Why I won’t follow you on Twitter

In the past couple of years, I have seen Twitter evolve from its early days to it’s current, post-Oprah stage. What started out as a simple online tool created by many of the same people who created Blogger and other popular web applications, Twitter has evolved into a powerful communication tool to some, and a nuisance to others.

In its beginnings, it asked the question “what are you doing?”. The site’s original intentions was a way for a person to let friends know where they’re at, and find out what others are doing. If you get a text from Twitter saying that your buddy Joe is at a bar down the street, you might want to go join him. On an early, archived version of the Twitter homepage, it said “Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you are doing. For some friends you might want instant mobile updates—for others, you can just check the web.” Clearly, it has evolved into much more than that.

Twitter is really catching on in the ham radio community. Not sure why, but it is. With more users comes more problems. Much like HF, you must maintain a good signal-to-noise ratio for it to be useful. Lately, a lot of ham radio “re-tweeters” have jumped on the bandwagon. Many of these re-tweeters also contain spam (this week I saw the @HamTubeJp account full of tweets advertising used cars for a used car lot).

Ham radio operators use Twitter to let other operators know which frequency they’re calling CQ on, asking technical questions for other operators to answer (crowdsourcing), announcing club meetings or other events, asking for ARES volunteers, or briefly updating others on radio projects you’re working on.

I’ve become much more skeptical of Twitter since joining years ago. I am seeing Twitter becoming the next Myspace — hot and hip at first, and then as more people join, the product becomes the trailer park of the internet. We’re already seeing a lot of that happening (though I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter goes bankrupt before that happens).

Due to so much Twitter spamming and a general decrease in usefulness, I have considered deleting my account (such as Jeff, KE9V did). However, I felt that I want those who know me in real life to know what I’ve been up to and I’ve found it as a great communication tool. I compromised and made my main personal account set to private, where I approve only people I know in real life, and created a separate account for ham radio, where I post only radio-related ideas and thoughts. I don’t post short, cryptic one-line inane thoughts on either. Relevancy is the key to Twitter.

Jeff makes some great points in his post about the inane and narcissistic Twitter users, but I follow (and approve) only those who I personally know and am interested in, so I keep it relevant to my interests.

While technically there is no right way or wrong way to use Twitter, there are efficient ways and inefficient ways to use it. There are also ways to gain followers — and ways to lose followers. These points are just my opinion, and are just guidelines on what I personally think makes Twitter useful or useless. Venture forward at your own peril.

(Editor’s note: Most of this article was written a few months back and these examples aren’t amateur radio-specific, but same principles still apply.)

Taking the question “what are you doing?” to an extreme

In the early days, Twitter asked one simple question to people using Twitter: “what are you doing?”

Some people, especially after Twitter went mainstream, take that question too far by letting the world know that they’re clipping their toenails, or picking their nose, or drinking a Pepsi. This is a big reason why the signal-to-noise ratio is so lopsided. This comic from Penny Arcade is a good illustration of the point. Think to yourself if this post will be significant to anyone on Twitter.

If you can’t say it within the allotted 140 characters, don’t.

Twitter is a microblogging platform, and it is not intended for any messages over 140 characters. If it takes more than 140 characters to say what you want, take it to your real blog. If you can cut it down to 140 characters using word abbreviations and slang, then do it, but don’t cut it up into four or five separate, continuous posts. The user will probably read them in the wrong order (top to bottom, reverse chronologically by default) anyways. Yes, I’ve actually seen it happen and it’s not pretty.

Twitter is not a public RSS reader.

Twitterfeed is part of the cancer that is killing Twitter. Des Moines television station KCCI uses only Twitterfeed to update their Twitter account. If I wanted to see your headlines, I’d either go to your website or subscribe to your RSS feed in Google Reader.

The Des Moines Register posts headlines to their Twitter page, but only significant breaking news, quirky news, or crowdsourcing purposes. The Register also uses it for customer service purposes like missed paper deliveries or someone can’t find a particular article on the website.

#Common #words #in #hashtags and improper hashtags

Hashtags can be a powerful tool if used correctly. Used incorrectly, they can be a nuisance.

Erica, a Des Moines Twitterer, became my personal hero when she put my thoughts into words better than I can. There is no reason to say “I’m going to go ride by #Schwinn #bicycle at the park today” because if people are going to look for posts containing either “Schwinn” or “bicycle” they can find it without the hashtags. With Twitter allowing only 140 characters, the extra # can use up valuable space.

