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.

In the real world, I like junk.  Junk is real and messy.  Junk has a history, a story.    Junk implies and connotes and suggests and narrates.  Junk is tangible, touchable, and occasionally has all the frailties and shortcomings that people do.  Junk smells.  Junk is scarred.  Junk is wounded. Junk has three legs when four would seem warranted.  Junk is often broken.

Of course I’m not talking about the real world, am I?  I’m waxing metaphorical about Twitter followers.  Junk – in the Twitter context – means REAL PEOPLE.  In Twitterville, junk is good.  But, let’s avoid any misunderstandings amongst my followers – hey there, I love all 1502 of you! *wink* – avoid the term “junk”, and call you what you are, people.  Real people.

Most of my followers are real people, anyway.  Some of you – and you don’t and won’t know who you are, for reasons I’ll explain shortly – are not real people.  You’re evil: heccubi and succubi and other creatures of the social-media witching hour.  You’re pure-virtual corpbots or pseudo-spammers or dilettantes with an agenda, and you don’t use Twitter to interact with other real people.  You don’t want to get your hands dirty.  You don’t want to be messy.  You set up a schedule on some tool and flood your tweetstream with links or RTs or canned #quotes or goddamned mother-fucking bit.ly links for your Twitter marketing engine gone crazy and expect – really? – that I’ll actually follow you back and buy into your warped twisted, anti-real view of Twitter, of social media generally, and of how people should interact.

Fuck you.  I’m not following you.  In fact, depending on how foul my mood is, how much shit I’ve had to wade through at work or fucking insulting crap I’ve had to wade through outside of work, I might block you or report you for spam.  Actually, not really – I talk a tough game, but I’m not that much of a douchebag and maybe there is this whole alternate universe of social media zombies who like to play pretend on Twitter and interact with other fake personas, all sheen and no substance, all smiley emoticons and no smiles, all promise and no delivery.

I like mess.  I like junk.  I like emotions.  I like REAL.  You had a shitty day at work?  Tell me about it.  I can probably relate.  Having a tough time with your relationships?  Send out an S.O.S. and odds are that me – or somebody like me, kind and caring and with whom you’ve actually started to develop a real-person relationship, will have your back, in some small way, while you work it out.  Just need a friend?  Yeah.  That’s me, there when you need it.

But don’t fucking follow me and expose a neutered, castrated version of your real self and expect any pity.  I’m merciless with fakes.  Go follow other shiny false-ass “friends” and leave me alone with the people I like and love and let us do what we like to do – be real.

First rule of Twitter etiquette: there is no such thing.  In my opinion, if you don’t like something that someone is doing, you can unfollow them anytime you want.

Having said that, what are some of the new themes in Twitter etiquette that are worth commenting on?  Let’s take a tour.

#hashtags: Hashtags are those words prefixed by the pound sign (“#”, also known a hash sign) that you see in tweetstreams.  They supposedly provide context and metadata to tweets, but in practice, I see them used mostly for emphasis, and that’s how I use them.  It’s slightly painful to see well-meaning twitterati try to coordinate hashtags for an event when everyone has already started using different ones.

Blog posts: Normally people are pretty good about noting that they are linking to one of their own posts by prefixing their tweet with [blog] or [post] or something similar.  Bloggers who repeatedly spam their own posts get blocked, period.  Twitter in my mind is a lifestreaming app, not a one-way push mechanism.

Retweets: Twitter recently fucked up the retweet function on their website, and not only don’t allow you to edit tweets for length, or add your own prefix comment.  Luckily most other tools still allow you retweet and  keep your sanity.  A couple tricky issues with retweets:

• How much editing is too much?
• If an item has been retweeted before it got to you, do you have to keep the whole chain of retweeters?

I have no hard-and-fast expectation for either.  If you want to edit the retweet, go for it.  If you want to chop out multiple retweeters, go for it.  Try your best to keep original attribution, but don’t go all haywire applying severe rules to a fluid medium.

Grammar: A lot of twitter grammarians have already checked themselves in to inpatient psych wards, so this problem is less of an issue than it used to be.  Twitter grammar sucks.  People type quickly, they type while driving, they type while roller skating backwards and locking lips with their significant others.  Bad grammar happens.  Even if bad grammar chafes (as it does me), you can learn to deal with it.  People are messy. So is Twitter.

Rickrolling:  Rickrolling is like heavy drinking; every now and then it can be a fun break.  Do it every day and people start to shun you.

Protected Updates: My favorite phrase on this question is “protected updates make baby Jesus cry.”  Don’t protect your updates and still pretend that you’re “doing” Twitter.  Get over your fear of the Wayback Machine, live your life authentically, and don’t worry what some future boss/friend/spouse might think about something you tweeted back in 2008.

Inanity: Sometimes tweets make no sense.  In my opinion, that’s part of the fun of Twitter; you get to see people as they really are, without a lot of filtering and polishing and pre-planning and run-this-by-my-publicist checking.  Tweeps who are too polished are boring, IMHO.  On the other hand, if you like the  corporate flavors, feel free to unfollow someone who tweets about the junk that their cat just threw up.

Anything to add?  Things you love or hate about Twitter?  Write it in the comments!

[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?

Here’s what Twitter brought to me today.  First, from @_Dianne, this picture of lightning over Brisbane, courtesy of news.com.au:

Lightning over Brisbane

Next, from @moniguzman, this picture of the 520 floating bridge in Seattle “floating” in fog, via Twinkle Shots:

520 bridge floating in fog

Thanks tweeples!

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.

Based on @marinamartin’s experience, I’ve decided to set up a bridge between Identi.ca and Twitter, so that updates I make in one tool can be viewed in the other.

My first experiment was with Brad Williams’ tool, but that appears to be one-way only, from Identi.ca to Twitter.

Another search pulled up kshep’s bridge, which ALSO appears to be one-way only.

Is there such a thing as a two-way bridge?

While I was searching, I saw some tweets that seemed to indicate that there may be a conscious decision NOT to program in two-way updates, due the “closed nature” of twitter and in order to make a “political statement”. Oh snap. I suppose that’s what happens when you get a bunch of talented open-source hackers on a project in an election year

So here’s where I’m at: if I can’t get two-way updates, then I will mainly use Twitter for the near future. If I can get two-way updates, I’ll use identi.ca.

Federation, heal thyself?

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.