Social Media Breakups are Awkward

Recently I direct messaged someone (and note, I virtually never DM people) I'm connected with on Twitter, an old co-worker of mine, to see if there was any chance of summer work at the company she is with. A company run by another old co-worker of mine, by the way. See, I work in the school system and have summers off so I was trying to get some income during my summer break.

She responded that things slow down in the summer but she'd let me know if anything did come up.

And then she unfollowed me.

The Discordance of Twitter During Disasters

Disasters like last night's insanely huge earthquake in Japan and subsequent tsunami bring out the very best and the very worst in people. And Twitter remains one of the most important and up to the minute places to get breaking news. The only problem with Twitter during events like this is that there will always be folks who carry on like nothing's happened, tweeting about their lunch, tweeting about the jerk who cut them off, tweeting as if there isn't an entire country in shock and not even beginning to start the recovery process from the double whammy.

And sometimes its just too discordant to try and parse the disaster tweets from the mundane What-I'm-doing-now tweets. And it is also sometimes difficult to not get irritated with the people who carry on as if nothing is happening. People are dying, people are suffering mightily and you're tweeting about trying to get a cab? There's a more polite term for it, navel gazing, and a less polite term, head up ass.

It is difficult to not want to shout at these people just going about their day as if nothing is happening. I know life goes on, it has to, but still, your tweets about the mundane are so very unimportant now (truthfully, they were unimportant before but far more so now).

And yes, I know that its important to not get stuck in the trance of the devastation, to go outside, to breath fresh air, to do the things you have to do to get through your day. But I think its also incredibly important to respect the tragedy unfolding before our eyes. And maybe think twice about tweeting that you're pissed because the bagel shop is out of your favorite kind of bagel.

By the way, if you do want to follow the tweets in real time, use this link.

Thoughts About the Immediacy of New Media

Watch your step (and your words).

My mother, ever the instigator of thoughts, emailed me Nir Rosen's response on Salon to the demise of his career for being thoughtless in his Twitter comments about the violent sexual assault on Lara Logan in Egypt. This is my response.

While I think the new social media makes it easier to be a thoughtless jerk, I don't think it changes people from being kind, considerate people to being thoughtless jerks.

With every revolution in communication there is a period when that medium's newness overrides people's need to think before they hit send or post. And, in the process of that new media becoming a mainstream communications medium, cautionary tales of missteps, stumbles, falls and outright career implosions will be the result.

Top Twitter Peeves

Time for another bracing round of what pisses me off about Twitter. Woohoo! These peeves highlight the problem between signal and noise, signal is worthwhile, usable content, noise is shit.

1. Bots - Yes, including the Slut Bots with the sexy avatar pics and drivel in their Twitter streams.

2. Feeders - people who post literally nothing but links to their blog and blog posts.

Twitter: All Photos Are NOT Belong To Us

This is not Twitter's property.

Recently there has been a bit of a furor over a post by one Scott Bourne, a fairly famous (and famously abrasive) photographer, regarding Twitter's Terms of Service in regards to ownership rights, exclusivity and content. Basically, the post said that Twitter's ToS agreement followed Facebook's way, way over reaching power grabs, that any media posted across Twitter's site becomes the property of Twitter to do with what they like including selling them and keeping the profits for themselves.

In the case of a tweet about finding a kitty cat in a box by your front door this is not such a big deal. But in the case of someone making their living (or supplementing it) with digital media such as a photographer, musician or videographer, this could be an absolute game changer. I am merely a semi-pro photographer and there's no way I'm signing over any rights to my photos to anyone without proper compensation.

As usually happens in these cases, the investigative photographer got it wrong. Badly wrong. And I'm reminded of why I stopped following Scott Bourne on Twitter. And why I continue to follow and appreciate posts by Petapixel, who breaks down the post, the ToU and why digital media types need not worry (besides the fact that Twitter isn't anywhere near close to being as evil and douchebaggy as Facebook is).

