I promise tomorrow I will go back to blogging about the MBTI, but I have one last post about Twitter.
The 10 Commandments of Twitter
1. Thou shalt not welcome each new follower with an @ reply. (It's unnecessary and wicked annoying).
2. Thou shalt not set up auto-DM's that tell people to go to your website when they follow you.
3. Thou shalt not diss the Alltop tweets. You're only cool if you Twitterfeed.
4. Thou shalt not beg for followers. Earn them...be interesting, be funny- be anything but a beggar.
5. Thou shalt not secure celebrity's names on Twitter in hopes of selling them like domain names. Not cool.
6. Thou shalt not answer the question "what are you doing?" with "Twittering." Yeah, we get it- and it's neither original nor funny.
7. Thou shalt not tweet more than 10 times in a minute. Breathe!!!
8. Thou shalt share interesting sites and stories via TwitThat, etc.
9. Thou shalt not be mean to followers. There is an unfollow button, use it.
10. Thou shalt use Twitter for good (sharing, communicating, customer service, etc) not for evil (anger, hate, racism, sexism, etc).
And as my friend @joegerstandt says every night- Be good to each other.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The Ten Commandments of Twitter
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15 comments:
Of course I found this post because I follow you on Twitter and I totally concur.
Or did I break a Comment 10 Commandment by not adding anything of interest and value in my comment :~)
Thank you for aggregating the great Twitter pet peeves of recent. I am certain that you will receive suggestions for additional commandments.
How can you be against autoDMs hawking stuff and for alltop? You had me until then. Share yes - in human ways. Allow a robot to tweet as you? How is that good? If I want alltop, then why don't I just follow alltop. Why follow you?
What is TwitThat, or where can I find out what TwitThat is? I went to http://www.twitthat.com/, but it has not "About TwitThat" link or anything to explain what that is.
1. As long as you don't have more than 1 or 2 new followers in each month (and that is probably true for the majority of all twitterers), I don't see why you shouldn't welcome them with an @ reply.
2. An Auto-DM? Is that possible? Cool! (If only I had a website)
6. I think every twitterer has the right to answer the question "What are you doing" with "Twittering" once in his or her twitter-career. After all, every experienced user was a rookie once...
@joeschmitt- the difference is an alltop flows through the timeline and if you don't want to look at it, you skim past it. DM's show up in my email and annoy me. They're separate from the tweetstream.
@simply fearless- you always add value!!!
@johan- Twitthat is a super cool tool that you can put in your browser (Firefox and Google Chrome- not sure if it works with Internet Explorer). When you're on a webpage or reading an online article you like, you click the Twitthat button on your browser and the link automatically shows up in yout Tweetstream. i love it!
As far as welcoming new followers only once or twice a month- that's no big deal. Lots of people do it 5+ times a day!
Auto DM'ing is possible...but I'm not sharing how on here because I hate it. HATE IT!!!
I'd have to agree with Joe Scmitt.
Although you can "skim through it", Alltop is no better than the new Magpie ad option - you're forcing unwanted messages into other people's streams.
People follow people for their conversation and insight - not to be an ad aggregator. Forcing someone's ads onto someone else takes away the social aspect of social media, and pretty much a guarantee to an un-follow.
@danny
As I always say...feel free to unfollow. Tell me how the "unwanted message" from alltop would be any different than if I wrote the update myself...you'd still get it because I dig Alltop. It would make u feel better if I wrote it myself? Makes no sense. Also, can you really control whether or not you "want" messages in your tweetstream? Um, did you tweet during the election? This is no different.
Sorry Breanne, I disagree. There's a difference between writing an opinion and having automated advertising Tweets that may or may not be related to anything you say.
As far as being different if you wrote it yourself, perhaps - but again I'd still say that it's a good way to get an Unfollow fast with blatant plugs.
I also don't see how you can compare one of the most important decisions in history with an advertisement.
As someone who's in 2 categories at Alltop, I agree they do an excellent job of posting relevant news about different categories. Yet that doesn't mean I want to have automated Tweets coming from them or any other ad.
To each their own, I guess.
@danny- as I've said before- feel free to unfollow. It totally doesn't hurt my feelings.
My point about tweets during the election is that we all saw things in the tweetstream that we didn't like/didn't appreciate...and alltop tweets are no different. You either unfollow or you choose to browse past that tweet. No harm no foul.
Why in the world would me promoting alltop via my words vs Guy's words be any different? If you don't like the content- don't follow...just like you do with any other twitterer.
You define alltop auto-tweets as an advertisement (and I agree it is). What about Twitterfeeding your own blog? Is that spam? What about Re-tweeting?
Where's the line? What's acceptable and unacceptable?
We all have our own definition, and with all due respect- you control your twitter experience with the unfollow button.
Amen.
I used to use TwitThat. Now I us Adjix. Better UI, character count, and renders page you're tweeting.
http://is.gd/8Goh
It's funny that i just blogged about the 10 commandments of social media the day before. Twittincidence ?
Here's my 10 commandments (http://smallr.net/2dz):
1. Thou shall not publish partial RSS feeds.
2. Don’t follow anyone, before starting to follow Scoble
3. You shall not use n00bie aliases like pawn3d_1982
4. Remember to renew your domain every year
5. For six days you shall read your feeds and remember the Sabbath for Facebook
6. You shall not make Twitter an idol for there is still IM and email.
7. You shall not steal. Use creative-commons instead.
8. Honor your reader comments, but feel free to ignore the trolls.
9. You shall not covet a Page Rank 9
10. I am Google, your Lord …
How about:
Thou shalt not use your feed to tweet others' tweets as if they were your own, or you will be taken as a tweet-scraper.
and its corollary
Thou shalt scrupulously attribute with RT and @alias when tweeting material you did not originate.
Can we add and 11th ...
Thou shal educate yourself either before you get started on Twitter or in the 1st few weeks of using the tool.
There are a LOT of great articles/posts out there with great information.
I've been bookmarking through my Twitter journey: http://www.delicious.com/franswaa/twitter
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http://twitter.com/franswaa
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