Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

Not sure why I even feel like posting this - probably because I’m overwhelmed with things I should be doing so naturally want to do something I don’t have to.  At any rate, here are my rough self-guidelines for twitter usage.  No promises of success, no analytics tracking data to back them up.  Just what feels right.

• No tweets about food. Yes, I just had an amazing meal but you weren’t there to share it so why rub it in?
• No tweets about commercial air travel. It sucks for everyone - no sense confirming it. Updates via emails to MsBoyink are enough.
• No tweets about workouts. Yes, I’ve gone for runs and long bike rides but do you really want to know every time I break a sweat?
• No retweeting compliments from others. A simple thank you to the original tweeter is enough.
• No “sharing” or “liking” from sources like YouTube or Pandora. If I really want you to see a certain video I’ll make more of an effort than clicking a button and sending a standard message to Twitter.
• No Mac vs. PC crap.  I don’t say “buy a PC” when your Mac has issues, spare me the opposite when my system has trouble.
• No following FourSquare or GoWalla users. If you value my attention so little that you’ll spend it just telling me where you are then you probably won’t miss me.
• Attempt to be encouraging and positive, but not at the expense of honest reactions & feelings.

Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.

1. Ben Carlson on August 30, 2010

   Hah, your post title is ambiguous and it threw me for a loop when I first read it. “What? Mike acknowledging that Twitter is awesome?! No way!”

   Then I read the post and it all makes sense. =) I generally agree with your rules. I mean Twitter can be whatever to whoever, and no one is “right” or “wrong” and some people you follow plant themselves all over a scale of “this is acceptable to me” or “this is not acceptable,” and there are no hard lines, and sometimes there needs to be a little leeway, but sometimes things are too out of hand.

   Although since switching jobs, I haven’t been nearly as active on Twitter as I used to, and I haven’t really missed it too much. I hop on there if I need something or hop on my phone if I am bored, but it’s not a piece of my time that I miss too much.

2. Chad Warner on September 01, 2010

   I agree with the rules, especially those about food and geolocation services like FourSquare. There are several people I follow for the 1 out of 10 tweets of their tweets that are valuable, but it’s hard to filter out the 9 in 10 useless tweets.

3. Stuart on October 03, 2010

   Absolutely - these rules should be (IMO) emblazoined all users hearts. and if they ignore them then we get to tatoo them somewhere painful ;)

   Seriously - nice set of rules and I’ve still yet to get any of the gowalla / 4sq bunch to answer a question as to why they use these services. I even wrote about this back in June on my own blog asking the users of these services to “sell them to me”: http://www.churchtechy.com/2010/06/sell-this-to-me/

   Got a few replies but not from them!

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