OK, first thing: these are RULES, not OPINIONS, so listen up, K?  K.  Also, I’m going to pick on a few tweeps in this post, but don’t consider it “picking on them”, consider it “pointing out their innate personality flaws.”

First of all: Upload an avatar.  If you have the default avatar, like phuongnguyen808, you just look like a hairless n00b.

Second: Your avatar should be a decent-sized picture, so that when I click on it, I can actually see someone.  Case in point: Tweep DJPLB, who just followed me, and who looks like a decent guy in the POSTAGE STAMP SIZED AVATAR PHOTO he uploaded.

Third: No sideways pictures.  JackieBolzan, I’m looking at you.  And hurting my neck.

Fourth: show your face.  Don’t look away from the camera.  Whatchoo lookin at, coolkarthik88?

Fifth: Make sure the height-to-width ratio is right, otherwise when I click on your avatar I get that carnival fun-house vertigo.  Dimpless95, resize that shit!

Sixth: Don’t include multiple people in your Twitter avatar photo, or else I can’t tell which one is you.  itspaigeollie, are you the cute one, the smart one, or the fat one?

Seventh: Avoid excess cleavage.  I know, I know, I’m losing man points for saying this, but I honestly don’t even remember this girl’s face.

Eighth: No cut-off photos. Oneway10, you’re not artsy, you just have bad aim.

Ninth: Don’t use a photo you took of yourself in the mirror with your phone.  Could you be any more ghetto?  That’s for sexting, not Twitter avatars.  Hey WhiteMamba04, I’m talking to you! 

Tenth: NO JUSTIN BIEBER AVATARS.  It’s just creepy.  Unless you’re actually Justin Bieber, in which case it’s still creepy, only slightly less so.

Gray area: You should use a photo, not an illustration.  There have been waves of Simpsons avatars, or South Park avatars, or others…at least using those I can tell your gender, your hair color, and probably your ethnicity.  This one from ximediaz really crosses the line, though.

Hat tip to Marjolein Hoekstra for this link to Twitter Friends’ Bio at a Glance, a greasemonkey script that adds additional information to your friend and follower lists at twitter.com.

Even if you don’t use twitter.com for tweets, it’s a handy place to review who follows you and whom you follow.  With this extra script, it becomes even handier!

Screenie:

Here’s a list of interesting stories, blog posts, and articles that have come across my tweetstream in the past day or two:

I’m a big fan of Marina Martin.  If you’ve lately been spending a lot of time thinking about 2009, as I have, you’ll want to read The Ultimate Guide to New Year’s Resolutions.

A good article on entrepreneurship by author and entrepreneur Norm Brodsky. Norm emphasizes the, you know, business part of running a business. (h/t @ryancarson)

The Social Media Club Seattle is having a “reconnect” event on Tuesday, January 9th.  Tickets are $15, but if you register online, you get a two-for-one deal. Looks interesting – I’m going to go network and make some new friends.

An interesting article about the honey trade, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  Have you heard of the term “honey laundering”? You have now! This was a five-month investigation.  Too bad WaPo didn’t spend this much time investigating WMD claims. (h/t @alisoncook)

Top Media & Marketing Innovations of 2008, as judged by Ad Week.  Warning: this is one of those articles with 17 pages that you have to click through.  I think this technique was invented, or at least perfected, by Forbes Magazine. (h/t @patrickbyers)

Twitter Friends Network Browser.  This is interesting, even if I don’t quite understand the UI metaphors.  What exactly is dragging supposed to let you learn?

“Why Journalism Schools Should Get Rid of PR” – by Bob Conrad. Provacative! Do you agree? (h/t @scotthepburn)

Are you a football fan? Real football, not the padded-up grabass they play in the U.S.  If so, you’ll enjoy this Yousport video of a Barca fan doing some amazing dribbling.

Here’s a treat – Merlin Mann’s 6-part audio series “How to Blog”.  My advice: listen to smart people; get smarter as a result. (h/t @conniecrosby).

Intercepter 1.2 is a greasemonkey script for Firefox that replaces TinyURL links embedded in a web page with the “real” domains so that you know roughly where you’re going before you click.

Before example:

After example:

A couple notes:

1. The script only works on TinyURL – not other url-shortening services like Snurl.
2. It only shows the top-level domain, not the final URL – which is probably enough to give you an idea of where you’re being redirected to.

[Gestalt: A collection of physical, biological, psychological or symbolic entities that creates a unified concept, configuration or pattern which is greater than the sum of its parts. -- Wiktionary]

Why do you use Twitter?  What do you get from it?  Everyone has their own answers, I suppose, but I believe that Marcelo Calbucci is way wide of the mark with this post:

I believe the best way to use Twitter is not to follow people that are interesting, or influential, or controversial. You’ll get the most value (and fun) out of Twitter if you only follow people that you know [...] don’t follow me on Twitter unless you know me personally or we have friends in common, so we are likely to bump into each other in the near future.

Twitter (and the intertubes in general) offer you the unique opportunity to free yourself from the constraints of real-world locale (aka “meatspace”). Why not take advantage of it? Expand your horizons.

I’m not sure how I’d describe Marcelo’s attitude: perhaps “conservative” is appropriate. To consider our wonderful new technologies as only an adjunct to previous ways of communicating and socializing is akin to … I don’t know, I can’t think of a good metaphor, but it misses the point, and ignores the possibilities.

