After 3 years of heavy twittering (with a brief pause of some months – seriously, what was I thinking), I have familiarized myself with most of the service aspects, developing some kind of unwritten Twitter laws.
People don’t take well my Twitter presence at times, so I’ve decided to make a post about it and share: am I a bad Twitter-er people? Do you do these things too?
Without further ado, my patented unwritten Twitter laws™:
- If you follow me and I don’t follow back and you’re absolutely pissed (there are some people who still do that), try to reply at some of my tweets in a coherent, non-jackass way. Fat chances are, I’ll eventually follow you.
- An e-mail containing your follow data arrives in my inbox. I always check your twitter page and do a bit of mini-stalking (apart from obvious spambots). If your twitter stream is full of titles + links, you fail. If it’s full of replies to other people, you fail. If you don’t have an online presence, anywhere, you fail. If you have a link to your facebook account or (God forbid) to your twitter account (endless loop anyone?), you fail. If your twitter stream is protected (seriously?), you fail again. If, however, you express coherent thoughts, no matter the language, no matter the subject, you’ll be likely followed back. It helps if you’re kinda hot too, in a steamy geek kinda way.
- You’re absolutely appalled by my Twitter activity and you decide to unfollow me. If your life or work isn’t spectacular enough to keep my interest in you, don’t expect me to stay a follower of you for long. It’s not a matter of revenge: when I follow someone, it’s because a) I admire their work or lifestyle b) I’d like to know them better (that’s more suitable for Greek twitters). If you decide to unfollow me, you don’t want me to know you better, so if I don’t really admire the things you do, poof! I’m gone too.
- Contrary to some predictions, you can make money off Twitter (or social media, as the cool kids call it). Not directly, I’m not DELL. But most of the freelance jobs I’ve been offered were based on Twitter interaction. I consider this a huge success for my Twitter presence and I don’t really care I have yet to reach 1000 followers.
- I’m all for conversations for Twitter, but please. Not lengthy ones. Don’t expect to draw conclusions from Twitter, it’s not for solving complex geopolitical problems – it can give the hints to transfer the conversation to some other medium though (thanks @stazybohorn).
- I’m perfectly fine with you posting links to your latest blog posts on your Twitter stream. Some people are complaining about this, but I’m not. Since I rarely (if ever) fire up my feed reader, it’s a nice way to let me know of your new posts. I’ll definitely check those out.
- What’s highly annoying: littering a perfectly coherent tweet with inline hashtags. #this is not #cool, #people.
- What’s highly annoying #2: auto-tweeting apps. Think gowalla, foursquare and the like. For the record, I’ve used a command-line hack to filter my Tweetie stream of that jargon. You can find it here. (thanks @olrandir)
- Yes, I’m greek, but I tweet in english. I also blog in english. In fact, about 80% of my online presence is in english. Why? Because english is a simpler, more techno-friendly language that reaches to billions of people, and not just some thousands. I’ll always reply in english, except when what I want to say has only meaning to greek followers (that will probably be a reply to someone though). Case study: this joke tweet reply.
- Fact: even if I respect your work, if you’re a cold elitist bastard at Twitter, you’ll always be a cold elitist bastard to me.
- Personal reminder: you can’t DM people that don’t follow you. You can’t DM people that don’t follow you. You can’t DM people that don’t follow you.
Hm, I think that’s all for now. Feel free to add your own pet peeves, usage patterns and unwritten laws.
God I love Twitter.
Flickr credit: directfromcannes
12 comments on this post
Freddos #1
27.Jan.10
Wraio keimeno filenada
(άη ρόουτ ιτ ιν γκρίκλις φορ δε ΧΟΟΟΟΛ γουόρλντ του αντερστάντ, γιές;)
+1 For the “no lengthy conversations people”. I have unfollowed others due to that.
Freddos
“I love the smell of unfollow in the morning”
TheoCoach #2
27.Jan.10
Nice thoughts/laws Sugarenia.
I agree with most of them and I really liked how you explained why you tweet/write in english. I write and think sometimes in english too – your explanation expresses me 100%. Some words/expressions are ment to stay in english and not be translated.
Your “Personal Reminder” made me laugh
Thodoris
Addmen #3
27.Jan.10
Good article! I’ve been lurking here for a while and finally decided to comment.
Papajohn #4
27.Jan.10
You prefer twitter to your feed reader?! I strongly disagree with this. Twitter may be great for short pieces of realtime information or the occasional messaging aspect, but the feed reader is so much better for everything else. For me, twitter is the 5min (personalised) tv news show and feed reader is my morning paper. J’adore my morning paper! :-p
And yes, links to your blog posts are the ad break to my 5 min news show!
Sugar #5
27.Jan.10
@Papajohn
I barely have time to check my feed reader anymore – Twitter is always on and there’s always something interesting to see. No need to scour between posts to read something interesting – your friends & the people you are following already do that for you.
So sorry, I’ll stick to Twitter for now
xpanta #6
27.Jan.10
Sugarenia, I agree with all of the points you mention. (this does not happen very often).
I especially agree with the fact that smart usage of twitter is better than google reader (or any other rss feed reader whatsoever). Twitter lists are especially made for this.
sla #7
27.Jan.10
+1 for cold elitist bastard. Perfectly capturing the essence of certain people.
Alex #8
27.Jan.10
Interesting post with nice facts and cynical observations.
I disagree though with the statement: “Because english is a simpler, more techno-friendly language that reaches to billions of people, and not just some thousands.”
Writing in greek is more challenging and you can easily fit in tech terms.
Also your audience is greek people, i don’t think people from other countries will bother reading blogs by greek people for tech related issues.
They will read stuff from tech gurus, experts, pros like techcrunch, mashable and other well known people or sites in general.
Sugar #9
27.Jan.10
@Alex
I disagree. I do not target only greek people, I write first and foremost for myself and for every web lover out there that can grasp basic english.
That kind of mentality is quite dangerous. We (as Greeks) must stop the navel-gazing and look outside the borders of our web community.
Unless you mean that my content is not good enough for people outside Greece – that, I can accept.
Also – I write for CSS3.gr in greek and I was the leader of the translation team for the InterACT curriculum (http://interact.webstandards.org/). I think I learnt a thing or two about technical writing in greek – and I still think it’s really, really challenging.
Berry_product #10
27.Jan.10
liked your post. I follow this rules at a 97% rate
The only difference is i don’t have a real problem with persons tweeting only titles+links.
One another thing is i find extremely annoying people retweeting posts after they have changed some bits of the original information
Alex #11
27.Jan.10
The mentality is not dangerous, it is reality served on a cold plate.
For example if i wanted to learn stuff about css i would first visit css-tricks.com which is very popular and written in english by a well respected designer.
On the other hand i would like to visit and read stuff from sites like css3.gr which are written in greek.
If css3.gr was written in english i don’t think it would reach more visitors since people would prefer to read stuff from well known sites first.
I believe if you wrote this post about twitter in greek you would get far more comments and visits.
Also the fact that i am typing in english to reply to a post where all comments are made by greek people is abit odd i think hehe
Sugar #12
27.Jan.10
@Alex
My blogging aim is not comments and visits. I write in english because it’s more convenient and feels more authentic to me, when writing about tech.
You seem to know quite a bit about my reader base though – care to share your heuristic data? Seriously, people would pay for this kind of analysis.
I’m sorry but you totally miss the point. You have every right to express your opinion – in fact, I’m the one that provided you with the chance to do so here anyway – but I have every right to totally disagree with it.