One instance that hashtags were useful was when the Des Moines Register created the #iagaymarriage hashtag when the Iowa Supreme Court announced its landmark ruling in April 2009. Using this hashtag, the Register was able to aggregate all Twitter posts and display them in real-time on the sidebar of gay marriage-related articles on their website.

Also, don’t use a hashtag that isn’t relevant to your tweet. Don’t use a #chocolate hashtag if you are talking about apples and not chocolate. Again, this decreases usefulness.

The above is a good use of hashtags. It’s a post asking his followers’ opinions of batteries for a radio, but as an amateur radio operator that isn’t one of his followers, I may not have found his post if it weren’t for the #hamr hastag because it doesn’t say “ham radio” in the post. Actually, this may not make any sense my my explanation, but trust me on this.

I think Twitter’s most valuable asset is the ability to track conversations in real-time and see what people are saying about certain topics, and hashtags (if used properly) is an efficient way to do it.

Dave Coustan explains the nuisance in more detail and reasoning.

“Plz RT” (No, please don’t.)

I hated it when “RT” and “r/t” started showing up in my Twitter stream maybe a year and a half to two years ago. When blogs became mainstream, it seemed like it started to echo itself. Everyone wrote the same thing, everyone linked the same thing, everyone linked to each other. It may not seem like a big deal, but if I wanted to read the posts of the person you’re “re-tweeting” then I would have followed that person. I followed you to read your posts, not someone else’s. Be creative and stop echoing everyone else.

What’s even worse is when there’s several layers of re-tweets like the one above. There’s the single re-tweet, the double (above), the triple, and I have even seen a quadruple. I wish I was kidding, but I’m not.

And what’s even worse than a quadruple-layered re-tweet? Someone asking for a re-tweet. If your post was worthy enough of a re-tweet, people would re-tweet it on their own without you asking. It’s just more teen-aged “look at me! look at me!” neediness that needs to get off Twitter and get back on MySpace.

If you’re a company on Twitter, make sure your social media specialist knows how to use social media effectively.

One of my favorite convenience store chains, QuikTrip, is a perfect example of this. It seems as though the company’s Twitter account has been placed in the hands of a 13-year-old girl, judging by its pointlessness and randomness. I have yet to see one single post that makes me want to walk into a QuikTrip store. There have been no deals/coupons or announcements of new products and no real interaction with other people on Twitter.

Unfortunately, there are many posts on QuikTrip’s Twitter stream much like the one above, highlights being “Bottle water is so convenient.” (apparently ignorant to the fact that it’s called bottled water, not “bottle watter”), “Got tickets to the Cards Cubs game on Friday!!!” (not even related to the company), “Loves the new 10 calorie vitaman water!!!” (again with terrible spelling and grammar), “Sushi is filling but doesn’t make you tired!!!” (QuikTrip doesn’t have sushi, let alone any fish products, so again it’s unrelated to the store). I could go on and on, but take a look for yourself.

Another one of my favorite convenience store chains (and competitor to QuikTrip), Kum & Go, has been doing a fabulous job interacting with Twitter. She has been letting her followers know about good deals in their stores, grand openings of new stores, and generally interacting with customers and potential customers.

Another Iowa chain, Panchero’s, has been another company extremely active on Twitter. The followers of the Panchero’s Twitter account has become quite fond of the person behind it, Joel, and even in some cases he has met with Twitterers at Panchero’s franchises all over the country. Both Kum & Go and Panchero’s gives away free merchandise and food through Twitter contests.

Be yourself — your followers will love you for who you are.

A perfect example of this is Iowa’s US Sen. Chuck Grassley. Grassley was recently voted the No. 7 Most Influential Twitterer in DC. I love to read his posts, even though I can barely figure out what it says most of the time.

I didn’t find out until a few days after the above post what “PantsBurnLegWound” meant. I absolutely hate people who fill their Twitter posts with hard-to-read messages like this, but there’s just something about Grassley’s Twitter that I can’t get enough of (and I’m not a Republican).

I think it’s because I respect the fact that one of America’s top senators isn’t having any aides or interns doing the Twittering for him. He is doing it himself 100%, and it shows. Most of the time, he posts right from his phone via SMS.

Even though his messages can be cryptic at times, he still managed to rustle up 7,973 followers (as of the publishing of this article). Behind the weird abbreviations, there’s something that Twitterers love.

Politico said, “Salon’s Mike Madden, a regular reader and big fan of Grassley’s tweets, says the senator ‘sounds just like the elderly pig farmer he is.’”