BLADAM - Entry - Stop being a twit on twitter!

DISCLAIMER: This is my personal blog. The blatherings here aren't (necessarily) the views of the current company I work for, companies I've previously blessed with my presence, my loving parents, the Illuminati, or anyone other than me, me, me!

Stop being a twit on twitter!

Don’t get the wrong idea. Despite having a cold and ironically being hot in an apartment with no airconditioning, I’m not unhappy with my life. True, I’m a bit cranky again, but I’m not deeply bummed. Just ornery and snotty.

Today, it was just a little thing that triggered my annoyance: For perhaps one of the last times, I read yet another asinine tweet on Twitter. In an effort to not call out a specific (normally nice and sensible) fellow, I’ll slightly obscure it thusly: “Going to the bathroom.”

Going to the bathroom. We all do it. We all know we do it. It’s not particularly exciting—at least typically—and it’s hardly the thing a normal person would announce unless there’s some particular need-to-know (roomies in a one bedroom apartment, little kids asking to be excused from a class, etc.). But make it Web 2.0 and, wheee, suddenly people believe that they need to share such crap with others… or that others have even a faint interest in reading such banal nonsense.

So, Adam, I imagine you retorting, chill out and just unsubscribe from those people that tweet lamely. I would, except every once in a while, these same folks refreshingly tweet something interesting or useful… or even a note or question directed specifically @me.

It’s like how your Aunt Frida (hopefully no longer) sends you teeth-gnashingly stupid forwards. Bill Gates is gonna give you a million bucks. P&G supports satan worship.

Frida is a good person, a well-meaning lady, but sometimes she just doesn’t THINK before she hits “send.” And, clearly, you don’t want to filter her notes into your junk mail because at least one out of every ten notes she sends is something you really *do* want to read… a happy-birthday wish, a sad revelation about her health, or even just a simple cute “I’m thinking about you .”

Thankfully, nearly all of my friends and relatives have gotten smarter about e-mail etiquette. When are (normally quite intelligent and thoughtful) people gonna wise up about Twitter?

At risk of being told, “Dude, who the bleep do you think you are to tell us what to do?” I’m going to, well, suggest what I think is optimal Twitter usage. You sure as heck don’t have to conform to my personal views on Good Twittering, but I’m more likely to read / less likely to unsubscribe from your tweets if you do .

I believe that the following things make sense to post on Twitter:

MOOD: How you’re feeling ("Kind of sick; apologies if I take longer than usual to reply to e-mails.")
QUEST: What you’re looking for or struggling with ("Dang, no matter how hard I try, I can’t find Hanuta in Bay Area stores. If you don’t know the joys of Hanuta… Google it! :D")
ACTION: What you’re doing ("Struggling with a blog post. Hate sounding so holier-than-thou, but sometimes a good rant is needed, you know?")
ANTICIPATION: What you’re looking forward to ("Planning a trip to Seattle, Montreal and Toronto… can’t wait! Anyone got tips? E-mail me!")
FILTERING: What you find interesting ("Fascinating article on...")

The following ought to result in you getting slapped with a wet e-noodle and subjected to watching hours of old Jerry Springer videos with the sound real loud:

CHEESE SANDWICH: What you’re doing that is totally boring / regular / etc. ("Having lunch” or “Reading my e-mail”...)
BORINGLY PERSONAL: What you’re writing is positively of interest to only one person ("Hey Fred… please don’t forget to return that book!” or “@Mary, thanks!") Try e-mail. Or IM. Or (gasp) the phone!
BLOGVERTISING: What you’re blogging. Each and every time. For the love of RSS, if I wanted to be notified of your *every* post, I’d subscribe to your feed.

* * *

Look, I haven’t said anything sooner ‘cause I worred about offending people… folks that I like and respect. And there’s been plenty of Twitter-hate already. But I don’t hate Twitter… I am just deeply frustrated by what I perceive as the wasting of its potential. It’d be so neat to have a quick window into friends’ and colleagues life. I care when my friends are tired. I’m curious to know when my colleagues are traveling to a conference. Even something as seemingly boring as “Filling up junky ‘92 Sentra en route to Chicago. Why didn’t I fly?!” tells me what kind of car you have, that you’re on a trip, that you’re frustrated, and you’re going to Chicago. Contrast that with the absolutely useless waste of space: “At the gas station.” Blegh!