The crux of the issue regards the definition of content. Bourne presumed content to mean any media crossing Twitter's servers. The reality is that content, according to Twitter, is anything stored on Twitter servers, that is, tweets and possibly digital media at some point in the future (apparently there was a short lived Twitter photo hosting service, yes, Twitter does have rights to anything posted there).

Here, go and read Michael's (that's Petapixel's real name) post: Twitter Photo Rights Controversy is Much Ado About Nothing which was partially compiled from ReadWriteWeb's Twitter Gets to Use Your Photos, for Free? (Updated)

This issue highlights another problem, that is that Scott Bourne refuses to allow any discussion that isn't in complete agreement with him. That is, agree with him or he will block you, probably delete your comments and pretend like he's still right. His perspective is wrong and his attitude is misguided though his intentions are still good (protecting his intellectual property from dilution and royalty free distributions).

In the end, I'll keep posting links to my photos I post (and host) on Flickr or other sites.

This post has been cross-posted to my IP Photography blog as well.

What Does Your Avatar/Bio Pic Say About You?

As much of my life goes, this post has come about as a reaction. In this case, from a new follower on Twitter who has a bio pic that can only be described as 80's Douchebag. He's sitting in his car, likely a BMW convertible, looking over his right shoulder with his sunglasses partially down his nose and he's got an "Oh, you FOUND me" expression on his face. The scene is staged and I'm sure it was part of a photoshoot he bought for himself.

Seriously. The image you are conveying with this bio pic is that you're an asshole. Sorry but that's what I take from it. The only way you could look like a bigger tool is if you'd popped your collar but you're wearing a button down, not a polo shirt so that's probably against the rules according to your GQ style advisor. You could be the villain in one of Adam Sandler's movies (thinking the douche in the Wedding Singer).

Sure, my bio pic isn't much better but at least I'm not mugging like an idiot for the camera. And I'm actually doing something I love doing which lets even a casual observer see at a glance that I'm a mountain biker. The other picture tells me nothing except he's got a receding hairline and a goofy smile to go along with his Bimmer convertible.

There are other blog posts and articles detailing the different kinds of avatar/bio pics that people use and what they mean.

Formal Headshot - The straight up head shot is more formal and indicates a balance between serious and frivolous.

Angled Headshot - non-conformist and probably pretty good at snarking others.

Look at My Boobs - usually a Twitter slutbot but sometimes just a good looking lady who's proud of her mammary assets. Which is fine, there are almost certainly men on Twitter with bio pics of them flexing to show off their pecs or arms or whatever body part they think will garner them the most Oohs and Aahs and follows. This bio pic is usually taken in a mirror so the person is not looking into the camera but at themselves which makes sense because they are totally into how awesome they look.

Activist - image is always changing to reflect the current "movement" be it election day solidarity, Hope for Haiti or PETA. This is more of an add-on than a stand alone. The original bio pic is embellished with a tint or twibbon (an annoying term that means a Twitter ribbon on your bio pic). I'm guessing these folks have bumper stickers on their car that say things like "Subvert the Dominant Paradigm" even though they may not be able to define what a paradigm is.

Corporate Logo - not interested in social networking but very interested in driving traffic and sales. I'm generally not interested in following corporate Twitter accounts though there are some exceptions in regards to bike companies.

My Pet is Teh Kewt - bio pics of animals, cats or dogs usually, indicates someone who holds their animal in rather high regard. I use a favorite image of my dog leaping as my Disqus avatar because it is a funny pic.

Ze Party Animal - a bio pic of you doing a keg stand relays the clear message that you are a party machine. You rock out with your cock out and can't understand why you end up going home alone most every night.

Stalker - if you use a pic of a celebrity as your avatar you are either obsessed or devoid of your own personality. Either way, not a compelling argument to follow you. And oh yeah, the celebrity you are "honoring" with their image as your pic? They think you're creepy as hell and wouldn't let you anywhere near them, ever.

Default - you can't be bothered to personalize your profile or are incredibly boring.