Some of my favorite tweeps are people that I only know through Twitter. What about you?

How do you decide whether or not to follow someone on Twitter?

Everyone has their own “attention bandwidth” that they can devote to Twitter and other social-networking platforms like Facebook, Identi.ca, Plurk, Pownce, etc. Some people can follow thousands and not bat an eye; others cap their following count at a firm number and have an “add one, remove one” rule.

Here are my own personal heuristics for deciding whether or not to follow someone:

1. Do I feel overwhelmed right now? If not, I’ll probably follow.
2. Have they followed me? Unless they get dinged for some other reason below, I’m likely to follow back.
3. Are they spammers? Dinged without remorse.
4. Do they use a recognizably “real” name, or something like CrazyHippo45? The more real the name, the more likely I am to follow back.
5. Do they use a real photo in their avatar? If not, I’m less likely to follow.
6. Do they tweet consistently? If they have big gaps in their tweetstream I’m not likely to follow.
7. Do they have a reasonable followed/following ratio? I don’t personally care too much about absolute numbers, but if they follow 2,000 people, and only have 20 followers, something smells.
8. Do they post about topics I’m interested in, or topics I’m not interested in?
9. Do they have frequent tweetorrhea (e.g. posting 40 times in any single hour): probably won’t follow.
10. Are they following or followed by people I’m following or followed by? +1.
11. Can they spell? You’d be surprised how important this is to me.

What are your personal rules for deciding whom to follow on Twitter?

So, coming after the big success of my blog post The 12 People You Meet On Twitter, I present you with the following quiz that will help you make sense of your #1 obsession:

How Addicted To Twitter Are You?

• You evangelize twitter to others (5 POINTS)
• You’ve adopted a cartoon avatar for at least some length of time. (5 POINTS)
• You’ve changed your twitter name at least once. (5 POINTS)
• You link Twitter to Facebook. (5 POINTS)
• One of your tags on your blog is “Twitter”. (10 POINTS)
• You check your follower count at least once a day (10 POINTS)
• You’ve made new real-world friends among your tweeps (10 POINTS)
• You have a personal theory of what characteristics make a tweep a good follow. (10 POINTS)
• You’ve integrated a photosharing website with your Twitter account. (10 POINTS)
• You tweet on vacation (10 POINTS)
• You’ve integrated a voice-to-text service with your Twitter account. (15 POINTS)
• You know the nickname of the guy who founded both Blogger and Twitter. (15 POINTS)
• You get giddy whenever you hear about a new Twitter tool or mashup. (15 POINTS)
• You’ve tried at least 6 Twitter clients. (20 POINTS)
• You have an instantly recognizable personal style for all your tweets. (20 POINTS)
• You Twitter while watching a big-screen movie. (25 POINTS)
• You keep Twhirl open all the time so that you can scroll back and pick up missed tweets. (25 POINTS)
• When you wake up, you check Twitter before you check e-mail. (30 POINTS)
• You Tweet your airport code as you rush to get to your connecting flight. (35 POINTS)
• You tweet on the toilet.  (40 POINTS)
• You tweet while visiting a dying relative in the hospital. (50 POINTS)
• You tweet while you drive. (50 POINTS)
• You tweet at a funeral. (50 POINTS)
• You tweet while waiting to be arraigned in court. (50 POINTS)
• You Tweet while using the urinal. (70 POINTS)
• You tweet during a nooner. (100 POINTS)

Add up your points and post a comment!  Share your stories, we’re all friends here.  Feel free to suggest new categories of addiction as well, along with a recommended point scale.

I just saw a tweet from Fred that John Cleese is now on Twitter.  As is my usual habit, I checked out John’s tweetstream and have decided that – as much as I love him as an actor – I won’t be following him on Twitter.

The reason?  He’s obviously writing for an audience.  I doubt that John has said “Bloody Heck” in preference to “Bloody Hell”, ever, yet he writes “Bloody Heck” in his tweet.

Turn off your internal editor, John!  When you do, I’ll follow you.

I just saw a tweet from Fred that John Cleese is now on Twitter.  As is my usual habit, I checked out John’s tweetstream and have decided that – as much as I love him as an actor – I won’t be following him on Twitter.

The reason?  He’s obviously writing for an audience.  I doubt that John has said “Bloody Heck” in preference to “Bloody Hell”, ever, yet he writes “Bloody Heck” in his tweet.

Turn off your internal editor, John!  When you do, I’ll follow you.

Friend @waynesutton tweets:

waynesutton Just read some sad news on the @BreakingNewsOn tweet time line, if you’re not following @BreakingNewsOn you should be

I checked out their tweetstream and won’t be following them anytime soon.  Why?  Too much negative news.  Here’s a one-liner summary of their recent tweets:

death, death, NASA, death, death, destruction, destruction, destruction, politics, politics, death, death, drill, injury, destruction, politics, politics, injury, injury, service announcement.

I don’t want to fill my brain up with death, destruction, injury, and the like. It’s the same reason I don’t watch local news: you’d think that Seattle is filled with meth-addicted gangster hos who leave newborns in trash cans before robbing the local Evergreen Bank branch. Not my cup of tea.

Give me uplifting, thought-provoking commentary that talks about the best that the human race can offer, and I’ll subscribe to *that*.