In a twitch on Twitter
- filed under Tech
Yesterday, Allyson Kapin of Rad Campaign and Women Who Tech pointed to the supposed Ten Commandments of Twitter and wondered how many we agreed with. Me? Some, I guess, but it got me thinking first about Twitter etiquette (Twitterquette? sounds like a dessert or a lawn game), and then other old and new netiquette issues.
It's fascinating to watch unspoken rules evolve in new social systems over time, and then curmudgeonly frustrating when someone tries to write them down. I can see how religions all over the world got themselves into trouble early on. "Wait, when he said 'honor thy father and mother,' does that mean I have to go over for dinner every Sunday? Seriously?" I admire the TenCommandments dude for giving it a shot, but… yeah. Telling people how to act is going to irritate some of the people some of the time.
It's curious to me because I'm a firm believer in using the tools however best you see fit, whatever fits your info-digestion style. Me, I use Twitter mostly to follow people I know in person (I'm training myself to finally stop saying "in real life," btw, since it's all real life), and a little bit to get breaking news. It's been indicated to me in a passive way that I'm not participating in good Twitter karma by following everyone that follows me. There's even an app that will check your mutual status called Twitter Karma. It's a bogus "rule" slowly being imposed on a nascent system of social transactions.
It reminds me of 1994, when if you didn't link back to someone in your little HTML page of family photos, there was bad blood between you after that. People, people, people! Come on. First of all, we're all adults here. I see people I'm close with, that I'm following, that are not following me back. I know there's a 99% chance it's because I tweet too much for their diet, or their community, and I can understand that. (In fact, I'm going to have to clean out some high-volume tweeters this weekend myself.) The point is not for me to thus impose a new rule to counteract the karma rule, but to ask people to live and let live.
We all have different styles of communicating, yes? This is a point we can agree on? In fact, when I'm doing trainings and workshops on using new tools, it's one of my main points: don't let anyone else tell you how best to use the tool. Sure, you can take suggestions or follow someone's lead. I've showed people how to use Twitter just to read news feeds, or just to know what their friends are up to, or to stay on top of tech trends.
In the end, social rules are going to evolve no matter what I say (le sigh, my power is not yet infinite and cosmic), and it's going to be fun to watch these new sets play out. It's kinda funny that, even after 20 years, you can still make a major social faux pax by not emailing someone back. We come up with all kinds of reasons in our little overactive brains: "she's pissed at something I said," "she never got the email," "he never really loved me." Maybe they just… forgot.
posted Fri., Aug 8, 2008 at 10:21am
tags: allyson kapin • communications • email • etiquette • karma • rules • social networking • technology • twitter
August 8th, 2008 at 11:38 am
I totally call bullshit on the ten commandments of twitter. I wrote a rant but I'm going to delete it now.
I'll stick to saying that Twitter is a tool. It isn't MUD. It isn't even IRC. If I don't like the way you tweet, I won't follow you. No big thing.
I wrote a post on a list at one point about how Gotham Gazette uses twitter and a million people got irate about it. Or three people. The idea that I'm somehow going to single handedly ruin twitter with a feed of one way posts is absurd. Some people like it. The ones who don't … they don't subscribe. It is *no* *big* *thing*.
I guess I'm ranting anyway.
August 8th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Exactamundo, my friend. I think the only one on the list that I appreciated in the end was the last one– assuming that the people who follow you are following at least 150 others, and aren't waiting on your every tweet with bated breath.
August 8th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
A few things about this list rub me the wrong way.
Who gets to qualify what's "funny" and "entertaining" for commandments number two and three?
Number five insists that we answer the "What are you doing?" question, but some of the best tweets have nothing to do with what you're doing.
And ambient intimacy isn't affected adversely by message frequency. Dudeman8848 can't ruin my revealing glimpse into JennieOhs evening meal simply by tweeting more than 25 times in a day about his new muscle car. In fact, it helps my connection with him.
I'm assembling some Twitter best practices over here: http://twitter.com/bestpractices Feel free to reply with your suggestions for the list.