my twitter manifesto...
If you're on this page, you probably were sent here from my Twitter profile. Welcome. If you want to get to know me a little better, check out the links in the right column. The intent of this page is to give you an idea how I approach my participation on Twitter.My rules for handling Twitter are guided by my overall "rules of engagement" for all personal online activity, especially my philosophy that the decisions made about following or unfollowing, blocking or unblocking, replying or staying silent, are PERSONAL decisions that are made without comment, explanation, or justification.
Quick distinction here: Twitizens (capitalized as a sign of respect to said users) are responsible Twitter users who show a clear intent of building community, genuinely interacting with others, or providing a valuable, useful service. twits (all lower case because they don't deserve the same respect) are cyber-leeches who "take" from Twitter and have no apparent intent of conducting meaningful interaction or building community. These folks tend to fail to get the true meaning of "social media". If you are a Twitizen, thank you for following me; I look forward to getting to know you. If you're a twit, move along; nothing to see here.
With that said, on Twitter I almost always follow another user back if he or she chooses to follow me. Exceptions to this rule include, but are not limited to:
- twits who follow for the sole purpose of link spamming (no, I am not interested in offers for MLM schemes or free laptops). These twits will be summarily blocked without comment.
- twits whose posts consist almost exclusively of self-promotional pabulum or braggadocio.
- twits whose discourse is one-way only - and who make no apparent attempt to engage other users.
- twits (with the exception of RSS feeds of web sites that provide useful news or information) who run accounts that are little more than "bots".
- twits who follow a few hundred people, have very few followers, and/or have very few updates on their profiles.
I tend to find auto-follow DMs annoying; but generally bear with them. One exception is when said auto-follow DMs sneak in a sales pitch and/or a link with the "thanks for following me" message. Any twit who uses these type of auto-follow DMs WILL be summarily blocked. IMO these are no better than spam.
Finally, just because I follow someone on Twitter doesn't necessarily mean I automatically want to follow that same person on Facebook or another social media site. I concentrate on three social media arenas: my personal blog, my Twitter account, and my Facebook account. My blog and Twitter account are public in nature; my Facebook account, however, is private. While I tend to be pretty liberal following others on Twitter, I tend to be rather conservative in adding Facebook friends.
Thanks for reading. Back to my Twitter profile?
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my online hangouts:
(frequently updated stuff)
blog.vanillacokehead.com
my twitter profile
my facebook profile
new family pix
my youtube channel
(somewhat dated stuff)
mcheathster.com
myspace profile
old family pix
my old blog
this page last updated April 6, 2009.
DISCLAIMER: this web site is my PERSONAL online presence and is not associated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Coca-Cola Enterprises. I am solely responsible for the content on this web site. Vanilla Coke is a registered trademark of Coca-Cola Enterprises and no infringement on, dilution of, or misappropriation towards the Vanilla Coke brand name is intended. However, it would be interesting to see the Coke Classic product team sue the Coke Zero product team.
