.com
Both services do not have the million dollar funding behind them and they both do a better job then the ones with the bankroll. Funding does not = a better service.
talk about timeline :,-(
Live Limitless,
http://AshleyBolivar.com
virtually acquire twitter on http://www.webmilker.com/twittercom/
gtg 4real