What is the etiquette around Twitter?
pcnerd37 writes on the Global Geek Blog:
“With the explosion in popularity that Twitter has received, especially with the massive usage at SXSW, it has become very clear that some facets of twitter are beginning to annoy people. For the benefit of all twitter users, I have made a list of rules for Twitter usage.”
A lot of these rules are pretty much the same as the netiquette so no big surprise there.
I’m wondering though about the etiquette specific to Twitter – like – if you get followed, is it necessary to rabbit out a “thanks” to each and every person? It really just ups reduces the signal:noise ratio even further. Bollocks to it I say. I don’t think it has any place in the conversation.
I’ve only unfollowed three people so far. These would be @guykawasaki, @jasoncalacanis and @scobleizer. Reason? Too much irrelevant signal. It’s not strictly noise when you’re talking about when it’s luminaries like these guys but at the same time, they’re hearing so much from their thousands of followers that there’s no conversation. And they update sufficiently frequently that Twitter just turns into their monologue. They put out signal, they only hear noise.
If you do get unfollowed and you’re informed about it by a tool like Qwitter, then please don’t waffle and beg and ask why. It’s just sad. Fix your signal.
I too unfollowed @guykawasaki for the spamming. Twitter should be all about cats falling over in Starbucks.
If you’re not making one kitten-related tweet a day, ur doin it wrong, as they say. That’s how to fix the signal.
Too much spam, not enough kittens = unfollow. Or something like that.