The Amy Post of Twitterdom

What is proper Twitter etiquette these days?  My colleague Ted Weismann blogged on an aspect to this a while back, specifically related to "following".  After discussions with some of the other Twitter users at the agency, I'm adding some additional rules to the list.  Think of this as “The Amy Post of Twitterdom.”

• If Twitter tells you someone is following you, you don’t have to follow them.  Check their profile to see if their background and specialty would make them valuable to follow.  Also check their Twitter feed to see if they provide relevant information.  If the first screen of “tweets” I see are a series of @thisone and @thatone, I don’t follow them regardless of their background.  I worry that they are Twitter Dwellers who will deluge me with tweets I don’t have time to read.

• Some people send an immediate “tweet” to thank the new follower for choosing their feed.  This is a bit “Eddie Haskell” for my taste [for those of us old enough to remember the smarmy phoney friend of Leave It to Beaver’s brother Wally.]  If Eddie was on Twitter, he’d “tweet” to new followers, “That’s a REALLY nice tweet you just sent, so and so!”

• Don’t say “good morning” and “good night.”  We aren’t working or living together.  I don’t need to know when you log in or out and neither does anyone else.  [If someone is watching your whereabouts online that closely, I’d alert the police that you have a stalker.]

• Don’t over-share.  As much as I am happy that there are many foodies on Twitter who enjoy good meals, I don’t need to hear about every single one of them.  The same goes for exciting trips and vacations.  Unless you can bring enough for the entire class (food, wine or airline tickets), please keep the fun stuff to yourself.

• Don’t overdo the “tweeting.”  Unless you have incredibly brilliant insights or data to share, you should never “tweet” more than once an hour, in my humble opinion.  And perhaps once a day would be enough.  Less is more applies to Twitter the same as it does most other forms of communication.

• Be polite.  Don’t use foul language or make offensive statements or people like me will quickly “unfollow” you. 

• Practice clarity of thought.  If you cannot write a coherent sentence, you shouldn’t be subjecting people to your Twitter feed.  You probably shouldn’t be allowed to write email either.  Get thee to a writing course, fast!

• Don’t write an article using Twitter.  One of the people I follow apologized in advance a few weeks ago, saying she does not have a blog, but had insights she wanted to share and proceeded to do so in 140-character “tweets”  -- about 6-7 of them in succession.  Stephen Baker of BusinessWeek got away with this, in an experiment earlier this year about using Twitter to write an article.  Non-journalist Twitter fans should not try that at home.  It just doesn’t work and will cause someone to “unfollow” you.

In general, Twitter is always interesting reading and can be the source of some really great information that someone else with like interests or views has unearthed and is willing to share.  It also can connect you with a wide range of people around the world instantly.  You get to know them because you regularly see what they are thinking and learn their views on current events.

If you follow Amy Post, you will live a successful run in Twitterdom and will be blessed by interesting followers.  If not -- well, they don't call it "TWITter" for nothing . . .