… slightly different…
I love Twitter.
No, really.
I am a massive fan of the microblogging service. I like the brevity of 140 characters. I like the fact that it works on my phone and I can use it anywhere.
But I have some issues, not so much with Twitter, but with the way (or ways) the service is being used by just a few folk.
*Issue #1*
I have noticed – and increasingly so – that there are some people who sometimes just ‘say’ things on Twitter, simply for the sake of ‘saying’ things. Like, for example, when they have run out of things of their own to say.
Which, frankly, is stupid.
Let me paint a picture with a hypothetical question.
Would you stay subscribed to a person’s blog feed if a significant percentage of their output comprised randomly uncompiled links from some (pretty rubbish) sources, out-and-out marketing hooks and thinly disguised adverts for various hardline commercial concerns?
Would you?
No, of course you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t either.
And that’s why I am here now, making a firm statement that from this point onwards I have no intention of following a Twitter feed if it is composed of a similar calibre of utter piffle.
Harsh? Yeah, maybe, but look.
I know that every year a few bloggers give up blogging for no reason other than they’ve they run out of things to say.
But if a Twitter user has run out of things to say (and seriously, it’s only 140 characters – and, you know, there’s no *compulsion* to use it every hour of the waking day) what’s wrong with just taking a deep breath, kicking back and… saying nothing, for a while?
I mean, why do people retweet marketing shit from some global, commercial beauty products conglomerate?
Why?
And while I’m on that particular strand of thought, why would *anyone* retweet pure *marketing* information from some beauty products company who, by their very own admission, actively supports and funds an organisation whose members have repeatedly been convicted of violence?
Yes, I’m talking about you, Lush, you hate-crime funding bastards.
So tell me, why would someone do that?
And why would anyone retweet grammatically incorrect, factually dubious, puerile nonsense from some American ‘life coach’ (whatever the fuck one of those is)?
I mean, if you’ve got nothing of any value to say and you just want to push buttons to validate yourself and get your Twitter ID out there in front of people because you’re feeling so insecure you might fall off the face of this planet in a minute (deep breath), why don’t you find something *useful* from someone else’s words?
Or something appropriate or relevant?
‘Wear sunscreen’ by Baz Luhrmann, how about those words? Those two words contain some of the most helpful, and one of the weightiest pieces of advice ever given to any member of our species.
Wear sunscreen.
And how about ‘Don’t shop at Lush because they give a shitload of money to people who terrorise innocent, law-abiding folk’?
In fact ‘Boycott Lush for life’ would be words of almost equal value as ‘Wear sunscreen’.
*Issue #2:*
Here’s another Twitter nonsense that is, frankly, beyond all sensible, reasonable logic:
Follow Friday.
What the hell?
Look, here’s my piece of thinking on this Follow Friday Phenomenon, condensed down to three simple sentences.
Don’t.
Do.
It.
If I want to know who you follow I will look up your Twitter profile and… look up who you follow. I may even read their backdated tweets.
It’s easy, isn’t it?
And it cuts both ways.
If you want to know who I follow on Twitter (and that’s a pretty big ‘if’ for a start, because why would you?), why don’t you go to my Twitter profile and just… see who I follow?
Honestly, the notion that I can single out a handful of the worthies who I follow on Twitter for praise, from the hundred or so people I do follow is, frankly, ludicrous.
By the same string of logic I don’t understand how anyone can single out a handful of who they follow, in order to highlight them to a wider audience, without tacitly devaluing everyone else they follow.
Unless, of course, people are highlighting *everyone* they follow by rotating them on a regular basis to ensure everyone gets equal coverage.
In which case, WTF is that all about?
Does anyone else understand just how much this kind of situation demeans the whole tool?
Or the service?
Meanwhile I’m supposed to sit here and have Friday’s incoming Twitter streams clogged up by some people I follow, each promoting a dozen or so *other* people who I could look up?
If I could be arsed?
Am I really supposed to put up with that?
Here’s a hypothesis for you.
How about this: I follow people who I want to. But if they start acting bizarrely (see any of the above) I’ll unfollow them.
Deal?
*Issue #3*
Here’s another pile of Twitter wrongness.
People constantly retweeting random people.
Look mate, you follow them if you want, but your default position should be that every one of your followers *does not* want you to recycle someone else’s tweets.
And here’s a scenario for any serial retweeters out there: 35 retweets and reposted links in less than an hour? Do you think that’s good? I’ve got news for you, it’s very bad.
Look, if people do that, then under my 2010 Twitter Etiquette, I will unfollow you.
If people are looking to reduce the number of people who follow them, they should just carry on with the multiple fucking retweets and reposted links and see what happens.
In my eyes anyone who produces multiple retweets is doing something that is on a par with producing spam. Think I’m alone in this view? Ask around.
In fact, does anyone think my logic is left-field on any of these things?
Think again.
It’s a little like blogging; if someone constantly behaved as badly on a blog, their blog would haemorrhage readers – and everyone know it!
The same applies to Twitter.
Simples.
So this is my Twitter Charter for 2010.
I shall live by these rules.
I’ll close with one simple statement:
Twitter users should follow the (heavily paraphrased) words of Bambi’s mother: If you can’t think of anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.
It’s the quality that makes the tool good, *not* the quantity.
Phew! Had to check through that list and make sure I was following the rules correctly – and I am! 😉
I never do FollowFriday (perhaps ungraciously because people seem to frequently quote me as a FF “candidate”) because, well, it seems a bit pointless to me. Also, I don’t *think* I’ve ever retweeted anything unless, perhaps once in a blue moon when it’s something totally vital like “Michael Jackson Dead – believed result of venomous chicken bite”. This is partly because it seems weird to repeat people and partly because I am frankly FAR more interesting than anyone else even when tweeting something that would be mundane in another’s life like, I don’t know, er, “I am wearing soiled pyjamas” although, of course it would be Quite Interesting if it was Gordon Brown tweeting that, which he probably wouldn’t since I don’t believe he can actually type – in fact, he’s a bit like the Tooth Fairy, after a certain age you stop believing that GB is real and is in fact so obviously a made-up character you wonder how the rest of the country has missed it.
Anyway, I digress – a side effect of having more than 140 characters to play with – perhaps I can sum it up like this:
RT @brennig “Twitter is alright except for the luzers” <– I agree. #ff #twitterquette #brenning-for-president-of-the-internet
god. i didn’t even understand what this follow friday business was about. i like twitter but i cant be bothered to keep up with its management speak/in jokes or anything that organises the fun out of it!
I’ve been in two minds whether to delete my twitter account or not. It’s a load of nonsense…but then I suppose that’s part of the point of it?! I just use it as something else to distract me in times of boredom.
I’ve noticed the number of retweets going up lately too, does my tits in (not literally).
*applauds*
Agree with every single word of it, particularly regarding Lush.
PS: I was discussing the Lush situation with a group of women online when the news first broke and interestingly even some of the vehemently anti-hunting women said they would be boycotting Lush because they didn’t approve of supporting terrorism either.
Here, here! Where can I sign the petition? You are spot on here Bren! Hip. hip, huzzah for you!