So I implore you, before I feel compelled to uninstall Twitteroo and delete my account—think just a brief moment before you tweet. Ask yourself:

Will more than one or two people in the world care about this?
Can I add even a smidgen more detail to make this informative or entertaining?

Please… and thank you!

- Blathered by Adam on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 14:14 [ Permalink | Trackback ]
- Filed under Geekery • Communication tools • Grab bag • Tips
- Commented on by 16 folks so far. Scroll down and see for yourself (and join in the conversation!)

Comment from David Dalka Mobile Search Visionary [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Hey check out my latest post on boring cheese sandwiches! P&G supports Google? Who knew… - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 15:11 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member Adam San Francisco [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Sorry, David, no can do. I’m busy taking photos of my cat eating a cheese sandwich (Actually, that might even be kind of funny. I wonder if normal people would get the geek humor in that situation?) - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 15:31 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member JoeDuck [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	.... but, but I’ve been HOLDING IT waiting until I could twitter about going and now you are saying I can’t Twitter about it? This is going to get painful ...... I’m not sure I agree that the inane stuff is worthless - for me it has been very interesting to see what people choose to mention and to examine the sort of voyeuristic dance of the dialog on twitter. The surprising lack of profound insights is part of Twitter’s appeal / educational intrigue. Sort of like having a beer and talking weather with occasional deep, thought provoking discussion posts or sites bubbling up. - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 16:09 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Monty Loree Regina, SK [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Hey Adam, So, you’re complaining of BLOGVERTISING: and you posted this post on twitter.com. You must be pretty annoyed with that! At first I thought that twitter was a big freekin’ waste of time. Listening to people saying “time for lunch” etc. Then I realized, sometimes it’s the small things that people tell us about their live that are the most enjoyable. I think you need to reevaluate your twitter expectations. Best - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 18:12 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member Adam San Francisco [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Monty, I’ve twittered I think two of my last fifteen posts. Doesn’t quite qualify as every. Not to mention it was about Twitter :D But you and JoeDuck raise good points otherwise. Looking at the larger picture, maybe my efforts’d be more efficiently spent finding a tool that fits me better rather than trying to reshape the way others currently use Twitter. Then again, what if milions, not just a few thousand geeks, would use Twitter if it were more like I envision it? That’s admittedly presumptuous of me to even fathom, but it’s also not wholly improbable When it comes down to it, though, my beef is probably more rightly focused on either the way Twitter is structured (or unstructured) OR the follies of my attempt to impose my own communications ideologies and expectations on a tool that’s doing just fine without me. I think much of my frustration has stemmed from how I was hoping Twitter would be the best of RSS, e-mail, and Facebook Status. It’s really like none of that, and so it goes. - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 19:01 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member JoeDuck [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Right Adam, I think you were hoping for a holy grail of communication where a lot of us were thinking of Twitter as just another silly social media application, which it is. However it’s use is catching on so fast, and the folks using it share a lot of my interests, so my very low initial expectations have been ... exceeded! At least for the next few weeks until something else comes along to steal my attention away from productive work. - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 19:15 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member JohnMu CHeeseland (Switzerland) [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Seeing how twitter publishes twits as RSS, I wonder how many twitter-based splogs are out there already? - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 22:48 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Elizabeth Michigan [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	I’m still undecided about Twitter. I’d much rather chat back and forth with people than just read singular statements that don’t invite further discussion, you know? So I am guilty of doing that “@Sally-Really? that’s interesting...” thing. - Posted on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 5:03 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Monty Loree Regina, SK [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Adam, I get a sense that many people who spend countless hours isolated behind a keyword, need an out let to say things like “I ate a cheese burger” etc. In this super busy age, it’s really hard to find the energy to communicate these small little ditties. I think it’s important to a person’s psyche that people say these mundane things. Whether twitter is that place is still for debate. Having said that, I’ve learned a huge amount by the other more intelligent posts on twitter. Best. - Posted on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 6:20 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member Aaron D'Souza [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	At this point Twitter seems to be like the internet before search engines came along to help us find useful content. You either have to be happy with what you find along your random walk, or know exactly where (whom) you want to get your information from. If a million monkeys banged away at a million keyboards and one of them actually ended up producing the bard’s works, how would you find it? - Posted on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 6:59 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Harith [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Adam So you are deindexing your self from twitter. I will blame it mostly on; “a cold and ironically being hot in an apartment with no airconditioning”. Most important is that you are still happy with your life Honestly, Adam. twitter is a new media and maybe a new way of online communication in addition to forums, chat, messenger etc. Too early to issue a final judgement. Think about twitter as the rel=nofollow, the use of which is under continuous development Wish you consider filling a reinclusion request to twitter soon - Posted on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 8:34 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Rakesh Agrawal [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Adam, Make sure that the cheese sandwich your cat is eating has the virgin mary on it. It could be worth 30k to you. What do you think of GPS twittering?<a> Almost all <a href="http://twitter.com/rakeshlobster">my twittering is where I’m at. - Posted on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 14:48 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member rockya [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Adam, Be sure to toast an image of the Virgin Mary into the cheese sandwich ahead of time. It could be worth 30k on eBay. What do you think of GPS Twittering? Most of my twittering is about where I’m at… hiking in California, at conference, at beach. (sitting on toilet isn’t one I’ve done yet.) - Posted on Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at 11:10 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Christine Salem, MA [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	I specifically have avoided joining Twitter because of the meaningless crap people write on it. Bravo to your post! - Posted on Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at 13:31 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member Adam San Francisco [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Rocky, thanks for forgoing the bathroom-location tweets. As for GPS twittering… I don’t really see how Twitter is uniquely valuable here, either. 1) I already get that on Facebook, and in the context of much more relevant and useful info. 2) I generally don’t need for my friends to know where I am and they don’t usually need to know where I am. Usually I’m busy. When I have free time and I want to do something with friends, I either plan ahead or I call / e-mail / IM them. And thanks, Christine, Harith, Monty, John, and JoeDuck and Aaron for the comments. I don’t hold the Universal Truth re: twitter, and it’s neat to get different perspectives (or, in the case of Christine, blissful affirmation that I’m absolutely right ) - Posted on Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at 18:53 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from James Business for sale [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Hey, does is universal truth afters the twitters that they are scrappers? - Posted on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 22:40 [ Permalink to this comment ]