High School Yearbook Black and White Headshot - this bio pic tells me you really don't like having your picture taken and/or you really wish you could be 18 again. You also regularly tell those damned kids to get off your lawn.

Cartoon - either a fan or someone who absolutely hates having their picture taken or hasn't been able to take/get a photo of themselves that doesn't make them want to puke.

Animated Gif - one recent new follower had figured out how to put a rather long sequence into his bio pic of a stick figure trying to break through the wall of the graphic. Like a five minute sequence. I watched it once and was not compelled to follow him back.

Ten (or More) Twitter Laws

Here are my Ten (or More) Twitter Laws.

1. Thou shalt not abuse the DM.
2. Thou shalt not whore links non-stop.
3. Thou shalt not post nothing but quotes.
4. Thou shalt not @reply exclusively.
5. Thou shalt not tweet without spell check.
6. Thou shalt not engage in gratuitous txtspk.
7. Thou shalt not feed (follow) the Twitter sluts.
8. Thou shalt not tweet the cursed terms, marketing or porn, lest a plague of bot followers descend upon thee.
9. Thou shalt not complain about how hard your life is because you have to travel all over the damned world all the time.
10. Thou shalt not follow me in the hopes that I will follow you back.

And some bonus guidelines.
If your Twitter name is something like RainbowOneCarpets then you can rest assured that I have absolutely no interest in your tweets.
If your Twitter name is something girly like SweetCakes1980 and your registered name is George Jones then you will not be getting followed back.
If your Twitter stream is loaded with links to your blog posts and/or other news articles without any personal tweets then you will not be getting followed back.
If your Twitter stream is impossible to read because you thought light print on a light background looked cool then you will not be getting followed back.

Google Does Its Best Imitation of Microsoft

There's been quite alot of justifiable furor over Google's latest offering, Buzz. It appears that Google stole a page from the Microsoft playbook, the evil playbook. You see, Microsoft has a long and painful history of release and patch software publishing. They'd push an almost done piece of software out with the intention of using early adopters as unpaid and aggravated beta testers.

From a business standpoint this is a solid tactic. Microsoft has grown into the de facto operating system and office suite on the planet largely due to the release and fix philosophy. The only thing is that end users hate being used as non-volunteer guinea pigs. End users just want their shit to work, they don't want to help Microsoft figure out what's wrong and then have them fix it weeks or months later. Its part of the reason I do my best to avoid Microsoft products as much as possible.

And Google has done the same stupid, stupid thing with Buzz, their attempt to destroy Facebook and Twitter. Only they rolled out this new service without bothering to code in end-user controls, important end-user controls like, oh I don't know, privacy, notifications and other pretty basic service requirements. Google has taken information that many people don't necessarily want made public and went ahead and made it public without regard to their customer base's wishes.

And when a company starts acting without the slightest regard to its customers then they are strolling the fine line between good and evil. And Google has publicly stated their philosophy is to not be evil. Well, Google, Buzz is perilously close to being evil in addition to being non-intuitive, oddly slapped into Gmail and in desperate need of some end-user controls. Without some controls on my end, I'm liable to shut if off altogether.

I don't get why Google, ostensibly a very well run "smart" company, would risk pissing off so many users with this half-baked offering. Much like I don't get why Google decided to change how information is displayed on my Google home page where they forced me to put up with a huge space wasting gutter navbar on the left side of the screen. Its only through the use of an extension have I reclaimed that space. Google is well aware of people's hatred of this stupid, unnecessary space waster and yet they do not appear to be planning to do anything to fix it.

How many more missteps will Google make before people really do start think they are just another evil corporation bent on nothing but shareholder profits and maintaining their market shares? Many people already consider Google the next great big evil internet behemoth and its hard to argue against them lately.

Google needs to pull its head out of its ass and realize that end users can be fickle and, when pushed too hard, will just leave Google altogether.

Google needs to fix up its shit before pushing out any more partially finished products like Buzz. Until then, it will flounder and fail.

Here's What You Missed

Here's a recap of recent Twitter finds you may have missed in the blur of posting.

