I tweet A LOT @cncx. The short version of my “Twitter policy” is that I don’t have one. Still, please keep the following points in mind:
1. The one thing I hate on Twitter above all things are people whose philosophy is “I only follow you if you are a prominent blogger who has at least 1000 followers and are on 100 lists and I want to look all deep and stuff when people actually go to my page to click on the little list and I only want to follow people who tweet exactly what I tweet.” Using Twitter like an exclusive club it goes against the philosophy and nature of the platform and people who play high school games are missing out on the richness of the information at hand. If you are one of these Tweeters, I am judging you in private. I have to deal with enough hipster exclusivity in Lausanne. Not gonna do it online.
2. I follow people I like and my TL is as diverse as my interests. That means a little bit of social media, a little bit of Dutch and French, a little bit of Swiss stuff, a little bit of pro-choice stuff, a little bit of Islam, a little bit of New Orleans, a little bit of Algeria and Morocco, a little bit Ole Miss and so on. I’m a “life tweeter” and sometimes I talk about the weather and what I had for breakfast but I do think I have a good balance of life tweets, useful links and carefully chosen RTs. I don’t curate for popularity and don’t like people who do. That means I am not going to get offended if you don’t follow me back, either.
3. Unless I know you in real life, or have been a devoted reader of your site, I don’t automatically follow back. I need to take time to go back and read your stuff, make sure you aren’t a bot or a follow whore, and sometimes that takes until the next weekend. If you have only tweeted a dozen times, it makes the matter much easier for me to decide if you have a link to your site in your profile. Common Twitter courtesy peeps: make it easy for people to know what you are about, either by tweeting often or providing links to information about you.
4. I only unfollow or block for specific, discrete reasons. The first is attempting to curate my tweets for me (telling me what to tweet about, either directly or indirectly, e.g. “Good Muslims should only tweet about Gaza when Gaza is a major trending topic” or “smart people don’t talk about the World Cup when children are dying in Biafra and I hate football”). The second insulting my person or making dramatic “I’m quitting Twitter/I’m unfollowing you because you’re boring and you suck” statements, for which you will get blocked. My twitter is public, but I don’t have time for drama in my TL or in my @replies. Finally, if you are locked down and you follow me, and don’t allow me to follow back, I block. Twitter is about interaction and why should you subscribe to my page (although if you wanted to be psychostalker you could go to the web interface anyway) if I can’t read yours?
5.(Update January 2011) I LOVE Twitter. But I don’t think Twitter is the revolution. A RT is not the same as someone dying on the street for what he believes in. Don’t confuse the two. The social media era is still in its infancy (even if people are getting tired of hearing Web 2.0) and all the things we are doing with Twitter (and FB and YouTube) when it comes to politics and activism is still part of a learning process, like all online activities. We don’t have all the answers. But keep tweeting!
