Twitter Birdies Found in Smashing Magazine

Last year, I wrote a post about Twitteretiquette (damn, that’s fun to say out loud) primarily because I was venting. But this time around, I’m going to layer on a new aspect: CARING.

And here’s what I mean: Twitter has become more a distraction to me than I can remember in the past. I know when I click on my Twitter pin tab that I’m about to forget what the fuck I was doing for about 30 minutes.

Which is why now, more than a year ago, I care that what I read is actually meaningful and not useless drivel. I want those 30 minutes of NOT doing billable client work to be well worth the distraction. Which on one hand is total selfish justification, but on the other is actually beneficial to everyone on Earth. Or a fraction of those people beyond myself, anyway.

This is idealistic, and I’m sure “meaning” is in the eye of the reader. So I’m certain that some of my followers consider my tweets to be inane, and for that I’m truly sorry and deserve a thousand lashings. (Or none).

Anyway, so in addition to the four I mentioned last year, here are four more types of Twitter updates that I really wish people would avoid:

1. Asking for more followers – Only once in my life can I remember actually following someone because I was asked to do so. And that was because I had a ridiculous crush on that person and so it doesn’t count. If someone has 999 followers and tweets “Only 1 more follower til I pass 1K followers!,” I *do* believe that person will feel accomplished once s/he passes that threshold. But isn’t it more meaningful to get tons of followers based on substance rather than having to blatantly ask for it? And what happens when that person reaches 1,999 followers? Do we all have to be subjected to another update and request for just. one. more. follower? Sheesh. Just keep on keepin’ on and leave your obsessive Twitter follower tracking out of the stream. (Especially because you actually DO have substantive things to say, which is probably why I started following you in the first place.)
2. Complaining when someone unfollows – I’m not sure anything looks more desperate than asking the world, “Is anyone else seeing a ton of unfollows over the past week” or “I wonder why @sillybeardedmanboy stopped following me?”  I have to believe I’m not alone in almost instantly unfollowing people who do this. (Am I? Bueller?)
3. Venting about clients – Lordy, this is so worthless. When clients don’t do exactly what someone wants them to (which is basically almost every day at some point), publicly venting to Twitter doesn’t make me want to offer support toward the client pains that person is experiencing. Instead, it makes me feel sorry for the client because she’s obviously working with a disrespectful ass hat.
4. Being (seemingly) purposefully ambiguous – Recently when Mike_FTW wrote a content-strategy-related tweet, I paid attention, partly because I think the work Mule Design does is awesome and partly because I had literally just finished watching this rad Creative Mornings presentation he did. So naturally I wanted to know where the heck this was coming from so I could reflect on my own mindset related to the topic, but it just remained hanging … unresolved. I wondered if it was my responsibility to ask for clarification, or if it was worthwhile since it seemed like a touchy subject, and both of these wonderings annoyed me because I just wanted the answer without all the weirdness. And by this time, I had of course forgotten what the fuck I was supposed to be doing and just got back to billable work.

Anyway, I wonder if any of these points are in The Twitter Book. If not, maybe they should be.