The 6 Weirdest Things Women Do to Their Vaginas

Passwords are like underwear...

Vibram Five Fingers running "shoes"

Anthem Blue Cross to raise rates by 39%

Job losses comparison Bush vs. Obama - the source for the graphic above.

Miley Cyrus' 9 year old sister launches lingerie line

John Murtha passed away, so did Capt. Phil Harris.

I wrote To Helmet or Not To Helmet over on NorCal Bikers.

Understanding what's scarce and what is not - breakdown of Jeff Jarvis' post by Techdirt.

In other news, Celine Dion is headed back to Vegas after Barbra Streisand couldn't be lured in. Sarah Palin is a fucking retard, satirical use of the term here, according to Stephen Colbert. I'd add that she's a hypocritical fucking retard but why beat a dead pig with lipstick on?

I'm sure there will be more stuff I forgot, there always is, but this'll do for now.

Another Twitter Etiquette Installment

It has been a couple of months since I wrote up some more thoughts about Twitter and etiquette and why I won't automatically follow you back. And, further, why I stopped following you almost immediately. It is all pretty simple really and I'll try to distill it down to some easy to grasp bullet points.

Top 10 Reasons I Don't Follow You Back
1. Your tweets are nothing but quotes.
2. Your tweets are nothing but links to the same PPC site.
3. Your tweets are nothing but replies to people you do not know.
4. Your tweets are obtuse one-side-of-the-conversation replies.
5. You have no avatar.
6. You have no bio.
7. You have no tweets at all.
8. Your tweets are full of txt spk.
9. Your tweets are so poorly spelled that it hurts my brain to try to decipher them.
10. You do not understand what Caps Lock does and that it should not be used as your default Tweeting style.

Top 5 Reasons I Immediately Unfollowed You
1. You sent an auto-DM thanking me for following you and please go look at some site.
2. You sent an auto-DM telling me you are looking forward to reading my tweets.
3. You sent an auto-DM.
4. You @ replied to me with the exact same message your entire Tweet history is made up of.
5. You are a Yankees/Dodgers fan.

Top 10 Reasons I Followed You
1. You are funny.
2. You are original.
3. You are a living breathing person.
4. You are interested in conversation.
5. You have something to add.
6. You know me in real life.
7. You are a cyclist.
8. You are a photographer.
9. You an mma fighter or fan.
10. You post pictures of yourself often and you're rather gorgeous (see Arianny Celeste for the best example of this phenomenon).

So there ya go. Any questions? Leave 'em in the comments.

My Expanding Twitter Lexicon

Over the course of my time on Twitter, most of it highly enjoyable interactions with friends and new friends around the world, I've created a growing lexicon of Twitter words. Here is that list of words as it grows. These new words are also logged in with all my other new words in my Fictionarium.

Tweeterhea - an explosion of tweets on Twitter after a prolonged period of no tweets at all.

Twignorant - not knowing about Twitter or not knowing about some of the culture of Twitter including txtspk abbreviations like LOL, WTF and BFF.

Twitterati - the creme de la creme of the Twitter world.

Twitbag or Twithole - someone who follows you on Twitter in order to get you to follow them back and then they unfollow you.

Faillow - follow fail, i.e. someone follows you on Twitter in the vain hopes that you'll automatically follow them back. For whatever reason, you do not follow them back and that is the very definition of a faillow.

Twurfing - astroturfing (Wiki - neologism for formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous "grassroots" behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf) via Twitter but includes the marketing wonks/SEO "experts" who use Twitter to expand their network of contacts.

More to come as I come up with them.

Update: There's more.

Twetiquette - Twitter etiquette

Twammer - Twitter spammer

Probably many more still to come.

2nd Update: Still more.

Twut - Twitter slut

Top Ten Ways to Get Me to Unfollow You on Twitter

More "help" for Tweeps that don't understand why I stop following you. Seriously though, I rarely follow new people, I'll check out their stream and make a judgment call then. If I follow you and then unfollow you then you've probably violated one or more of the rules below.

