Sunday, April 3, 2011

The Twen Commandments

I've been pondering recently the things on Twitter that wind me up, but, more importantly, what works well in use of it as a medium and I thought I'd share my 'rules of Twitter' or my Twen Commandments if you like - as I tweeted them earlier today.
  1. Anyone using deckly or similar such services breaks the spirit of Twitter and will get unfollowed!
  2. Any applications that tweet 'as' you (or DM you unsolicitedly) without your knowledge are evil.
  3. Don't RT any feeds that ask you to do to win something. You taint their brand and make you look like a spammer.
  4. Never beg for followers. It makes you look like a sad act.
  5. 'Celebs' who don't engage with their followers by replying to them are vacuous and should be ignored/unfollowed.
  6. Any brand not on there and not responding to tweets both to and about them doesn't care and has no clue.
  7. Be patient with newbies. They keep it fresh and relevant as a medium and drive innovation.
  8. 'Humorous' news related parody feeds that live for anything more than 4 weeks is flogging a dead horse.
  9. People who only ever tweet when they are trying to promote something (PR etc) must be unfollowed immediately.
  10. Finish lists like this when the material naturally ends, rather than rounding it up to a landmark number.
Had to add the last one as a homage to social media 'news' sites that endless post dull lists of even duller things (am sure many will know who I mean!) but thought I'd share generally.

My personal opinion and all that of course ...
Posted by Alex Brown at 7:27 PM
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1 comment:

  1. So many problems with this, I don't know where to start. But ...

    There are no rules, or as you choose to call them "commandments" to social media. Much like going to a dinner party with a loudmouth guest, you can't just say "It's against the rules".

    Junk like Deckly died a natural death. No rules required. Ditto 4sq, horoscopes and the like. So easy to unfollow. No rules required.

    Retweets: Nobody folows serial retweeters for long. Common sense applies -> Unfollow.

    Dodgy apps? People learn. Sometimes the hard way, but they do learn.

    Celebs? Well, any celeb that thinks they'll make a market impression via Twitter is nuts. Yes, celeb feeds *can* be interesting, but it's not their shop window.

    Be patient with newbies? Oh my. I bet you were a mod on a couple of newsgroups or IRC channels once. PATRONISING.

    Begging for followers? I suspect anyone who follows someone begging for followers realises that the followee is merely a "stamp-collector" and doesn't care about *you*, so unfollows.

    I think you take too much upon youself with this post. I think you insult the intelligence of most/all Twitters.

    Social media is 'organic' (yuck). It grows it's own culture. Anyone trying to overlay a set of 'rules' is clearly out of touch.

    A.


    A.

    ReplyDelete

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