Twitter Thoughts
April 21st, 2008While Greg Schwartz re-examines his Twitterness, I’m finding that my Twitter groove is starting to flow again (maybe all of this stuff comes and goes in cycles). I’m figuring out the whole timing thing by not logging onto Twitter while researching. When I’m doing mindless tasks (like approving invoices, data entry), I’ll jump on to say hi, but as soon as I get a research request, off it goes. It seems to be working rather well.
I’m also in the process of denying most requests to follow me on Twitter. Before you call me pompous or narcissistic, hear me out. You see, I’m pretty new at this online social networking thing (I don’t do MySpace, Facebook, altghough I have been on Flickr for a while and my blog has been around for a bit too) and have just begun to understand the craziness at its core.
I’ve had some Twitter issues in the past where some followers didn’t understand me and accused me of being mean to them. What they didn’t get (and what everyone else did) was that I was joking, because that is what we librarians do in Twitter. You can’t hold a serious conversation with colleagues in 140 characters with all of your other Twitter followers “looking” on. It just doesn’t work that way.
So, I began the process of blocking those that found me “offensive” as well as those I thought might get “offended” about other stuff that I Tweet about in the future. I also made the choice to only accept Twitter follower requests of those that I have actually met in person at some point in my career or have had a few e-mail or phone conversations with.
The result is that for every 50 people I deny, I accept 1. What I’m finding is that this totally works for me. Not only do I feel a lot more comfortable in Twitter with my friends, but it cuts down on the possibility that I will be following too many people and get burnt out quicker. Win Win Win.
I’m going to do the same thing for my Flickr account, although I won’t be blocking anyone. I’m just going to mark followers as friends and/or family and work from there. Barbie has wanted me to do this for a while and it’s about time I did it.
I’ve learned more about friendship, collegial bantering, and online social networking choices in the past month, and it hasn’t been easy. I’ve also learned that if I am going to speak my mind and have an opinion outside of this blog, I’m still not going to hold back. I’m just going to make sure that certain people are listening.
April 21st, 2008 at 10:39 pm
*nods*
I guess I’m having the opposite problem, which is that, for the most part, I want to take the time to have those conversations with (most of) the people who want to follow my Tweets. I want to include new people and broaden my network. But I also want to not spend my entire life managing my social network.
I expect that I will dip back into Twitter primarily as a way of broadcasting messages to my so-called followers and initiating conversations, while only monitoring replies and DMs. The full-on multilogue is just too much for me. I don’t think I’m capable of the occasional dip. Maybe I’m wrong. Hmmm, what’s this Second Life icon on my desktop?
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:51 am
Good for you, Stephen! The people who don’t understand the medium or the way messages are relayed sap one’s energy and waste others’ time. For example, someone via a comment to my blog wanted to know why I seemed to hate public libraries. As any regular reader knows, not only do I work on behalf of public libraries, but I certainly don’t hate them. But it took me a good 20-30 minutes to craft a response to that, ending with a strong suggestion to read the blog to further understand the message.
It seems that, on the web, people feel free to engage in community without knowing the mores or etiquette governing that community.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:23 am
[...] friend and popular blogger Steven Cohen also is attempting to manage his relationship with Twitter, and interestingly notes that Twitter is his first foray into “social networking,” [...]
April 24th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Are you vetting people now?
“Can anyone recommend - http://twitter.com/lorireed as a follower for me?”
April 24th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
What a funny troll-like question!
We *all* vet who we allow as followers and who we follow back. Even those of us following, like, a thousand people. Otherwise you might have someone very creepy follow you.
April 28th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Okay, you are makiing me think - and that is good. Expanding my options of how to best use twitter. I’ve tried the follow everyone approach, follow a few and neither one has really made twitter useful for me. Perhaps I will do as you are doing and will follow only those I know well for a while and see what the results are. . . hummm.