1. Reference God often.
2. Tweet in All Caps.
3. Use text speak.
4. Following and replying to twitards like Spencer Pratt.
5. Nothin' but retweets.
6. Automated direct messages.
7. Tweeting ten to twenty times at once regularly.
8. Have internet marketing guru in your bio. Actually, I'll never follow you in the first place.
9. Tweet about your sexual conquests.
10. Tweet minutiae all the time. Nobody, really, nobody cares that you are going to bed.

Bonus, 11. Lie.

All of this said (or written, if you want to be precise), I still do follow some people that break one of more of these rules but they almost invariably have a really cute avatar pic. So keep that in mind, when in doubt, a great photo can make up for a lot of shortcomings.

My Twitter Follow Back Formula

Because I am, at heart, a nerd in a Greek god's body, I run a series of calculations to arrive at most every decision I consciously make during the day. From the risk/reward calculation about either blocking the asshole in the pickup driving like he's in the Indy 500 or just letting him go to whether the deliciousness of a pair of Wendy's Double Stack burgers is sufficient to offset the gut bomb of fat and empty calories.

Seriously, I do this all day, every day. I always have and expect that I always will.

So it is natural, when it comes to Twitter that I'd apply the same rules of the road, as it were. I thought I'd try and detail my thought process in deciding to follow or not follow a new Tweep, or, in rare cases, blocking them entirely.

Satisfying these minimum req's isn't a guarantee of a follow but missing any of these is pretty likely to result in a non-follow.
1. An avatar. The default little o big O thing shows a stunning lack of creativity.
2. A bio.
3. An url linked to your website, not MySpace, not Facebook and not, not, not to Twitter or Google, you're not being clever, you're being annoying.
4. Updates, not retweets, not links to boner pill sites, not links to free laptop/iphone/Xbox sites. Updates are personal, they are interesting, they are readable (txt spk makes me want to smack you, sorry). Some retweets are totally fine but if that's all you do or if all you do is post links to your site then I'm just not interested.
5. A low signal to noise ratio. If you tweet every two minutes about every minute thing happening to you then you will be unfollowed quickly.
6. A really high ratio of followed to followers. I've seen people following 3,000 and having less than 10 follow them, this is a pretty clear sign that you have little of value to share with the community.
7. Auto direct messages (DM) upon following exhorting me to visit your website. If you're on a trial follow period (and you are) and you do this then you have failed and will be faillowed (which is a brand spanking new word for fail followed, i.e. unfollowed).
8. Being funny - being funny is a great way to get me to follow you. Being funny, mildly vulgar and female is even better (see @everydaystrange for a perfect example of this trinity of awesomeness).
9. A cool background pic on your Twitter page never hurts.
10. Readable tweets - I've seen some color choices that make reading the tweets all but impossible. Grey lettering on a white background is ANNOYING!, not cool.
Lastly,
11. Be interesting. Simple.

This list is, by no stretch, comprehensive. It is ever changing depending on conditions, mood, wind speed and the angle of the sun's rays hitting the earth. I am capricious, I am, occasionally, vengeful, I am always seeking something or someone that can make me laugh.

What's your Twitter follow back formula? Post it in the comments. And, as always, you're welcome to follow me on Twitter, just don't take it personally if I don't follow you back.

Twitter Feature Requests

I make no bones about the fact that I really like Twitter. I love its immediacy, I love its rambling community, I love sharing pics from the day, I love hearing from friends and some strangers.

But, as with anything, there are downsides to the up. There are people who use Twitter like a blunt marketing instrument. There are bots exhorting you to visit some sex site or some retail site. There are wonks that do nothing but spew links to fake giveaways, that post nothing but words other people have written and then there are people who follow you solely in the hopes that you'll follow them back.

I have one "follower" who started following me yesterday morning. By the afternoon, she'd stopped following and then followed me again. Now, I have my Twitter set to notify me of new follows and the only thing I can conclude from her actions is that she was trying to nudge me towards following her back. Only she's not a Tweep, she's a sales bot. Her sole purpose for being on Twitter is to drive sales for her hand creams and other whatnot. Sorry but I'm not interested and the passive aggressive behavior is seriously off-putting.

