Rules.
We all all live by them. We all have our own code.
Twitter.
It’s the second love of my life. It’s the communications platform I always dreamed of. It gives anyone the ability to talk to anyone else in this world as long as they have a Twitter account. Not once in the history of the world has this been possible. Yet here we are exchanging words across the globe with anyone and everyone.
I’ve been using Twitter for nearly five years. I don’t cheat the system. I don’t play the follow me and I’ll follow you game. But I do reply to nearly everyone who speaks to me – its only polite – and I do hunt out fun and interesting people to talk to because its what makes life interesting.
But you got to have rules and that’s where My Twitter Rules come in to play.
1. If I follow you and you send me an auto-DM then I’ll unfollow. It’s rude to think that because I’ve chosen to engage with you that you suddenly have the right to barge into my life and try to sell me something or direct me to your blog or your website. If it’s in your profile chances are I’ve already looked.
2. If you tweet more than five times in my timeline in less than a minute and it’s not a scream for help because you are in a dire situation the I’ll unfollow you. I follow you because I’m interested in you. I didn’t follow you to know the exact contents of your mind one a second by second basis.
3. I don’t read celebrity gossip. I don’t wait patiently every week to find out which celebrity has been knocked up, divorced, having an affair or simply put on some extra pounds. You know what? I simply don’t care. Everyone deserves their privacy and I’m not a fan of peering into people’s lives through an 800mm lens.
4. Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton. Retweet them and I unfollow. I have no desire to know anything about either of those two. Basically I suggest thinking about your followers before you retweet certain things. I always hover for a second and think about my followers before I retweet.
5. Quotes. If you think continually tweeting quotations is cool well that’s just swell however if I want to read quotes the I’ll head on over to one of the million quote pages on the web and read some.
6. Every week I try and find a few people I’ve not engaged with in a while or at all and see what they have to say and try to chat to them. Find something they have said I have found interesting and let them know.
7. If you have connected your account to a site that is sending DMs to me telling me ‘people are saying this about you and has a link’ I’ll DM you back and let you know. You may not know the account is sending on your behalf so it’s only right I let you know.
8. If I have just followed you and we haven’t interacted and you send me a DM asking me to subscribe to your YouTube channel or your blog you can be assured I won’t be visiting your site and I certainly won’t be following you any more.
9. I will block you if you are a troll. I have been abused a few times on Twitter (this one comes to mind!) and I simply won’t put up with you being an asshole. I’ll accept it a few times as you may be having a bad day but if you keep at it it’s block city
I guess they are my standard rules. I’ll probably come back and update when I think of others I use. If you have any rules I’d love to hear them.
kiltforhire 
One of the things I try to do is to add people to appropriate lists. If I get a couple of conversations out of people, I tend to add them to my more conversational lists rather than the lists I rarely monitor. And I’m like you, I try to respond to every mention. It’s more fun that way
Thanks for the comment Gavin. Yeah I also add people to lists. In fact you are smack dab in my main one because you are always fun and interesting.
Some Twitter accounts turn nasty or problematic after a good start. I found a New Zealand written app called Twit Cleaner is useful for periodic clean-ups. I wrote about it on my site: http://billbennett.co.nz/2012/05/01/twit-cleaner-made-in-nz-seriously-useful/
Cheers Bill. I used it a while ago and should probably dip back in once more.
Very similar to me mate. I just don’t get on their as much as I use to. I do use the facebook connector to publish and I make an effort if someone response to me on twitter (even to a facebooked tweet) to reply back on twitter, it’s only polite.
I have one extra rule, which is: If you are constantly negative (75%+ of the time) and have nothing nice to say and just criticise, then I don’t need to read you and will unfollow. I think we all have enough stuff to deal with and I don’t need someone else getting me down. Constructive criticise is fine, but criticise and being negative is something I can do without.
I remember calling someone out over Rule 1, then being told that my “feud” made it impossible for them to come to the pub for twitter meets… Wait, what?
Seriously? That’s mental!
And that person wants to be your ‘friend’?
Man, the language of social networking gets strange at times.
Do you have a rule about mixing business with pleasure? That is, do you mix NBN stuff with Star Wars, gaming and strange Scottish food.
There should have been a ? at the end of that, sorry.
Nope but I do mix my conversations across a massive range of areas.
What if I accidentally break a rule with a slip on the retweet button or a monthly bout of verbal diarrhoea? is there any chance for redemption?
Mate, I can’t believe you haven’t unfollowed me. Nobody is a bigger fan of Paris Hilton DMs than I.
You are a very special case though…very special.
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This is so great… I almost practically don’t miss Twitter because everyone gets on my nerves for retweeting the same people, or doing the ‘im so inspirational’ here is a quote by the Dalai Lama. Or tells me to quit sugar. 🙂
Never quit sugar. It’s awesome!
I’d also say that Twitter is what you make it. If people are posting that stuff simply unfollow and move on. Craft your own experience 🙂
Once I figure out how to not care about what other people think, I may return 🙂
You are missed