Twitiquette
A lot of people are confused about Twitter. Some people, like Dave Armano at CriticalMass, think it’s a “conversation ecosystem,” while others, like Edelman’s Phil Gomes, find it to be more of a private network and not a place for “friend collectors.”
The answer is that they’re both right. Twitter is a tool that can be used for many different purposes. If you choose to close off your network, you can maintain a degree of privacy with your tweets and use it to host a somewhat exclusive ongoing conversation between you and a larger group. If you want to open up your tweets to the world, then you have the opportunity to get a response from people you might otherwise of had no contact with. Likewise, an open Twitter user enables second and third degree contacts to expand their own circle when they see you replied to by one of their friends.
Of course, with any emerging communications platform, etiquette is a major factor in it’s long term success. Luckily for its current users, Twitter hasn’t yet exploded to the point where it has attracted many spammers or too many of the compulsive “frienders” of MySpace that have nullified any meaning of the social network “friend.”
Brian Oberkirch took the issue of Twitter etiquette head-on in a recent post where he lists some blunt pointers to existing in the Tweetosphere. Here are a few highlights:
Do:
make it clear what the link you are including will take us to.Do:
put a URL in your profile so people know who you are and can make choices about following you.Don’t:
overdo the @ tweets. It’s a stage whisper. For everything else, there is the D command. Learn it. Love it.Don’t:
try to follow like thousands of people. Unless you are a porn spammer. Or Robert Scoble.
Another thing I’d point out is to distinguish a difference between Twitter and your instant messaging platform. As much as the Strumpettes and 1938 Medias of the world may think that their readers want to listen to them feud with every PR blogger in the world in real time, most people are looking for snippets of organic conversations and don’t want to have to follow everyone that you’re following just to be able to listen to you.
What it all comes down to is knowing your audience. Keep on eye on who is following you and ask yourself if enough of them would be interested in your Tweet. Yes, your friends may be interested in what you had for breakfast but, if your network is largely professional, try to add something that that the group may benefit from.
Think of it as a giant dinner party.