As I tend towards optimism mostly, I'll leave the downsides at those above. There are more, of course, but let's turn back towards the light, shall we?

How could Twitter improve? Here are some thoughts from the trenches.

- Create a setting to approve or disallow new followers. Or, even better, to automatically deny access by people with user-defined parameters (like filters so that I could, for example, auto-deny followers who use the word marketing in their bios or they have to ask for permission to follow me first).
- A means to collect, keep and easily share all of the very cool Twitter add-ons. Sort of like a Delicious bookmarking system but within Twitter. It could easily be expanded to beyond just Twitter links but I'd most like to make use of it for Twitter stuff, at least at first.
[Update: Upon further thought, this is actually a pretty good place to use the Favorite function to save posts that contain links to good stuff you want to be able to revisit more easily. Still, it would be good to have a specific function to save links.]
- A conversation setting that would remove any comments outside of a specified conversation across two or more tweeps. This could also involve incorporating response outside of a Tweep's follows. It could be a great way of adding to one's follows and followers lists.
- Categories - I exist in several spheres and it can sometimes be confusing, difficult or just plain taxing to keep who is who separate. This is the same kind of thing that TweetDeck is already doing for users but I'd love to see it incorporated into the site from the get go.
- Private Tweets - less a direct message and more of a private message that only followers noted as friends or in a particular group or category could read. I mean, do I really want people who think I might still be reasonably cool to know that I'm a Skyrates, fantasy baseball, Survivor nerd?

Those are just the ones off the top of my bleached blond head. What features would you love to see loaded into Twitter.

Update: Another one I just thought of. An easy, graphical way to see if someone you follow does not follow you back. All too often, I follow someone back, they eventually realize that I'm a blithering idiot and unfollow me, I'll reply to their tweet about something and they don't see it for a day or two because it doesn't show up in their stream but on their @fenriq (or whoever they are) page.

MTV Creates Celebri-Monsters

Having only watched short snippets of MTV for the last ten years or so, they seem to have completely forgotten the Music part of their name and are more concerned with "reality" shows like The Hills.

The moments I've watched The Hills have been few and far between since it seems incredibly, incredibly shallow and vapid and panders to attractive people with contrived "issues".

And it gives rise to utterly useless egoists like Spencer Pratt. Seriously, go read some of his Tweets, this dumbshit thinks he's the second coming of Jim Jones talking about "his following". His background image on this Twitter page is telling, he's got his hair all nicely coifed, his hands lightly clasped and the tiling has turned his fake wife with fake boobs, fake hair and fake smile, Heidi, into just an arm off the side of his tweets. Unintentionally telling.

And, oh yeah, he's got 180K+ followers. Which is kind of crazy when you stop and think about it.

There are plenty of other jackasses who have come to fame via MTV's watchers. The channel seems to focus on totally self-absorbed nimrods as long as they look good.

It'd be nice if MTV went back to, you know, playing music videos.

The Unreciprocated Follow

It is an odd thing, when you choose to follow someone on Twitter (like me, for instance) and they do not choose to follow you back. It feels like rejection though it can be any number of other things which feels like rationalization.

Sometimes the person you follow just doesn't follow others back. Like take Lance Armstrong, he follows a mere 44 tweeps and has nearly 340,000 following him. Your odds are not good unless your last name is Leipheimer or Basso.

And then there are people you've known for a long time that get on Twitter, follow a whole bunch of people and then slowly weed them down. You can tweet something they find offensive and bam, you're off the shortlist. Which is fine, not every tweet is going to be gold and sometimes you need to wade through a deep puddle of melancholy dookie to get to the gold on the other side.

If, however, I follow someone and respond to their questions into the Twitterverse and they do not ever respond back or follow back then I will have no issues dropping them. They aren't really interested in expanding their conversation so much as fattening up their follow numbers because they equate more followers with more right to ego or pride.

