Twitiquette: Etiquette for Twitter

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I do like Twitter, and think it has lots of room to grow, but I have a particular way that I like it to be used.

1. Cream of Crop. Twitter is not a complete braindump of everything that happens to you throughout the day. It's not IM'ing from your subconscious. It's for the gems. The best. The top events, thoughts and things you come across. It's the stuff you would write home about. Everyone is looking in and if you send too much stuff that isn't worth looking at, you'll stop being followed. You can get a lot and it's not meant to be an exact medium, but there is a point where you miss good stuff because of the bland stuff.

2. Occasionally Personal Qwirky. Once in a while, maximum once a day you can throw in a little bit of individual life. Like, "Back from they gym and I'm really really tired." That's fine. Mix it up a little. Let us know you're human. Just don't tell us every little thing that happens. Don't twitter "Morning" "Coffee time." "Good coffee" "Back to work" "Hungry..." "Reading a website" "Checking emails". I'm really not interested, if other people are and I'm too 1.9 then OK, fair enough, but I think it applies.

3. Remember the Invisible Audience. Your Twitter crowd is vague and changing. Not everyone watches, not everyone reads every message, not everyone follows everyone. Responding "Oh, that's funny." when half the people don't know what was funny is disastrous.

More Twitter guides here and here.

Discuss it Here

Comments

[dekrazee1]

Everytime I read one of these etiquette lists for twitter, it makes me wanna break every rule listed!
:D

[Phil Morle]

@dekrazee1: You already do don't you?

[alan]

I hear you, and it frustrates me too when i keep getting notifications that someone feels like a coffee. But personally, I don't care very much how large or small my Twitter audience is.

As long as it has my key peeps on it (you, Mick, obviously, and my mum, though not my wife as she's still stuck in 1.9) I don't really care who drifts in or out.

The only people who really need to consider Twitter etiquette are the people like you, factoryjoe, missrogue, etc for whom their twitterstream is part of their broader marketing relationship with their customers/users.

And you guys mostly have it down already cos if you didn't intuitively know how to do it, you wouldn't be doing this for a living, right?

...though sometimes missrogue's unalloyed love for factoryjoe gets a little repetitive... get a room, you two... with free wifi, obviously...

[Ben Buchanan]

I can't remember where I saw this suggested, but a good rule is this: if you've just posted three tweets in a row (ie. you're in the stream 1,2,3) then you should stop and think about what you're doing.

Tweet five times in a row and you really need IRC or a blog post ;)

[Julian Schrader]

thanks for this post -- another resource to link to in terms of twitter etiquettes and something that lets me think about some of my recent tweets ;-)