additions to the ever growing list of rules to be applied to twitter

Many moons ago (12th May 2009 to be unnecessarily precise) I suggested a top ten list of 18 rules that should be part of the Twitter sign-up process. While my maths may have improved since then, it seems that Twitter has not. Indeed, as Twitter continues to get more and more popular, it seems that a disproportionate number of these Twimmigrants are hell-bent on befouling the playground with their rusty syringes of irritating contribution.

Being a Good Socialist, I realise that I’m prone to enthusiastic bouts of rule-making and social engineering. However, I think it’s time for a few more, up-to-date, Twitter rules.

PS Please don’t use the word “Twimmigrants”. I made it up so it’s mine, and I’m trying to sell it to the Daily Mail.

More Twitter Rules
1. Twitter is NOT an “ideal marketing platform”. An ideal marketing platform is a place where you can try to sell your tat to people who are looking to buy tat. Walking into a room or bar where people are happily chatting, pretending to be interesting for a while and then grabbing everyone and shouting “buy my tat because I’m an EXPERT!” is not acceptable.

2. Look, I know that Twitter is indexed by Google. So when you start randomly posting dozens of links to “useful” articles that you’re “borrowing” from other people on the web, you’re not fooling me; I know that you’re targeting search engines rather than Twitter users. A big clue is when you post links to articles faster than anyone could possibly read them. Anyway, it’s incredibly rude, so please pack it in.

By the way, if you’re going to ignore this because your grimy doomed-to-fail attempts at grabbing a few quid are more important to you than pissing me off, at least have the decency to set up a separate Twitter account to do it from. that way you can while away the hours wasting your time on stupid attempts to trick Google, without me following you.

3. If – on a regular basis – you’re going to post more frequently than once every couple of hours, then don’t be surprised when people stop following you. If you want to tell me everything you are doing/have done/are thinking then it’ll be more efficient for me to throw Twitter away and just move in with you. I’m not going to do that.

4. Just because retweeting is a big part of Twitter, that doesn’t mean it’s OK for your marketing plan to include nicking other people’s web content and passing it on through your Twitter account, under the guise of being helpful. In effect you’re saying “Bert thinks that widgets are cool. I agree, so that means you should buy my tat”. I can go and buy a Manchester United shirt, however doing so won’t make me any better at football.

5. More on retweeting – it’s OK to retweet stuff that is genuinely interesting. However endlessly retweeting other people’s comments just shows that you have nothing interesting to say yourself. And you know what everyone’s mum says: “If you haven’t got anything useful to say, for fuck’s sake SHUT UP” (well, that’s what my mum said anyway).

6. If you’re using Twitter as a marketing tool, then odds on you’ve got a corporate blog (because that’s what marketing people were saying everyone should do three years ago). Please, please stop sending a tweet advertising your blog every single time you post something to it. If I want to be updated every time your update your blog (which, after all, is probably just there as another tat-selling channel) I can use RSS – that’s what it’s for.

7. Time for a non marketing-related rule. Twitter is not a popularity contest, so stop sending out messages imploring people to follow you. If you’re in any way interesting, I may follow you; if all you do is yell “look at me! be my friend!, look at me some more!” then I definitely won’t.

8. Going back to the original list of rules, they still haven’t come up with a way of formalising hash tags. Bastards.

That’ll do for now. There’ll probably be more – next time I’m grumpy no doubt.