Twitter fascinates me and I come up with new things I'd like added everyday. I'd like a request to follow system, I'd like a reason for unfollowing system, I'd like to have a grading system for people I follow so that I could have a tab in my tweet reader to just read pal tweets or however else I break them down. I know there are a myriad of add-ons already and many do these things but I'd like them to be incorporated into the site itself rather than an add-on.

But I'd also like it to rain hundred dollar bills and for my dog to unlearn how to whine too and neither of those is going to happen anytime soon.

Twitter Follow or Block?

Twitter is still an evolving social network, it is slowly working out what it is all about and it will likely end up being different things for different users. There are the brain dead link bots that use it as a link dump, there are social commentary tweeps who post about everything, there are the social network connectors who use it as a 140 character news agency and report from shows and conferences and there are people who use it as a way to stay in touch with friends.

Because it happens with reassuring regularity, I've been slowly developing my set of rules for following someone back or blocking them or just ignoring them when they choose to follow me.

I will not be surprised in the least if my reasons for not following far outnumber my reasons for following.

So here are some of my evolving rules for a follow back on Twitter:
- Being a real person.
- Following less than a thousand people, otherwise you're a collector with an ulterior motive. The number of followers you have matters less to me but there's simply no way to interact with 15,000 people. Its stupid to think you can in any meaningful way.
- Describing yourself as a biker or cyclist.
- Being funny.
- Having interesting insights.

And some rules for not following or unfollowing and even blocking:
- Nothing but link dumps to drive traffic to your blog. I can understand and accept them on occasion but if that's all you do then I am just not interested.
- A horrid pic, come on, its an inch by inch image, put some effort into it.
- No bio or a bio url linking to a junk site.
- A social "experiment" account.
- No posts at all.
- A provocative pic/avatar and nothing but links to free laptop sites as posts.
- Any use of the words "marketing guru" in your bio.
- If you describe yourself as an "internet marketer".
- If your Tweet per day count is in the triple digits.
- Use of txtspk instead of real words.
- Tweeterhea, when you tweet like its going out of business, twenty, thirty or more tweets in a row.

And, sometimes, it doesn't matter if the follower doesn't tag any of these, sometimes they just seem to twitter about stuff that I'm not interested in. It isn't any slight against them. I'm sure the vast majority of my tweets are skipped right over by my followers, it doesn't make me tweet any less nor more interestingly. I tweet what's going on around me. That doesn't interest some, it maybe interests others. There's room for all kinds.

I'm sure this list will continue to evolve and change over time, just as Twitter is growing and changing. But this is a pretty good place to start. But, if you want to follow me, then be my guest just don't feel bad if I don't automatically return the favor.

What are the Twitter "rules" you abide by?

I Tweet, Therefore I Am

The Five Six Stages Of Twitter Acceptance. Where are YOU?

Mr.Tweet offers up the Five Six Stages of Twitter with my comments. There were originally five stages but collaboration was added as a sixth stage after numerous commenters suggested it.

I am currently at stage 4 and 5 and am not sure I want to go to stage 6. Most of my new followers these days are, pardon my language, butthole marketers with zero interest in actually reading or interacting with me, they just want to increase their "reach" by getting me to follow them.

The most annoying stage is #3 Dumping where people use Twitter for nothing but posting links to their blog posts or, worse, links to their blog. Again and again and again.

And I have no interest to be another channel for someone to broadcast their marketing BS.

And there are people that join Twitter and just add every single person they see to amass these huge groups of people they supposedly "follow" but really they just want to get reciprocal follows to spread their marketing message or as an advertisement for their services.

What do I like about Twitter? It is immediate, it can be poignant (the terror attacks in Mumbai were a stark example of how immediate the information can be, Twitter was hours ahead of the big news agencies in disseminating information), it can be goofy, it can be helpful, it can be all these things all at once. Its a fun way to keep tabs on friends, to keep an eye on interesting personalities (I follow Adam Savage from Mythbusters among others because he's, ohmygosh, a geek). Plus, the ability to post a pic adds a fun element. The open API has allowed people to create an amazing assortment of add-on functionality for the service too. And the integration with my iPhone makes it very easy to keep up and to also tweet on the go.

