Twit-equitte: To Tweet or Not To Tweet?
February 17, 2009 at 11:58 am
Psst, UTB is on Twitter. Follow us!
I made a Twitter account early last year. I do this sort of thing a lot -- I hear about some new web 2.0 jumpoff through any of the variegated remnants of my computer nerd past, sign up, poke around a bit, then forget all about it.
But as the "[insert name] is now following you on Twitter!" emails turned from a trickle to a torrent, not to mention the mainstream media coverage, it's clear that tweeting is no longer just for birds, and we just have to get used to the idea of chopping our lives into easy-to-swallow 140-character pieces.
It all came to a head when a good friend of mine signed up this weekend and started following me. I thought, "Here's someone who I may actually care about following," and turned on my mobile updates. Bad choice.
Within the first two hours I had received at least seven updates, half of which were in French, the only positive result being my adoption of the tres chic version of FML. Apparently, life really sucks when you're French.
In any case, the experience made me realize that we could all be a little more considerate in our use of the Twittermonster. (Now, I'm no Twitter power-user. I use it as a notebook when I don't have pen and paper on hand. Don't follow me. I'm boring.) And so, here is my lesson in "Twit-equitte":
- Tweet unto others has you would have them tweet unto you. If you don't want to read about my new shoes, odds are I don't want to read about yours either. Unless they're Uggs, but we'll save that for another post.
- Do not take the tweet in vain. Seriously, you've only got 140 characters, do you really need to waste them on obscenities? What the fuck? Besides, Cursebird tracks every vulgar tweet, so we can laugh at how shitty your vocabulary is.
- Thou shall not covet they followee's followers. It's like sniping Facebook friends you're not really friends with. Just don't do it.
- And please PLEASE don't invite all of your Gmail contacts. Anyone who wants to join Twitter already has, so stop clogging inboxes. You, sir or madam, are obnoxious.