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Comment from David Dalka Mobile Search Visionary [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Hey check out my latest post on boring cheese sandwiches! P&G supports Google? Who knew… - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 15:11 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member Adam San Francisco [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Sorry, David, no can do. I’m busy taking photos of my cat eating a cheese sandwich (Actually, that might even be kind of funny. I wonder if normal people would get the geek humor in that situation?) - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 15:31 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member JoeDuck [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	.... but, but I’ve been HOLDING IT waiting until I could twitter about going and now you are saying I can’t Twitter about it? This is going to get painful ...... I’m not sure I agree that the inane stuff is worthless - for me it has been very interesting to see what people choose to mention and to examine the sort of voyeuristic dance of the dialog on twitter. The surprising lack of profound insights is part of Twitter’s appeal / educational intrigue. Sort of like having a beer and talking weather with occasional deep, thought provoking discussion posts or sites bubbling up. - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 16:09 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Monty Loree Regina, SK [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Hey Adam, So, you’re complaining of BLOGVERTISING: and you posted this post on twitter.com. You must be pretty annoyed with that! At first I thought that twitter was a big freekin’ waste of time. Listening to people saying “time for lunch” etc. Then I realized, sometimes it’s the small things that people tell us about their live that are the most enjoyable. I think you need to reevaluate your twitter expectations. Best - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 18:12 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member Adam San Francisco [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Monty, I’ve twittered I think two of my last fifteen posts. Doesn’t quite qualify as every. Not to mention it was about Twitter :D But you and JoeDuck raise good points otherwise. Looking at the larger picture, maybe my efforts’d be more efficiently spent finding a tool that fits me better rather than trying to reshape the way others currently use Twitter. Then again, what if milions, not just a few thousand geeks, would use Twitter if it were more like I envision it? That’s admittedly presumptuous of me to even fathom, but it’s also not wholly improbable When it comes down to it, though, my beef is probably more rightly focused on either the way Twitter is structured (or unstructured) OR the follies of my attempt to impose my own communications ideologies and expectations on a tool that’s doing just fine without me. I think much of my frustration has stemmed from how I was hoping Twitter would be the best of RSS, e-mail, and Facebook Status. It’s really like none of that, and so it goes. - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 19:01 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member JoeDuck [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Right Adam, I think you were hoping for a holy grail of communication where a lot of us were thinking of Twitter as just another silly social media application, which it is. However it’s use is catching on so fast, and the folks using it share a lot of my interests, so my very low initial expectations have been ... exceeded! At least for the next few weeks until something else comes along to steal my attention away from productive work. - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 19:15 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member JohnMu CHeeseland (Switzerland) [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Seeing how twitter publishes twits as RSS, I wonder how many twitter-based splogs are out there already? - Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 22:48 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Elizabeth Michigan [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	I’m still undecided about Twitter. I’d much rather chat back and forth with people than just read singular statements that don’t invite further discussion, you know? So I am guilty of doing that “@Sally-Really? that’s interesting...” thing. - Posted on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 5:03 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Monty Loree Regina, SK [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Adam, I get a sense that many people who spend countless hours isolated behind a keyword, need an out let to say things like “I ate a cheese burger” etc. In this super busy age, it’s really hard to find the energy to communicate these small little ditties. I think it’s important to a person’s psyche that people say these mundane things. Whether twitter is that place is still for debate. Having said that, I’ve learned a huge amount by the other more intelligent posts on twitter. Best. - Posted on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 6:20 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member Aaron D'Souza [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	At this point Twitter seems to be like the internet before search engines came along to help us find useful content. You either have to be happy with what you find along your random walk, or know exactly where (whom) you want to get your information from. If a million monkeys banged away at a million keyboards and one of them actually ended up producing the bard’s works, how would you find it? - Posted on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 6:59 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Harith [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Adam So you are deindexing your self from twitter. I will blame it mostly on; “a cold and ironically being hot in an apartment with no airconditioning”. Most important is that you are still happy with your life Honestly, Adam. twitter is a new media and maybe a new way of online communication in addition to forums, chat, messenger etc. Too early to issue a final judgement. Think about twitter as the rel=nofollow, the use of which is under continuous development Wish you consider filling a reinclusion request to twitter soon - Posted on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 8:34 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Rakesh Agrawal [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Adam, Make sure that the cheese sandwich your cat is eating has the virgin mary on it. It could be worth 30k to you. What do you think of GPS twittering?<a> Almost all <a href="http://twitter.com/rakeshlobster">my twittering is where I’m at. - Posted on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 14:48 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member rockya [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Adam, Be sure to toast an image of the Virgin Mary into the cheese sandwich ahead of time. It could be worth 30k on eBay. What do you think of GPS Twittering? Most of my twittering is about where I’m at… hiking in California, at conference, at beach. (sitting on toilet isn’t one I’ve done yet.) - Posted on Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at 11:10 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from Christine Salem, MA [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	I specifically have avoided joining Twitter because of the meaningless crap people write on it. Bravo to your post! - Posted on Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at 13:31 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from member Adam San Francisco [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Rocky, thanks for forgoing the bathroom-location tweets. As for GPS twittering… I don’t really see how Twitter is uniquely valuable here, either. 1) I already get that on Facebook, and in the context of much more relevant and useful info. 2) I generally don’t need for my friends to know where I am and they don’t usually need to know where I am. Usually I’m busy. When I have free time and I want to do something with friends, I either plan ahead or I call / e-mail / IM them. And thanks, Christine, Harith, Monty, John, and JoeDuck and Aaron for the comments. I don’t hold the Universal Truth re: twitter, and it’s neat to get different perspectives (or, in the case of Christine, blissful affirmation that I’m absolutely right ) - Posted on Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at 18:53 [ Permalink to this comment ]
Comment from James Business for sale [ BLADAM Profile \| URL ]	Hey, does is universal truth afters the twitters that they are scrappers? - Posted on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 22:40 [ Permalink to this comment ]