Being a Good Twitterer

I am big into Twitter. I update many times during the day, engage with the folks I follow (even if they don't often engage back, I'm looking at you Mathowie and BrittneyG but I still love you both) and do not often add new people to follow.

Which makes it even rarer for me to stop following someone once I've started following them. But I stopped following someone this morning and am likely going to stop following another one soon if he doesn't stop treating Twitter like a blog post notification system.

Mathowie had a post on his A Whole Lotta Nothing blog about why he chooses to block someone. And his reasoning runs parallel to mine (great minds and all that). But most expressly number 3, using Twitter to take link dumps all the time without any engagement in the community of Twitter.

So here are my rules for Being a Good Twitterer
1. Twitter is not solely a mechanism to drive traffic to your blog. If that's how you see it then fine but I'm not really interested.
2. Following more than a couple of hundred people. It isn't really possible to pay attention to so many voices which tells me you're probably trying to work an SEO angle.
3. No more followo, Mr. RoBOTo. I engage with humans, not bots. If its obvious that you're not a living, breathing human being then you'll be blocked. Even if you're a bot with a really cute avatar.

Update: I just dropped the other Twitterer. Three or four posts this morning, all links to blog posts. That's not Twittering, that's just trying to drive traffic.

Blogging vs. Twittering

I was just reading an article in Wired that basically says Blogging is Dead. The reasons they lay out make some pretty broad assumptions about the reasons that people blog. For example, they say the chances of a well written article/post by a nobody like me showing up high in search results is virtually nil. And I can accept that. I used to blog with an eye to notoriety and expected book deals, groupies and Google AdSense millions to come my way anyday.

While I wouldn't complain if that happened, it is no longer even in the top five or ten reasons why I blog. Sure, I'd love to get paid to blog but it pays me in other ways. Like having gotten to know good people like Amy, Ryan, Lujza, Nutsy, Rick, Jack, the rather awesome fellas at the Mint 400, Easy and more (apologies if I didn't list every single blog I read here, it started to get silly). Blogging has become a sort of therapy for me. Mixed in among the ejaculate posts about politics, celebrity idiocy and news are posts about what makes me tick, about things that are important to me. Plus, it gives interested members of my family, who are mostly bound to the east coast, a chance to check in and see where my head is at, leave a comment or two and stay in touch.

Twitter, as much as I love it for its immediacy, funky community and brevity, has no staying power. A great tweet is off the page in an hour and gone for good in a day. During one of the presidential debates, I took part in a live Twitter chat during the debate (I'm sure Jay remembers the hundred or so tweets in an hour and a half). And I have some wicked funny comments, one liners and observations. But they are all so far down my tweet list now as to be gone forever.

And, maybe its my age showing, but I rather enjoy a little bit of permanence. Plus, the blog is a measure of my feelings, thoughts and what was important to me at the time. And yes, even the stupid low-brow attempts at political humor count.

Blogging offers a way to explore events and feelings in far greater depth. Twittering is, in many ways, a symptom and manifestation of our ADD society.

I remember a tweet by Brittneyg to the effect that she had such a short attention span, she wasn't even reading full tweets anymore, she was skimming them. What does it say about our society when we can't even slow down enough to read 140 characters?

I don't think blogging is dead but it might be if you're planning on starting a blog to change the world and get rich. That landscape has been claimed and is now being dominated by professional writers with teams of researchers. And, oddly enough, I don't read many of those blogs because they are so impersonal. I prefer blogs written by just a couple of people who I can possibly develop a relationship with, discuss things with and not be yet another anonymous commenter.

But Twitter has its place too. And I'm sure there's something else just around the corner that will shoulder its way into the mix as well. Like Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube and other social networking sites (things like Facebook but not Facebook because I absolutely refuse to agree to their ridiculous terms of use).